Tharsis Review

Difficult games are fun, and we're all capable of accepting a decent amount of challenge, but Tharsis seems to teeter on the edge of “I can figure this out eventually if I try hard enough” and “YOU STUPID DICE, WHY DO YOU KEEP ROLLING ONES AND TWOS!?” Luck plays a bit too heavily into the whole concept.

But despite all of that, the game’s atmosphere is pretty great. There is a pretty gripping story being told when it’s really just flavor text. It wasn’t needed to carry the game along, but it is certainly appreciated. In the end, Tharsis isn’t for everyone. But those looking for a game of chess mixed with cannibalizing scientists with a lot of luck thrown in, it can be pretty fun.

The Positives

• Tharsis is a strategy heavy game. Fans of FTL and XCOM may enjoy the “Think or die” action of the title. It presents a real challenge for those looking to master a game. Even easy mode was extremely difficult. The replay factor has a very “one more try” aspect to it, that is both frustrating and addicting.

• The game has a “hard-science” science fiction, which makes it believable in the real world. The story and the captain’s log are both very gripping and foreboding. Even the tooltips for the actions you perform are written in a scientific way that doesn’t involve flux capacitors or reversed polarities.

• Nothing is really kept from you. If times get grim and a character dies and there’s no food, you can eat them. Remember the bright eyed/bushy tailed quip earlier? That’s right, the man who was by your side for the first four weeks that died yesterday may be today’s meal so that we might have enough energy to continue working!

• A few of the mechanics are different from most games. Health works like you would expect. They’re little squares. a -1 takes a health from your character and they die if they hit zero. But stress is a mechanic that affects what your characters do between turns. A less stressed team will suggest good uses of time that may help you make it to Mars in one piece. A stressed out team may suggest terrible plans, one of which you must pick in order to progress.

The Negatives

• This game is hard. There’s a difference between Dark Souls hard, Megaman Nintenhard, and this game. That main difference being luck. This game may use luck a little too much in its journey towards the goal. Dark Souls can be mastered by learning what every weapon does, how to maximize your chosen stats, etc. Megaman can be mastered by way of memorization. Tharsis can be mastered by learning exactly what every tool does, knowing what astronaut class to use where, knowing all of the mechanics through multiple attempts… and having a ton of luck. No amount of skill can beat bum dice.

• A few choices in the game aren’t exactly clear on how they’re used. You can harvest food, gain more “assist” points and repair the ship using a skill specific to the module you are working in. I did this multiple times to gain food for my crew, only to receive none. I’m sure the proper way to do it makes sense, but it isn’t exactly apparent and wasting dice to experiment with something that should have a clear tooltip isn’t wise in a game where life and death are a mere click away from each other.

• You never feel like you can do enough. Again, there is a threshold where this type of gameplay is acceptable. It wouldn’t be a challenge if every disaster could be handled easily. But when you’re low on food and every character has two dice total and there are two or three modules that have a number higher than 15, your victory becomes literally impossible.

Surviving in space is hard. Really hard. Tharsis is a dice-based survival game by Choice Provisions in which the player finds themselves controlling four astronauts in a shuttle on its way to Mars. Sounds fun right? Ready for a space adventure full of intrigue, excitement and whimsy?

That’s too bad. Because Tharsis will take those wide eyes and that bushy tail of yours and make you eat it. Literally, they’ll make you eat it, but more on that later. In the introductory cutscene, you are greeted with two hopeful and positive astronauts happily plugging away at their little modules inside the food pantry of the shuttle. Well buckle up cowboy, because your food pantry just blew up, launching one of these helpless little space explorers into the black void and killing the other instantly.

Your ultimate goal is to make it to Mars, by any means necessary. With no interruptions (and those can happen quite often), the shuttle should reach Mars in 10 weeks. The game is divided into turns, which are a week’s worth of time. This may sound short, but worry not… You will have to play many, many times before winning/giving up. On your way to Mars, different events will happen each turn. These events are handled with dice rolls and they have negative consequences attached to them if they are not handled by the end of the turn. One event may cause damage to the ship if not repaired but another event may damage all crew by one health point. The game basically turns into managing what catastrophically bad thing you can accept happening that turn while you handle the other near-death experience trying to tear your ship apart. If it hasn’t been clear up until this point: This game is hard.