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Astronomical sums
Mars Horizonis a much more cunning creature than it seems at first. When I played its demo last year, I thought it was a splendid little management sim about the space race, albeit with the words “splendid” and “little” arranged like the wheels of a penny farthing. It seemed a bit simple, if I’m honest, with the potential to be a pretty linear walkthrough of the history of space exploration.
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It all started so well for the Walsall Space Agency. We were the first in the world to launch a satellite into space. Then we chucked a hound up there, and then a lady, and while the dog didn’t make it, the lady did - and so did the WSA. In the year 1960, the West Midlands was at the undisputed forefront of the final frontier.
“This is a piece of piss,” I thought, as I selected the obvious best option at every decision point. “Of course I’ll build the best rocket!“click. “Of course I’ll pay to fix this ominously damaged system before we launch!“click. “No expense shall be spared, for these brave men and women from the black country!”
Because I’d played games like this before, I thought I knew the drill. You probably know it too. Risks areunderplayed dramatically when first foreshadowed, so that idiots will leap at cheap wins like a wolverine into a carrier bag full of ham, only to face the consequences later when things get out of hand. Thinking myself wise to these pitfalls, I took the sober, sensible route at every turn. And of course, I ploughed resources into research too, because scrambling up the tech tree is always how you win at these things.
That was when I learned that the moon isn’t just a harsh mistress in Mars Horizon; she’s a bloodyfindom. I’d thrown everything at my version of the Apollo programme, but it had proved to be a financial bridge too far, and while I had been desperately trying to make it work, other agencies had quietly built themselves up on more humble missions. We made it in the end, of course. But since nobody really cared who was fourth to the moon, the WSA never truly recovered from that loss of momentum.
The first thing was that risk mitigation will only get you so far from the surface of the earth. Space is so insanely dangerous, after all, that if you do everything necessary to make it safe, you’ll have no cash left to actually get there. You can’t make an ISS without breaking a fewAriane 5s, after all, and Mars Horizon does a great, nuanced job of exploring how risk works for space agencies.
The second thing was a reminder that head starts don’t always last. To me, one measure of a well-designed management or strategy game is its ability to prevent early wins from snowballing into inevitable victory. Winning stops being fun when you know you can’t lose, and Mars Horizon manages to keep things permanently precarious in a way that even giants like the Civ series struggle with.
Disclosure: Alice Liguori, formerly of this parish’s YouTube channel, now works for Auroch Digital, the developers of Mars Horizon.
