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Show HN: I created a Mars colony RPG based on Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars books
I built a desktop Mars colony survival game called Underhill, in homage to Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Land on Mars, build solar panels and greenhouses, and try not to pass out during dust storms. Eventually your colonists split into factions: Greens who want to terraform and Reds who want to preserve Mars.
There’s Chill Mode for players that just want to build & hang, and Conflict Mode that introduces the Red v. Green factions. Reds sabotage, the terrain slowly turns green as the world gets more terraformed.
Feedback welcome, especially on performance and gameplay!
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- pmontra 8mo agoI visited the site on my Android phone with Firefox. It loads and the UI fits the screen, however it seems slow. Words appear at 3 or 4 characters at a time, then there is a pause, then another 3 or 4 characters. Some music when characters appear, then it stops, then it starts again. I muted it soon. It looks nice, so I hope to give it a try from my laptop. The Mars trilogy was a great read. When I saw the title of this Show HN I said, oh wow! By the way, dust storms could be a plot device but are they really that bad with so low air pressure?
- ariaalam 8mo agoThanks for giving it a click! Let me know how it goes on desktop. Actively trying to improve the phone experience now...
- magicmicah85 8mo agoPlayed for a bit, liked the aesthetics so I bookmarked it to come back to it later and discovered a bug. On mac/chrome, I hit CMD + D to bookmark. By doing so, I setup some kind of autowalk bug where I kept walking to the right. I couldn't stop myself from walking, even pressing WAS temporarily stopped me but as soon as I let go, I kept walking right.
- ariaalam 8mo agoThanks for this, I'll address it now.
- deafpolygon 8mo agoIt’s not really clear how it’s played.
- ariaalam 8mo agoThanks for trying it out. Can you say more? Was it the controls or more about what you're supposed to build/do first?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- deafpolygon 8mo agoBoth. It was the controls at first, I didn’t realize you had to press “E” or “Enter” to progress the dialog. Then I tried clicking the mouse and moving the cursor. Then once I figured out how to advance the dialog and move around, I wasn’t sure exactly what to do. The top left bars were blinking as if I needed to interact or do something with them. I eventually figured it out, but it was confusing to start off with.
- number6 8mo agoGreat, how did you build it? Also I have to read the books
- ariaalam 8mo agovanilla JS and canvas plus a hefty bit of technical help from Claude.
- lukan 8mo agoIt seems you draw everything every frame onto the canvas? The result is quite GPU heavy, for your next game I would recommend looking into a graphic libary like pixijs, to make use of the webgl/webgpu .. then it would run smooth even on old mobile phones.
- evilhackerdude 8mo agocheck out raylib, it should be amazing for this :)
- captn3m0 8mo agoGot power water and o2 but can’t seem to scroll the list of items to build for food on Firefox/iOS (should also be Safari/iOS) since it selects on tap before the scroll.
- ariaalam 8mo agoAnother person just mentioned this to me, looking into it.
- xcf_seetan 8mo agoI am on Firefox and it does nothing, no movement, just flashing resource monitors with zero values...
- lazyasciiart 8mo agoHmm, I just get a black screen on my iPhone when I click your link. Did you use any existing stuff like the mars-sim project? https://mars-sim.sourceforge.io/ https://mars-sim.sourceforge.io/
- ariaalam 8mo agoTry it now! And no I didn't but that is very cool.
- lazyasciiart 8mo agoMuch better, now it opens up the game. Is this open source?
- desireco42 8mo agoIt is hard to understand and play... maybe make it more obvious. I made a solar panel, it says I should assign staff... I would love to play if it would work. And music, thank god for the mute button.
- ariaalam 8mo agoare you on mobile? it looks like there's a bug where the opening scene/dialogue is not loading, so the instructions aren't clear. working on it now.
- Aeolun 8mo agoI think on mobile it’s natural to walk to the guy and tap on him. Not helped by the fact that the screen shows ‘tap’ over the highlighted tile, which does nothing. You need to walk and position the guy under your cursor, then press ‘act’. The position yourself, then long press on ‘act’ to build when you can’t see where to put the building anymore is pretty awkward too. I’d expect to click to build, position it, then press confirm or reject or something.
- oug-t 8mo agoInteresting game, love the design. Struggled a little before understanding the instructions.
- ariaalam 8mo agoare you on mobile? it looks like there's a bug where the opening scene/dialogue is not loading, so the instructions aren't clear. working on it now.
- AnotherGoodName 8mo agoTerraforming Mars is a board game that heavily references these novels which i highly recommend.
- baq 8mo agoIt’s great but really needs the expansions, don’t play without
- sointeresting 8mo agoLoud music warning for those wearing headphones.
- michaelteter 8mo agoYou weren't exaggerating! I didn't even have headphones on, and it scared the sh*t out of me when I clicked on the little man.
- Teckla 8mo agoThe music was so loud from my monitor's speakers that I nearly jumped out of my skin and rushed to close it, and my volume isn't even turned up much!
- skrumblito 8mo agoYeah, it's more horrifying than the premise - despite it being good, it's loud as hell The 'mute' button is near the top-right, the leftmost option of the little rectangles ~80% from the top It's a must-click if you're loading the site with sound - it would be great if OP would add a very obvious volume slider on load
- ariaalam 8mo agosorry folks, the music should start at a much lower volume now....
- Vaslo 8mo agoMade me think of this gem: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/ultima-worlds-of-adventure-2-martian-dreams-1az https://www.myabandonware.com/game/ultima-worlds-of-adventur...
- saltwatercowboy 8mo agoThis is so cool. How are you going to simulate Michel's longing for Provence? Seriously though I adore the trilogy. I started a Mars storymapping project which incorporated Underhill, Senzeni Na, the Moholes etc. a little while back too: https://saltwatercowboy.github.io/marsinplace/ https://saltwatercowboy.github.io/marsinplace/
- ahhhhnoooo 8mo agoLovely series. One of the first science fiction series I read that gave a proper anarchist culture a shot. (A big thing most people don't understand about anarchism is that it's not a violent, crime ridden, disorderly society without rules, but rather a society built on the idea that everyone deserves care, and we should all put in some effort to achieve that in a self organizing way.) Loved seeing things like gift economies, self organization and free association, and a general care for both the people and the planet in those books.
- vogtb 8mo agoSame. I thought his portrayal of anarcho-primitivism was really cool and interesting as well. Also, other people called it boring but one of my favorite parts was in Blue Mars as they hammer out the Martian constitution.
- CSMastermind 8mo agoNot sure who is downvoting you. You're experessing a valid opinion even if I disagree with it. I read this book series as a kid and was enthralled by the sci fi aspects of it. When I reread it as an adult the political undertones completely ruined the series for me.
- Tossrock 8mo agoIndeed, sci fi has always been a way for KSR to explore and animate his politics. But he's so skilled a writer that the spectacle and incredible technical detail of the sci fi wrappings can obscure subtlety of the political philosophy (as it should be, imo).
- the_biot 8mo agoAgree, except I thought his political views were rather more obvious, to the point that it's a little annoying (IMHO of course). I'd describe it more as hard-left than anarchism, too.
- strogonoff 8mo agoWhich sci-fi series give proper anarchist culture a shot, other than the Mars trilogy?
- jimnotgym 8mo agoI'm on mobile (Android, Brave), and I can do everything but interact with the people. Am I doing something wrong?
- jimnotgym 8mo agoOh and I can't scroll down on the hq menu. The engineer guy only spoke to me after 15 mins
- 3eb7988a1663 8mo agoI must have missed something because my HP keeps ticking down until I pass out and get warped back to the command center. Eating food and resting do not seem to change the situation.
- mkl 8mo agoDo you have permission from the publisher for an adaptation? If not, you're taking a legal risk basing it off the books.
- cantalopes 8mo agoIt's based on it, it's not an adaptation. Also, this would very well fit within fair use
- stevage 8mo agoThat does not match my understanding of fair use at all.
- gamblor956 8mo agoIt would not fit within the definition of fair use. Lack of commercial revenue isn't some escape hatch. OTOH, if it were merely inspired by it (but not an adaptation) then there would be no copyright issues.
- tantalor 8mo agoSurviving Mars (2018) is another really good game in this category. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5djTZfKVIKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5djTZfKVIKQ
- the_biot 8mo agoAgreed, very nice. Turns out the whole game is written in Lua (minus rendering and such I assume). The source is fully readable, I was amazed how high-level that code was. Writing mods was ridiculously easy.
- personjerry 8mo agoHad 1000 of each resource, lots of income, landing pads and habitats, but never got more colonists?
- emaro 8mo agoSame, I'm stuck at 18 inhabitants.
- personjerry 8mo agoI'm stuck at 0 lol
- UltraSane 8mo agoWhen the mars space elevator was brought down and wrapped around mars TWICE was one of the most memorable moments of any book I've ever read.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- ajkjk 8mo agodear god make the music quiet by default
- TIPSIO 8mo agoAwesome work love it
- good-idea 8mo agoWell, here we are!
- skrumblito 8mo agoI'm full HP and hunger and slept - why is the character now walking so slowly?
- mmastrac 8mo agoI have a popup saying "terraforming complete" after 10 sols, but I want to keep playing and I cannot dismiss that popup. The game is definitely fun but there's some papercuts that make it tough: no dismantle I can find, placement is difficult to understand. Some feedback: Colonists are really tough to talk to - you have to be in just the right spot. There doesn't seem to be a downside to spamming buildings if you can afford it. There needs to be some ongoing cost to everything you place OR a downside. Music shouldn't change in menus, or at least shouldn't restart constantly. That gets a bit annoying.
- mmastrac 8mo agoEDIT: Looks like these were almost all fixed, awesome. I'd say there's a few QoL improvements you could make: - The building choice for a colonist could probably just be a type of building, otherwise you're scrolling through 90+ buildings - Add key repeat for scrolling long lists - Draw a rectangle for the building footprint you're about to build to help position, allow mouse placement to shift it around if you need - Maybe consider re-selecting the same building type because building an array of buildings requires a lot of keys (or a hotkey per building type?) - Lists should probably wrap around too
- savgore 8mo agoThis is one of my favourite book series ever; it has so many points for learning and humanity. Thanks for making this!
- ariaalam 8mo agoThank you for checking it out!
- mNovak 8mo agoVery cool! A couple notes from my first few sols: - I had a really hard time building a greenhouse, because I hadn't realized it'd be bigger than 1 square like all the previous buildings, and it just wouldn't build despite having materials etc. Maybe a footprint outline while hovering a build option? - There were a lot of instructions from Dr. Kimura right off the bat. Hard for me to remember all that, and I was hoping talking to the doc again would replay those hints. - My population seems to be stuck at 2.. I have landing pads and habitats and plenty of food etc, but don't really know what I should be doing next. - that menus continue beyond the first couple lines was not obvious to me. Possibly because I'm on laptop, so the existing hint was way far to the right
- ariaalam 8mo agoGot it, thanks for all this. There seems to be a bit of a bug with new colonists arriving so trying to fix that now. And agreed on your other points as well.
- foxglacier 8mo agoI hope you did most of it in AI. I pasted your post verbatim into Claude free (except changed "I built" to "Build" and it made a similar looking game that seems to work on the first try.https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/7420f435-3d5f-4b33-bb43-de25a5ab6103 https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/7420f435-3d5f-4b33-bb43-d...
- yuppiepuppie 8mo agoWow, the mobile experience is great! Really like the feel of the game. FWIW, I have added this to the HN Arcade https://hnarcade.com/games/games/underhill https://hnarcade.com/games/games/underhill
- ariaalam 8mo agoThank you!!
- Jimmy6929 8mo agoHey it looks cool but for some reasons I cant play it? Is it because I use brave browser?
- justinclift 8mo agoTried briefly with Firefox here, and I think it's just a game that starts out incredibly slowly. As in, it needs to go through the whole "What is your name? ____" type of sequence first before any of the WASD/arrow keys actually do anything, even if the instructions earlier on give the impression they should be functional right away.
- arethuza 8mo agoYou could also do a version of this for the KSR novel "Antarctica", which is effectively "White Mars". ;-)
- linuxguy2 8mo agoDvorak support/autodetection would be nice.
- gus_massa 8mo agoIf I go near a building, like a solar panel and press E then I get the information status, press E and more information, press E and more information, press E and more information, press E and more information, press E and get a menu [Destroy]/Cancel, press E and the building get destroyed! Important feature request: When I reach the menu, the default action must be "cancel" in case the user is pressing E without reading the messages.
- junon 8mo agoSame thing on mobile, just immediately destroyed the thing I just built :D
- juanpabloaj 8mo agoI love it! thanks for sharing.
- ariaalam 8mo agoThanks for clicking!
- addedlovely 8mo agoIs hard to talk to the engineer, I can't select him, stuck between the base and a solar panel.
- thinkingtoilet 8mo agoI could only get two colonists to come. I built a ton of every structure I was able to, housing, landing pad, energy, water, O2, and greenhouses and still only two came. Perhaps a bug?
- ariaalam 8mo agoWorking on this. Thanks for clicking!
- nealmueller 8mo agoI really enjoyed my first few Sols. Good work! How did you build it? How long did it take? Will it make money?
- Self-Perfection 8mo agoFeels really laggy on desktop. Tried both Firefox and Brave. Like 3-4 FPS
- mekod 8mo agoi'd prefer to live in a game where i could sleep during the day too.. wp btw