Surviving Mars Sagan Patch Revamps Rovers, Adds Challenges, Cuts Price

Published: September 26, 2018 1:24 PM /

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surviving mars - sagan update mars landscape

Haemimont Games' Surviving Mars has released the Sagan Patch, bringing with it revamped rovers and a new Challenges feature according to a news post on the game's Steam Community page.

Surviving Mars is a retrofuturistic romp that has players establishing their very own colony on Mars. Rather than just being a straight colony builder, the game has a number of sci-fi "Mysteries" that mix up the game's dynamics and have players contending with everything from malevolent AI to bizarre alien architecture.

The Sagan Patch has added some neat stuff and made some fundamental changes to the game. Rovers will no longer have batteries and Concrete Deposits now work other resource deposits, significantly cutting down on micromanagement (an issue that our review of the game highlighted after its release). These two changes will let players focus a bit more on the big picture without having to worry about rebuilding Concrete Extractors or rescuing a rover that ran out of charge.

surviving mars sagan update challenges
Challenges in the Surviving Mars Sagan Patch give experienced players a more difficult experience to overcome.

A new Challenges feature gives players of Surviving Mars the opportunity to really test themselves on a level playing field. Each of the challenges introduced in the Sagan Patch takes place on a specific map and has a time limit for achieving your goal. Furthermore, the maps themselves have been changed in a few ways. Map generation has been redone - your old favorite coordinates will likely look a bit different than they used to.

Research has also had a minor change to make the game a bit less random. While the order of technologies and breakthrough techs will still be randomized on a per-map basis, each individual map seed will maintain this randomized order. That means that a particular seed will always have the same breakthrough technologies and research tree order and players can compete for scores on a particular map seed with an even playing field.

A number of other changes have made their way into the game; be sure to read through the full patch notes for all the details. If you don't yet already own Surviving Mars, you can pick it up for yourself on Steam and on the Humble Store for $29.99 or your regional equivalent, a new permanent price drop of 25% off from its cost at release. Console players can get it on the PlayStation Store for the PlayStation 4 and the Microsoft Store for the Xbox One.

Disclosure: Humble Bundle works with TechRaptor for affiliate partnership, and TechRaptor earns a small commission off purchases made from links in this article.

What do you think of the changes made in the Sagan Patch for Surviving Mars? Do you like the changes made to randomization for individual maps? Let us know in the comments below!

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More Info About This Game
Learn more about Surviving Mars
Game Page Surviving Mars
Developer
Haemimont Games
Platforms
Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC
Release Date
March 15, 2018 (Calendar)
Genre
Simulation
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