User Ratings

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ease 1 of 5 2 of 5 3 of 5 4 of 5 5 of 5 4 / 5
features 1 of 5 2 of 5 3 of 5 4 of 5 5 of 5 3 / 5
design 1 of 5 2 of 5 3 of 5 4 of 5 5 of 5 4 / 5
support 1 of 5 2 of 5 3 of 5 4 of 5 5 of 5 5 / 5

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User Reviews

  • As a big fan of FreeCiv and FreeCol I’m shocked that I didn’t know about this game too! I grew up playing Sid Meier’s Colonization and the Mars scenario in Civilization 2 so someone combining these 2 things together into a standalone game is just a brilliant idea! Also has some slight Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri influences there as well I think but it mostly feels like Sid Meier’s Colonization but on Mars! Someone sent it to me a week or so ago to help my ongoing search for Colonization and Mars Scenario Mods (among many other cool mods) for all the Civilization games and when I saw this similar stand alone fan made game I thought I was seeing things lol! I downloaded it and tried it out and have been addictively playing it all day every day since (thankfully I’m holidays lol). Very impressive and it’s fully playable as I was able to complete the game however sadly it’s a bit unfinished as a number of missing features made it hard for me to enjoy the late game, but the early game was super fun! You get to choose between all these different sized Mars maps (or randomly generate your own) and can have up to 16 nations in the game all with their own interesting advantages. Mars appears to be partially terraformed in the game as there’s grassy plains and plantations of forests and giant mushrooms bread to survive there that you can harvest. Other than some useless swamps there’s no oceans so you’ll be using big space freighters instead of sailing ships that go into orbit and fly between Mars and Earth to trade goods. Instead of the usual Civ unknown village huts or Col lost cities offering random treasure to your scouts in FreeMars you get asteroid and crashed satellite debris appearing all over the map for you to pick up resources from, they’ll keep coming too so it’s good to have lots of scouts all over the map hunting for treasure lol. City managing is very very similar to Col except instead of dragging around little workers representing communities, you can instead allocate the communities themselves using slider bars (eg put 100 people on food harvesting and put 50 people in this factory etc) which feels strange at first but is actually pretty cool once you get used to it as it leads to more player customization and strategy, plus some parts can be automated to save time. Just like your greedy King in Colonization, Earth will keeping raising taxes and building up a expeditionary force to quell any uprisings so you’ll need to build your own army of futuristic soldiers and mechs to fight back when the time comes for independence! (makes me think of The Expanse tv show) Earth also sends you all these expansion based missions to keep you busy, which some might appear daunting but I didn’t have any trouble completing them way before their deadlines. As previously mentioned the game is unfinished but I was amazed by the lack of bugs I encountered as the game didn’t even crash once on me! The AIs will expand and build their empires however it doesn’t seem to attack, trade or interact with you in any way sadly. Also I’ve seen the dev post about a number of colony buildings yet to be implemented such as top tier energy and water production, and yeah boy are they needed. I had to rush to independence before my civ collapsed in on itself from too many people and not enough food and water lol. The war of independence was fun much like in Col as dropships will put Earth troops, mechs and tanks around your empire and you’ll have to fight them off to win the game! The game supports other win conditions too such as sending all your Mars rival nations to oblivion or achieving a certain amount of resources but obviously independence is the one all us Col players go for haha. As for extras there's no multiplayer that I can see sadly but just like FreeCol and FreeCiv it does come with a map editor which means someone could probably make a true mars map at some point as I've seen some good attempts at geographically correct ones made for Civ games over the years.
  • Still needs balance and ai but I had fun. Also not everyone knows how to run java. Selling is way more productive then straight free labor force by a margin of 10 even with high taxes and crashed market.
  • excellent free game. The mechanics are most of the way there, its just not quite done yet. not buggy either. its not a SMAC ripoff either. all in all, i would recommend it. its free and small, so what could it hurt to try it out?
  • It a great game! Try it for yourself
  • Promising project! However it's still in development, Free Mars is already one of the best games on Source Forge. ... and it's already playable, too! Download it! Try it! Follow it!
  • Wonderful game in the vein of Colonization and Alpha Centauri. I absolutely love the graphical design, which is both simple and attractive. The unusual scenario to build a colony on the red planet is fascinating and I'm looking forward to further development.
  • I'm giving it a five for the future. I like this game, but unfortunately it's on Java, so it's not so fast as Alpha Centauri :) I think you will make some other graphics for some terrain types. Or not. But the units need some polishing definitely. Also i'd like to see the action buttons at least for the engineers a.k.a terraformers. I'll be honest, when i started for the first time, it took me 30 turns to GUESS what is needed for thew production. At first i thought - hydrogen, then - other resources. Imagine HOW was I surprised when I saw that I need only undistributed workers. Damn, you should mention this in the Marsopedia, man. RLY. Though it's obvious but it's not. Also the Pedia needs much work on resoucres vs improvements thingy. The idea of "Goto this tile and build ..." is GREAT, please consider the paired builds, again like in Alpha Centauri - "Build Road+Mine", "Road+Irrigation", etc. And I would appreciate the "Don't show movement animation" option in the preferences. P.S. Some missions would be better dynamic, for ex. I'm plaing always on huge maps. So I'm playing the 120*120 map. I can't imagine how I can explore 15% of the surface during the first 150 turns. But the idea with missions is GREAT. Don't you dare to abandon this project :) Thank for this game.
    2 users found this review helpful.
  • I enjoy this game but am disappointed that I, as of the last three updates, am unable to build space ships on Mars. Early imposition of Earth tax robs me of the ability to buy large ships which are necessary to complete the missions.
    1 user found this review helpful.
  • It has tremendous potential, and I will be following its development. The latest update makes it work on my computer again, and now the foreign nations have an ai.
    2 users found this review helpful.