Scars of Mars on PC

Real-time strategy games can be quite the thrilling endeavour. By taking a few brainteasing elements and forcing you to implement them on the fly, you can easily transcend genres between action and strategy. When Scars of Mars is at its best, it’s a great showcase for this notion. Unfortunately, as you’ll discover, its best is distressingly limited.

The game quickly piqued my interest, based largely on the development team at the helm. You might not know Acquire at first glance, but they were in fact the studio that collaborated with Square Enix to bring the fabulous Octopath Traveler games to life. With that kind of pedigree, you have a certain kind of expectation going in.

Set in the distant future, Scars of Mars has you controlling four units — dubbed humanoids — which are placed on a 3×3 grid. By moving them back and forth, you are able to get into range of enemies that navigate a grid of their own. Using the weapons at your disposal (each with varying cooldown times), your goal is to deal enough damage to wipe out the enemies, while dodging their attacks at the same time.

Incoming danger is marked by the squares on the grid turning red, giving you enough time to move your humanoids out of the way. Alternatively, you can remain in that space for as long as possible and dish out Counterattacks that yield higher damage.

Depending on the class of the humanoid and the weapons they carry, you may be able to attack from further away, or heal other units. Between battles, you navigate a branching path in a roguelike dungeon crawling fashion. Some spaces will lead to battle, while others allow you to collect items or trigger a random event that can help or hinder.

All the while, your battery power will whittle down. Once it reaches 0%, your units will be frozen in place like sitting ducks. Keep this point in mind, as we’ll be circling back to it later.

All the above is a shorthand version of the mechanics, and at first, it can be a lot. Considering the juggling act you’ve got going on between offence and defence, your success will be dependant on how quickly you can react. This proves especially difficult when you discover that some of the stronger enemies have attacks that will take up an entire row of your grid. Do you prioritise your most valuable humanoid? Or the one who is closest to death?

Once it begins clicking, the core gameplay loop can become rather satisfying. I quite enjoyed ducking in with a katana-yielding unit, then stepping aside so that the gunner behind could add some additional fire. It may sound obvious, but you’ll have to learn pretty fast which humanoid does what — a challenge when one considers that they’re four blank templates that can be customised as you see fit.

On the one hand, this does mean that you can switch between classes until you land on the optimal combination. On the other, more apparent hand, is the fact that there is little to differentiate one humanoid from the other. They can each be renamed to whatever you like, and you can assign each of them an avatar from a pre-selected rotation.

Beyond that, they have no autonomy whatsoever. They are merely tools for your disposal, and had I not named them after my cats, I may have had further complications in deploying them effectively in the heat of battle.

Much like a deteriorating game of Tetris, once you start making errors, the consequences begin piling up until your back is against the wall. By the time I had reached the first boss, my mental lapses left only one unit standing (a dapper robot gentleman I named Daft Punk), who was forced to carry out the mission solo. Funnily enough, this made combat much more manageable, but with that battery constantly ticking away, not effective in the long run.

On the note of the battery, it’s a bit of an elephant in the room, because it is no Energizer bunny. While you’re fighting, it’s draining. While you’re choosing where to navigate next, it’s draining. While you’re trying to decide which option to select in the event room, it’s draining. The only time you have solace from it is when you enter a safe room, which is accompanied by my old favourite; lilting safe room music. Ahh, bliss.

In the end, it’s a divisive mechanic that some may find too oppressive. Humanoids will gain EXP and level up between battles (up to a maximum of 20), strengthening them for the fights yet to come but resetting once you have finished the current stage. Tackling enemy spaces ought to reward you for your efforts, however it’s just not time effective to keep on fighting and sucking your battery dry.

Sometimes you will receive items that can replenish it, or as a result of the event spaces, but it’s too uncommon to be reliable — though the possibility of it happening does make these lower stakes spaces more attractive than going through the gauntlet. See the issue here?

Inevitably, each run ends up being completely rushed from room to room, and if your battery is almost out, you might as well throw in the towel and allow the party to get wiped. You get to hold onto half of the items you picked up, as well as the EXP and monetary credits, which are converted to research points.

And here is where things get a little dicey. Even if you have mastered the art of combat, you’ll eventually find yourself hitting a wall where your humanoids aren’t dishing out enough damage. Considering you won’t have the battery supply to reliably gain EXP via constant battles, the solution is to unlock special powers through the aforementioned research points, or to boost your humanoids’ stats through upgrade points.

As a result, you’ll end up grinding before too long, hit with a difficulty barrier that feels cheap and artificial in order to increase the game’s runtime. That runtime, incidentally, needs all the help it can get, because as of the time of writing, there are three missions.

Three. Each of which can be completed in around 10 minutes or so. There is a barebones text-based narrative spoken entirely by NPCs about an extraction mission to rescue a doctor who is a complete dick (as most doctors are), but it’s pretty much over as soon as it’s started, to the point where it’s rather baffling.

You can start again on the higher difficulty level if you’d like, or continue to beef up your humanoids, but once you’ve finished the story, why would you, exactly? You’ll only be returning to those three stages over again, and other than enemy types and difficulty, they’re much the same, anyway.

Although the slight runtime is Scars of Mars’ most noteworthy drawback, the simple truth is that you may not really have wanted it to go for much longer anyway. The base mechanic is quite fascinating, and swapping between classes and weapons to suit your playstyle is a nice touch. Once those battles start dragging out, however, your enjoyment will start depleting faster than that godforsaken battery.

There’s just not enough polish or variety to keep even this brief story mode engaging. The lack of soul in the humanoids will leave you feeling lonely, and the newfound sense of combat flow will inevitably turn into malaise. Then, once you encounter enemy types that will fully heal their allies on the frontline — and can themselves only be targeted by ranged attacks — that malaise will turn into downright vexation.

I like a lot of the concepts in this game, but I found myself disliking how they were implemented. That aforementioned roguelike dungeon? A bit too roguelike for its own good, at one point offering me a path of three straight event tiles, followed by an item drop. Events aren’t always going to help, of course, but they’re much faster and easier to handle than constant battles, especially true because of — yes, you guessed it — the ever-looming, ever-diminishing battery.

It all comes together for an experience that is dismayingly hollow, and one that you’ll be unlikely to return to. As harsh as it sounds, you’ll get the most enjoyment out of Scars of Mars if you play it as a free demo. Once you’ve seen one mission, you’ve seen it all; or if you’re being literal, you’ve seen a third of the game’s entirety.

Final Verdict

Scars of Mars

REVIEW COPY PROVIDED BY PUBLISHER

Release Date: 20 June 2024

Platform: PC (also available on Switch)

Developer: ACQUIRE Corp.

Publisher: ACQUIRE Corp.

A brief and undercooked disappointment, Scars of Mars will hook you in at first before cutting bait thanks to a myriad of drawbacks.

There is a fun game in there, and you’ll find it within the first half hour of play. Tinkering with your humanoids and then deploying them efficiently can be satisfying, albeit with the caveat that they are completely devoid of character. Once you hit the wall, you’ll either crash and burn or grit your teeth to grind your team up to snuff.

Then, your reward for sticking around is a measly three stages, held together by a storyline so flimsy it may as well not be there in the first place. I crave more from this game, but absolutely not more of what it has to offer. It’s a good core concept that is hardly done justice.