This is an in-game screenshot and also the last scene before the credits.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/803050/Per_Aspera/
Everytime I load this game the first thing I do is remember what I'm supposed to be doing except... I don't remember.
Looking at it this close puts the scale into perspective on how big these structures are, Take a look at those small windows and those roads that must have stretch for miles.
Per Aspera Main Menu.Per Aspera is a videogame about terraforming mars, it is developed by Tlön Industries and published by Raw Fury. be warn though because the game has steep hardware requirements that scale throughout the game.
And like what its title literally means, this game is something one would put time and effort and after completing the game once I would say I am very satisfied, I actually want to play this game again with knowledge I gained from my first playthrough! This game is very educational.
This game has two main game modes, a Campaign mode (Story mode), and a Sandbox mode.
This game also has 4 levels of difficulty which mostly affects abundance of mineable natural resources, resource costs, construction time, maintenance, and the amount of recoverable material from scrapping of buildings, as well as the speed and durability of the worker drones.
And finally, the one feature which I find the most appealing, MULTIPLAYER.
this is me and @akumagai playing this game. you can tell with our different build styles. He chose to build compact while I chose to build spread apart, Overall it's fun and if I ever get a partner I'm going 'persuade' her to play this game with me along with other games.😊
In the Campaign mode you play as central AI tasked in terraforming mars named AMI(Artificial Machine Intelligence) and I can't say anything more than that because of this:
Hehe I am a good player so I won't spoil the story. kek. 👼
But the least I can do is describe it Ey? Let's see, the story is... very human. You see AMI is not like other girls A.I.s, She is equipped with a Bicameral Mind which meant she is capable of thinking and has her own consciousness. simply put, She is alive.
And because AMI is the one in charge, she has to make big decisions like 'Do we nuke mars to melt the polar caps', 'Do we crash one of mars moon?', or even import green house gasses from earth.
AMI also end up making social connections over the course of the story, She meets and bonds with the colonists that would migrate from earth, Businessmen, Politicians, and much more.
And the best part. There are multiple endings.
first things first, Topography. the dark areas represents regions of mars that are at a lower elevation but not always below sea level-- prone to flooding. The lighter areas are regions of higher elevation-- safe against flooding.
Once we press the Landing Site button at the bottom of the screen, our screen switches to highlight locations rich in a specific type of minerals and metals.
I decided to position my first [Landing Site] away from the deposit rich locations and also not on a floodzone.
This is the scanner screen, it shows us which areas are scanned, we will need an [Areological Scanner] to scan areas for resource veins and even abandoned facilities.
Now here's a PROTIP, a [Landing Site] that is placed on a location that is not yet scanned with always yield all deposits needed to have a self sustaining base.
A [Landing Site] functions as a storage and have a stockpile of materials needed for constructing mines and factories, THEY ARE LIMITED so let's make sure to construct facilities generating those materials.
The [Landing Site] also functions as a power station, generating 20MW of power, It will supply power to the facilities inside its coverage.
And finally a [Landing Site] houses one cute drone, a land based vehicle capable of transporting materials over roads, upgrade roads, and also build and scrap facilities.
Fun Fact: Mars gravity is less than half of Earth's, 3.7m/s vs 9.8m/s respectively.
These are the first batch of facilities we need: An [Aluminium Mine], A [Silicon Mine], An [Iron Mine], and a [Carbon Mine], As you can clearly see I have not yet built the [Carbon Mine] and decided to build the [Glass Kiln] and the reason is simple.
We have a power deficit and that's why we need the [Glass Kiln] to produce [Glass] so we can make a [Solar Farm] facility.
In this game we are able to turn on and off facilities as well as set their priority, These settings are crucial at the early stages of the game.
I have strategically placed the [Solar Farm] beside the [Chemicals] Deposit, you see we can't place facilities too far apart as they won't be connected by road, After constructing the [Solar Farm] we now backtrack to our previous goal and that is to have a source of construction materials.
After the construction of the [Steel Factory], we have now secured the procurement of the construction materials. The next step is to procure more drones as one drone is simply not enough to manage the logistics of this colony, The next batch of facilities to build are the [Electronics Factory], [Parts Factory], and the [Worker Factory].
PROTIP: The game speed can be adjusted up to 16x
Fun Fact: A day in mars is called a 'Sol' short for Solar Day, 1 Sol is equivalent to 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds in Earth numbers, or roughly 3% more. A Martian year has approximately 668 Sols divided 24 months with an average of 7 sols a week.
This is definitely 3D printing and it's cool, this reminds me of Supreme Commander.
After constructing the Worker's Factory I went ahead and built a [Worker Hub] facility, a home for our drone, We are one step closer to having a self sufficient Colony. Worker drones live their happy lives to serving the colony until their eventual breakdown, Yeah... these cute worker drones have a finite lifespan and they will be replaced by a new one.
The last step in having a self sustaining colony is by building a [Maintenance Facility], this facility will repair damaged facilities but not those that are destroyed by an act of God.
We will need to have a [Chemical Plant], a [Polymers Factory], and a [Maintenance Facility].
Speak of the devil and a meteor impact notification appears.
Weeeeee!
Plop.
Fun Fact: Planets are big space rocks, then we have Dwarf Planets which are smaller than Planets, then Asteroids which are smaller than Dwarf Planets and has metallic composition, Comets are space rocks mostly made up of ice and dust, meteoroids are tiny space rocks.
Meteors are space rocks that have entered the atmosphere of a bigger space rock, and finally meteorites are meteors that survive.
And after just under 35 Martian months We now have a functioning [Maintenance Facility] which meant we now have a self-sustaining Martian Colony, That took less than 3 Earth years, bloody hell.
Baby steps... baby steps.
...But is that true? as we roleplay as an A.I. tasked in terraforming mars aren't we just using these flesh bags we call colonists as a tool to achieve our mission? Once we complete our Directive what use are these flesh bags other than being parasites to our efficient system.
Do we dispose them as unwanted tools?
Sometimes I think about these things, A programmed A.I. would never invent the wheel, it would simply increase its efficiency by carrying twice as much and or twice as fast.
For it is logical.
Ingenuity is born out of Laziness- of not wanting to do it, To find a better way. We strive to make an A.I. capable of rational though and a sense of self. We are already capable of making programmable robotic arms doing tasks for us, But are we really that sadistic as race to create a slave race?.
It's one thing to make an assembly line of mindless robots and another to enslave self aware androids for free labor.
Okay that got out of hand.
This is a spaceport, the first of many. This facility is vital to our efforts in terraforming mars, from migrating colonists and creating additional landing sites to creating a solar mirror array and space elevators.
One of the key functions a spaceport can provide is to unlock sectors on mars by building a satellite assigned to it.
The first project I choose is to migrate big brain earthlings to our colony, we need them.
While waiting I built them a Colony facility for them to live and their basic needs prepared such as food and water, We do that by building an [Ice Drilling Plant], a [Chemical Plant], and a [Food Factory].
At long last after nearly one earth year they arrived, our first colonists.
An Airship docked at a spaceport that the colonists use to travel to their designated colony.
So why an airship? you see an airplane with a combustion engine won't work because you need oxygen for combustion, as for helicopters, it's too dusty, the margin for disaster is too high. hence airships, and no it will not explode due to the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere.
It took about almost two earth years but we now have access to the [Tech Tree] screen, The first tech I choose is [Space 1] because it gives us the ability to build additional spaceports, we are currently limited to one, Our strategy is to increase our research speed.
And with that we completed stage 2.
This is the North Polar Ice Cap of mars, don't let the word Ice fool you, these are Dry ice--Carbon Dioxide and not water. Like earth, mars is also tilted on its axis--about 25 degrees, a bit bigger than that of earth. It means that depending on the season, there will be ice on the north pole but none on the south pole and vice versa.
The third part of our endeavor is melting these dry ice and turning them into atmosphere, this move will also release water trapped below.
And before we get the chance to do that, we must first expand our base, get more materials, and get those big brain colonists think of a way to do that. the image above shows the logistic sides of things, if it's red it means a drone is overwhelmed in its assigned sector and we should build more [Worker Hubs] on the congested area.
This is what it looks like after I build additional [Worker Hubs].
Slowly we progress [Tech Tree], after unlocking additional spaceports I concentrate on increase the colonist capacity.
Oh look! another one of those hazards, we have [Dust Devils] on earth too, but the ones on mars are of a larger scale and much more dangerous due to the low atmospheric pressure there.
I continue unlocking more tech such as additional landing sites.
I also started scanning the surrounding area for deposits.
Finally we started researching key technologies that will help us melt the polar caps and this tech is called [Black Polar Dust], as its name implies it's a project that will spread black dust on the poles because darker colors absorb more heat while lighter colors deflects it.
The research for [Black Polar Dust] completes and I assigned a spaceport to proceed with the plan while I tell the colonists to research the [Space Mirror Array], which basically means using space mirrors to refract the sunlight to melt the polar ice caps. Pretty genius.
[Black Polar Dust] in action.
later on I also launched one of the first solar mirrors but it proved too costly.
I decided to research and build a [Greenhouse Gas Factory] and as its name implies it produces greenhouse gases that will help us heat up the planet which in turn release water trapped in ice.
I started to unlock regions as well by placing control satellites in their respective regions. I wanted more space and access to the basin.
As our base get bigger the margin of getting hit by a meteor rises as well.
I also have the roads upgraded for efficiency.
Our base gets bigger and bigger.
Fun Fact: I reckon you might have noticed but are buildings big or is mars just small?, the answer is mars is only half the size of earth.
And while we are not looking, something magical happens, Water.
Fun Fact: Getting liquid water to appear in mars requires two things, melting the ice that traps them and secondly having atmospheric pressure. you see liquids does not lasts long in a vacuum, if we splash water into space, it will boil and freeze at the same time.
It took almost five martian years until we were able to guide and disintegrate our first nearby comet into mars.
[Solar Farms] are simply not enough to support our facilities and with their energy generation correlates with time of day, We needed something more reliable.
We started mining uranium which later on will be required to build [Nuclear Fission Power Plants] which will fit the bill.
Do we call it a lake or an ocean?
Our freshly built nuclear fission reactor.
Experienced our first martian dust storm.
Started building a base near the martian sea.
A hyperloop connection between two [Hyperloop Terminals], it covers long distances and bypasses roads which is great for moving materials.
I also started importing greenhouses gasses from earth.
North Pole Ocean?
Disintegrate more comets.
Our priority now shifts from making an atmosphere to making mars able to support life.
What we are looking at is the scanner view of mars and I would like to point out the two areas with an abundance of Nitrate, Which then through a process called 'Denitrification' converts Nitrate(NO3) to Dinitrogen Gas(N2).
If we want life as we know it to flourish we needs a lot of dinitrogen gas as this is one of the three requirements for life. Dinitrogen gas is 78% of the earth's atmosphere, and together with oxygen (20%) scatters blue light coming from the sun and that is why the sky is blue.
Our first [Aquadome], spreading bioengineered cyanobacteria to the martian sea, you can think of them as algae but they are not algae. The cyanobacteria are the simplest organisms(bacteria, lol) capable of photosynthesis, which will enable us to convert our atmosphere that is mostly consists of carbon dioxide to one with oxygen.
A [Dome City], gone are the days of being trapped inside a building without being able to look at the outside sky, now the colonists have the freedom to move and run anywhere they want, as long as it's inside the [Dome City].
This facility is the start of using [Water Treatment Plants] as a water source instead of ice which is a step up in terms of logistics, the only problem is you can only build these on a compatible craters.
Our first [Biodome], a facility dedicated to spreading bioengineered lichen and later on bioengineered plants.
Fun Fact: Lichens are a combo organism, consists of either an algae or bacteria and a fungi, they are neither plants or fungus. some species can survive harsh conditions which maybe the case for why they are the first to introduce into mars.
Oh hey! our [Solar Mirror Array] is completed. raising the temperature by 10°C.
FUN FACT: Mars is about 50% farther from the sun compared to Earth, which makes Mars much much colder than Earth.
Bioengineered plants have started to grow as well.
I also started building aquatic structures. [Blue Mars DLC]
A [Tent City], has a higher population cap than the [Dome City] and without the restriction of being built on a crater.
As temperature rises so does the water level which forces us to rebuild seaside facilities.
as I said earlier, our main priority is increasing Dinitrogen Gas into the atmosphere and these facilities will mine [Nitrates] and convert them to Dinitrogen Gas.
We also started converting carbon dioxide to oxygen.
Our first [Fusion Power Plant].
Started spamming [Biodomes] everywhere.
This is an [Organic Material Dumpster], basically it culls trees in an area so that new trees might grow. It might sound stupid but a fully grown tree converts less carbon dioxide to oxygen because it only needs to maintain itself than the younger trees which converts more as it needs to grow.
an [Open City], a facility that I should not have built yet, lol. An [Open City] is the ultimate facility that will house our colonists, it requires a breathable atmosphere and probably a dipole shield that will shield mars from the sun's solar winds.
This is a [Space Elevator] and if you look closely you could see a thin white thread tethering it to a structure on the Martian soil below. The concept of a space elevator is simple, instead of using rockets to launch objects into space, we build an elevator so that we don't use rockets.
Now the design, the design is mostly what you see in the screenshot above, We tether a geostationary space station to the ground with a cable and run a cable car on said cable up to the space station. I'd imagine there's a counterweight extending from the space station as well.
So, can we build one? in theory yes. we just need a very strong rope and carbon nanotube fits the bill it's just, it's very expensive and relatively new tech. CNTs are just not used for ropes as one other use case is CNTs replacing silicon as transistors.
Mars, the new green planet.
Here we have an [Oxygen Capture Plant], a facility built for the purpose of capturing oxygen from the atmosphere.
some of you might wonder why we are removing oxygen--the most vital element in life, in the atmosphere.
There are several reasons but chiefly because oxygen is highly reactive.
Let's start with combustion, without oxygen there will be no fire, hypothetically if a planet has 100% oxygen in its atmosphere, just one spark and it will instantly turn into a ball of fire.
Today our atmosphere is made up of about 20% oxygen but in the time of the dinosaurs the oxygen in the atmosphere is at 35%, this is why they get so big and also the same reason they have short lifespans. Yes, oxygen levels do indeed affect lifespan. it is also partly the reason they got extinct, more oxygen = bigger explosion. they got isekai'd by Chicxulub-kun!, but most of them died from floods and decades of winter after the impact.
This is a [Magnetic Dipole Shield], well what it's being represented in this game, It's a man-made satellite placed in between the sun and mars. You see the sun is always radiating solar winds and unlike earth, mars no longer has a magnetosphere.
so what happens to us if we live in a planet without a magnetosphere? solar winds doesn't affect life forms, but it can slowly strip away our planet's atmosphere causing it to not support life.
Solar winds also makes unprotected electronics practically useless, this is why in this game the most basic construction material is Aluminium, it renders the effects of the solar winds to a minimum. hence why people wear tin foil hats to avoid getting mind controlled.
At long last, life. bioengineered birds. are they really birds or cctv cameras?
You might be wondering but later in game you get to build fisheries and farms that produces food without the need for materials, allowing us to phase out food factories.
The requirements for a breathable atmosphere is 20%-30% oxygen in the atmosphere, less than 5% carbon dioxide (for reference earth has 0.04% of CO2) and the rest are other gases preferably dinitrogen gas because it's inert.
And there we have it. We have successfully terraformed Mars for human occupancy.
Only took us about 139 earth years give or take.
While doing this run, the game had a content update that features missions and additional stuffs after terraforming mars, pretty nice aye.
When I rate things, I always use a three-point system.
1 for Bad
2 for Okay
3 for Great
I must point out that I have very low standards and is easily impressed.
so it's very hard for me to give a score of 1,
and very easy for me to give a score of 3.
Per Aspera 2020, 3/3 I love it!
I learned a lot.
THE PROS:
- Story and Dialogues.
- Music.
- Multiplayer.
- Game Speed.
- Mars Terraforming Simulator.
THE CONS:
- Logistics can be overwhelming.
- It takes a very long time to complete.
THE NEUTRAL:
- Gameplay is stale (because it's a simulator)
- requires a computer with a decent CPU.
- A game you would probably uninstall once you played one playthrough.
Can't believe I ended up playing a whole new sandbox playthrough while writing this, but I had fun.
Still sad about what happened to Turkey and Syria with the earthquake. sigh...
anyway, Cheers!. hope to play and review another game soon.