Quick Review: Waking Mars

No, no, we’re not terraforming Mars; we’re just exploring one cave within it. This might take a while.

Liang Qi, humanity's first Mars cave botanist.

A creation from Tiger Style released on December 13th, 2012, Waking Mars is an odd puzzle/metroidvania combo. You play as scientist and astronaut Liang Qi, the first human on Mars. Their previous rovers reported a vast network of caves and alien plant life underground – time to check this all out! Liang proceeds with his first descent, aided by the voice of a coworker named Amani and an AI named ART. This allows him to discover several types of plantlike organisms. Like any true scientist, he will study how each plant reacts to him and to other elements of the environment. That is… Until he finds an acidic plant type that spreads like wildfire. After Liang returns to the home base on the surface, the ground shakes and the mountaintop base crashes through the Mars soil, with the astronaut surviving the fall underground. No other choice but to explore to get to the other base, at the foot of the mountain…

That's a lot of Martians in one spot. Great time to play catch
with all their seed-spitting selves!

Liang moves with WASD (no jumping; he uses a jetpack to fly), aims with the left-click button, and can switch between inventory items with Q and E. Although this game is described as a metroidvania, it feels more like a puzzle. On each new screen, you must make a barrier disappear to progress, and those will go away once you’ve sufficiently increased the biomass of the current area. You can collect seeds of the surrounding plants, dubbed Zoa, and throw them onto empty patches of grass to grow more, with each type being worth a number of points towards the amount of biomass. Part of your task will be, as you discover new seeds and plants, to study their interactions.

Yes, these might be somewhat like plants - but they're not
friendly.

As an example, you can plant the starter Halid almost anywhere, but if you want to recover more seeds of theirs, you’ll need to “water” them with seeds from Hydron plants, which generate water. However, if you need water seeds, you’ll have to plan Hydrons. Further down, you’ll find the acidic Prax, which attack on sight when grown; Phyta, safe moving creatures that are worth little points and flee from Liang, but reproduce easily thanks to Halid seeds; other plants with offensive/dangerous abilities that our scientist must avoid; and so on. That’s just the first few chapters – as alien and seed types pile on, with some being deadly to each other, your strategic choices will become increasingly relevant.

"Dynamic" = This thing won't stop goddarn moving.

Am I going to make these weird tentacle things reproduce just
to further my goals at evasion, and to increase the biomass
of Mars? Yes. Yes, absolutely.

My favorite is how Liang and Amani discuss the events. They speak scientifically, bringing up realistic concepts about Earth plants to understand the new phenomena they are witnessing. Always going at it logically. Of course, as he ventures deeper and loses connection, Liang is often separated from Amani’s transmissions, leaving him to converse with the stranger (and funnier) ART, the AI helping him.

ART provides visual aids for the puzzle aspect, like a biomass counter. In each area, you can collect up to 5 stars in biomass. You need to reach 3 stars to open the barriers known as Cerebranes. I don’t know if collecting 5 stars in every environment impacts the game’s ending, but it does count towards progression, which can reach 110%. You keep your inventory between levels, and can go back to refill on seeds when you’re running out of any type. This can be useful in later puzzles.

It's still a long way to get to the bottom.

Not even half way in, and we've encountered magma (and
creatures that can live in it!), and other creatures that are
extremely protective of their home turf (but chill outside
of it, even though they love to steal the seeds you throw).

I enjoyed this one a fair bit. It’s more of a puzzle than a platformer or a metroidvania; although there is an element of flying just right to avoid hazards and enemies later into the game, the focus stays on increasing biomass to progress. I appreciate the focus on scientific process and discovery, and how everything you learn comes in handy down the line – with new things to find, and learn about, being introduced regularly. There’s a great sense of ambiance in this one, not much in the way of music, just letting the player soak into the various environments and their fauna. The graphics aren’t that incredible in gameplay, they do the work (several creatures are… unsettling up close, like the Phyta). I do like the major characters of the story, too, their voice acting is fun, and their headshots when discussing are so detailed they look downright realistic. The game does get a little bit repetitive in the latter half, especially once you’ve seen every Zoa type and only have to complete every puzzle with 5 stars. But otherwise, it’s a great, pacifist, scientific adventure.

Waking Mars is available on Steam for 9.99$ USD.