This brings to mind a very recent dilemma of sorts that I have been experiencing. I love strategy games. From Carrier Command back in the 80s to Sid Meier's Al

This brings to mind a very recent dilemma of sorts that I have been experiencing. I love strategy games. From Carrier Command back in the 80s to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri to Stellaris. I've recently picked up Surviving Mars in the Steam sale and it doesn't appear to be holding my attention as well as Stellaris does. Why? It probably can be reduced down to the reward factor. In Stellaris the galaxy is pretty huge, there's a massive combination of races, ideologies and other factors that all go together to create what feels like a novel/new experience. In Surviving Mars, your playing field is limited to a 10x10 grid, and you quickly become bogged down keeping ahead of your colonists' needs. The experience feels the same, and there's no real novelty. The planet just kind of exists as a map outside your little grid, there's no way to visit or expand, you just send expeditions out and get a text box saying they found x, y or z. Now, if someone could write a game that accurately captures the feel of reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars in an exploration/build/research combined with novelty in a truly expansive world, that would be amazing. Setting up your base, digging your habitats, finding volatiles and water and all that good stuff. It would be great, if done well, of course. But maybe by the time someone writes such a beast, we'd have people on Mars for real.