HomeGames & Tech'Per Aspera' first impressions and preview

‘Per Aspera’ first impressions and preview

Humans have dreamed of going to Mars for decades and have been running missions there for nearly 50 years. In recent years the prospect of landing humans on the red planet has increased as our knowledge and capabilities have expanded. If things go to plan Elon Musk’s SpaceX, NASA and other projects could make the dream a reality in the next 5-10 years.

Per Aspera is described as a planetary simulation game that combines hard science fiction with base building. The game is set at least 180 years in the future and the Martian surface is littered with the remnants of previous missions. Players take on the role of AMI (voiced by Laila Berzins), an Artificial Consciousness whose prime directive is to terraform Mars for human colonisation.

Watch the Per Aspera launch trailer below:

Before you get stuck in you can choose between two modes – Campaign or Sandbox. Campaign is recommended for new players and is set against an engaging narrative while Sandbox is for the more experienced players who want to take things at their own pace and push the game mechanics. Both modes offer three difficulty levels – Easy, Normal or Aspera. On the easiest difficulty you can expect to find an abundance of natural resources and take advantage of cheaper and faster construction with a slow structural decay rate. These things become tougher as you move up the difficulties.

The game starts as your landing craft reaches the Martian surface. AMI is running from a satellite that is orbiting the planet allowing you to watch and control what happens below. You are contacted intermittently by Dr. Nathan Foster (voiced by Troy Baker), the mission’s chief robonaut engineer who is back on Earth at Houston, Texas. He checks in to see if you’re doing ok and offers help and guidance as you progress in your mission.

Per Aspera
Credit Raw Fury Tlön Industries

Starting out with limited resources, your first order of business is to use what you have to obtain more. You’ll want to start out by building facilities for mining aluminium and silicon. These resources will allow you to progress onto making glass and eventually more such as chemicals, steel, polymers and electronics.

To advance you need to make sure you’re building the right things at the right time. This means keeping an eye on resources and prioritising what you can make and what you need. Careful consideration also needs to be given to where you place your structures. This includes the distance between them and taking note of the surrounding terrain. Keeping things close together and a little thought about their positioning can make a lot of difference.

Per Aspera
Credit Raw Fury Tlön Industries

When you place a structure it becomes linked to its close neighbours by small tracks that your worker bots can use. If a facility needs a particular resource it pays to place it near the source to cut down on transport time. Eventually you’ll want to build more workers, worker hubs and maintenance drones.

Another big consideration is how much power you need to run everything. Your initial module contains a limited fission reactor to get you going but you need to build yourself new ways of generation power such as a solar farm. If you don’t have enough capacity it’s possible to turn off facilities until you need them.

Per Aspera
Credit Raw Fury Tlön Industries

Everything that you do takes a lot of time that would take forever in real-time. To combat this the game gives you the option to speed things up with 2x, 4x, 8x and even 16x speed. These are essential to get things going faster but be careful that you don’t forget if you do speed things up.

Once you’ve built a decent starting set of facilities you move onto building a scanner that can look for more resources. You’re then ready to think about accepting the first humans from Earth. A flight from Earth can take around 9 months to arrive so that gives you enough time to get to work on stocking up on food and water supplies. You also need a space port for their spacecraft to land and a colony for them to live in while they do their research. It’s essential that you have these things in place in time for their arrival and keep them supplied once they settle. Otherwise they’ll have no choice but to head back home.

Per Aspera
Credit Raw Fury Tlön Industries

I spent several hours with the game to get to this point and loved every minute of it. There’s a fairly steep learning curve but you can mostly go at your own pace and I found it to be a rather relaxing experience. So far, I’ve found the narrative in Per Aspera to be compelling. I really enjoyed the interactions with Nathan Foster, who seems to pop up just at the right moment. He treats AMI as a colleague and poses questions for you to answer. AMI also gets moments of reflection where you can decide how you feel about things.

I don’t fully know where the game will take me next. My time has allowed me to occupy just a tiny portion of the Martian surface. Next steps seem to be spreading out across the surface to bring in more resources. I’ll also have to keep my humans happy and get ready for the arrival of future groups. The research trees look interesting and I can see the decisions I make will also influence what happens next.

Per Aspera
Credit Raw Fury Tlön Industries

My time on Mars has indicated that there may be natural disasters to deal with as time progresses. I’ve seen dust storms take hold in other regions and also witnessed an asteroid smack into the planet, leaving a large crater behind. Thankfully these didn’t impact my hard work but I can see them being a problem later on. At some point I’m expecting I’ll also have to decide how to go about terraforming the planet to make it more suitable for human life. The trailer also seems to indicate that later in the game you can come across opposition to your presence. This means dealing with a hostile enemy and engaging them in combat. I can’t wait to find out what else the game has in store.

Per Aspera launches on PC/Steam on 3rd December. EF Games will be bringing you a full review later this week.

author avatar
Greg Ellwood
Greg is the Deputy Editor of Entertainment Focus. He writes about Games, Tech and TV. You can find him on Xbox/PSN/Steam as Tahllian.

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