A fresh start and so many ways to die on Mars. I found myself having crash-landed in an escape pod. With limited supplies and time, I needed to build myself better shelter and equipment if I was to survive on Mars for more than just a couple of weeks. My life pod after a while would no longer serve much use for me.

For the first couple of days, I explored the area I had landed in. Nearby was an abandoned building that I would slowly salvage for parts. In the short term, I lacked the technological ability to salvage most of the parts of that building. So, I started off working on simple things that yield some basic building material.

I ended up being quite lucky. There were two abandoned vehicles in the area. One of them a little ATV would just need a new circuit board. I would end up finding one in the building I was slowly looting and salvaging.

As far as the other vehicle. It was quite massive and I for sure thought there was no way it would just be working. Oh, how wrong I ended up being. At some point, I'd go check in on it after my base had some ability to produce power and I'd discover I had quite the powerhouse of a tool left at my disposal. For the time being, however, it would just sit around and rot on the harsh Mars surface.

My base workshop itself would be quite humble for a while. I mostly would just set up equipment to start growing seeds for potatoes. I knew at one point food would start to become the limiting factor in how long I would be able to survive on Mars.

I also knew it takes forever to grow anything. At least in the short term, I had some food on the pod I crashed on. I’d also find some leftover emergency food when I'd go out exploring different structures, I'd find scattered all over the planet.

My base was powered by a couple of solar panels. This also for the time being I could not shelter at night at it. My crops growing inside would also be at risk of dying. There was not much I could do till I could build a bit more of a complex energy grid that included some power banks for storing energy overnight.

Once it got dark enough and temps plummeted, I'd rush back to my escape pod and rest there for the night. It always felt like my nights were a bit of a wasted time. I'd have to oversleep in my pod till it was warm enough for my spacesuit heaters to keep me from freezing when I'd go out and explore. This was however the best I could do in the short term.

Most of my early days were just mining some local rocks for different kinds of ores. I’d run around to the different kinds of rocks and mine each one to discover what I could gather from them. I was in such a primitive state it made it a bit hard to try and target whatever I was lacking to build out my base and improve my situation.

Thankfully my escape pod has a 3D printer onboard. This allowed me to craft basic building materials. Anything overly complex like circuit boards was out of the question. Thankfully I'd find some in building around me.

After a couple of days of mining, I was starting to collect a small number of resources. Iron and silicon would end up being the ones I kept running out of on the regular. At least things like power cables and screws I had a large stockpile of.

I even built a workbench in my base so I could attempt to repair any broken circuit boards I had looted. It turns out you need to remove any broken components and replace them if you have the parts to do so.

While my base would run out of power at some point during the night. I’d start to spend a few hours working on broken circuit boards. I’d then rush back to my escape pod hoping to not freeze to death. Always making it just in time but draining quite a lot of energy out of the suit to do so.

Final Thoughts

The first couple of days were at least relaxing. I’d slowly start to get the itch to want to go exploring much further than where I could just walk to in a given day. The materials I'd need to grow my array of solar panels would also require me to venture out as all the local abandoned structures were stripped of anything I had the skill to salvage for the time being.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Occupy Mars: The Game.

Disclosure: A review copy of the game was received for free.

Disclosure: This game was in early access when I played it.