The Promises of Mars

This was a longer, thoughtful Twine game with a clickable world map and heavy inventory use. The inventory occupies a side bar, and different elements light up in red and become clickable when in the appropriate location, allowing for some complexity.

The story is about a future where carbon dioxide is so prevalent that the air is poisonous to humans. Everyone lives underground while above-ground scientists work to purify the air. The purification plant has stopped working, though, and so you, a young girl, have been sent to the above-ground lands to try to get it working again.

The writing is melancholic and wistful. Simultaneously, I was excited by the writing style but found it hard to focus on. You have to click to make each line appear for some pages, which wasn’t too bad, but the slightly slower pace and the desolation of each passage made it easier for my mind to drift away from the game.

Mechanically, you basically plow through the map (I love being able to click directly on the map to skip to a room I’d been in before), and there are rooms with obstacles and rooms with obstacle removers (like locks and keys, for instance). There is a timer of sorts (your oxygen tank) but I think it’s cued to story beats and not to your actions, which is great. Near the end there are some trickier puzzles, but the puzzles in general aren’t too hard, allowing the story to take center stage.

I think this game nailed the atmosphere it was going for (no pun intended). The design UI is great. Something about the whole project didn’t draw me in fully, but that’s a completely subjective experience, and I did find it above-average for an IF-game.

This game immediately impresses with its excellent presentation. On the title page, the pixel art and beautiful orange and grey colour combination gives a striking first impression. This continues into the game itself, with a well-designed UI featuring separate map and inventory panes, plus nice font choices and typography (I’ve since downloaded Lekton for myself). There are options to change font and font size, which I always like to see. There is a lot of attention to detail put into the design, which makes for a pleasant and immersive experience.

This is a puzzle game set in an scifi future where the population of Mars has retreated underground following climate catastrophe. A large part of the gameplay is based on exploring, collecting items and using items; but there is a major focus on narrative also. There is a lengthy introduction, the narration of the protagonist’s progress through the city is interspersed with memories of her sparse life in underground bunkers, her observations on the abandoned streets as someone whose only experience with things like hot dog carts and playgrounds is through her mother’s stories.

I’ve played several parser puzzlers this Comp, and it’s had me thinking about how a choice-based interface can create a different kind of vibe and experience. The result here feels very smooth and directed. The player makes decisions such as the order in which the protagonist (referred to only as The Girl) explores locations, what to examine, which item to use to solve a puzzle. At times the game itself takes over, having the Girl act on her own. These moments (from small sentences where she finds and take items to longer ‘cutscenes’) are narrated in the same voice as player-driven actions, which makes the puzzle-solving and the storytelling feel nicely intertwined. For instance I appreciated how the comms link to Command is a diegetic hint system, but the Girl also uses it on her own initiative when the situation calls for it, like reporting a system failure or asking to unlock a door (which naturally doesn’t work).

But sometimes the game is too smooth, to the point of reducing the sense of challenge. At one point the Girl finds a storeroom and cycles through a list of tools: angle grinder, drill, pliers, and so on, before landing on a folding ladder. “That could be useful,” she thinks. She takes the ladder." The cycling text is a neat effect, but it also felt a little too convenient, erasing the potential puzzle of deciding for myself which tools to take. Later on the Girl comes across a passage blocked by debris and makes this observation: (Spoiler - click to show)“Another apartment block […] has a second storey balcony — if she can reach it, and then climb to the next balcony over, the Girl might be able to circumnavigate the wall.” Again, instead of asking the player to find a way forward, the solution is handed over right away.

In a way it feels like the Girl has more agency than the typical text-adventure protagonist. She’s capable and clearly knows what she’s doing, instead of being subject to the player’s flailing. That’s a cool effect, though it does mean less is left in the player’s hands. Still, I was glad to see the puzzles ramp up in complexity by the endgame.

The prose itself is melancholic and well-written. the ending twist is perhaps too obvious, but the story engaging and thought-provoking. I do wish there had been more space for the Girl’s introspection; what we do get is effective, but it feels like there was room for more depth.

(Edit: Spelling fix)

Soon. Observing the decaying cityscape and the drifting dust clouds, feeling the heat cutting her skin, breathing in infected air through a tube, the Girl had never felt more doubtful.

The Promises of Mars is a Twine game about manufactured hope, waiting it out, and finding a silver lining despite everything that’s happened. And, as the title suggests, broken promises.

Genre
It’s easy to forget how diverse science fiction can be with its subgenres. The genre “science fiction” is so often used as an umbrella term that we overlook its nuances, so I’d like to take a moment to look at the genre of The Promises of Mars as a work of SF.

There is nothing shiny about this game.

It’s post-apocalyptic with a decaying city bleached of its colour. Everything about the story and setting embraces the “used future” aesthetic. That is, a future where life depends on reusing technology and patching it until it can no longer be repaired. Often this goes hand in hand with scarcity, strife, and reversal of technological advancement. Sometimes it includes embracing the old ways of living, though that’s not explored here.

The “used future” subgenre is descriptively conveyed through the game’s writing.

Her body is wrapped in layers of black and brown, cloth and leather held together loosely with gaffer tape and thread. A breathing mask is held tightly over her nose and mouth by fraying elastic straps, and goggles cover her eyes. Soldered onto the underside of a peaked visor, the lenses are thick and brown like soda bottle glass.

It’s infused throughout the game. Dim lights. Cheap recycled paper. Scarred lungs. Tape. Food rations. And the overarching question of how long will this last?

Gameplay
You play as “Girl,” an inhabitant of an underground bunker and member of Command’s Expeditionary Force. You’ve been sent on a mission to investigate a carbon capture plant that has gone offline. It’s also your first glimpse of Mars’ surface, a place you know only through stories.

This is a great puzzle Twine game for those intimidated by technical puzzles. In many ways, the game does all the heavy lifting for us. On the left side of the screen are two boxes. The top box features a clickable map that allows us to navigate the game’s world. The bottom box lists our inventory.

INVENTORY:

Comms Link
Headlamp
Screwdriver
Wrench
Paperclip

When faced with a puzzle, the inventory list lights up to indicate which items may have a possible application. The Comms Link option also serves as an in-game hint system that provides a gentle nudge.

There was never a point where I got stuck with the game. Notably, there is a pipe pressure puzzle where you need to set three pipes to the correct readings as stated by a manual. Pipe pressure puzzles have been used in plenty of games, and I’ll admit I’m not really a fan of them. After all, I prefer story-driven games. But in The Promises of Mars, the process is simplified and provided the right amount of casual challenge.

Gameplay is not as smooth as it could be. For instance, early in the game I encountered an error message:

Error: cannot find a closing tag for HTML <set>
<set $communicationsStage to 1>… >

Thankfully, this does not put the game into an unwinnable state.

Story
Backstory
The backstory revolves around an event known as the evacuation. Once, people lived in a city on Mars’ surface filled with modern conveniences. The protagonist’s mother shares what life was like: pets, frozen yogurt, trips to the mall, looking up and seeing the sky, plants growing on the sidewalk. Grass fields and playgrounds.

But when life on the surface of Mars took a turn for the worse, a bunker system was built underground to serve as a new home for survivors, and a group called Command was arranged to oversee the operation. From that point on, daily life focused on anything that could maximize humanity’s odds of returning to the surface. Everyone has a part to play.

While there is a decent amount of backstory, I couldn’t help but yearn for more of the backstory’s backstory. What exactly happened that forced everyone to flee Mars’ surface? Less relevant questions include: Has Mars been terraformed? If so, to what extent? Has human biology adapted to Mars’ lower gravity or has technology made this irrelevant?

Promises, promises
What exactly is this promise as stated in the title?

The promise is that Mars will recover enough to allow people to live on the surface again. That if humanity keeps trying to rebuild, Mars will respond in kind. But is it really Mars making these promises?

(*Carbon capture technology separates carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it underground.)

Endings
The endings are slightly underwhelming.

Themes
There are several interesting themes in this game, but since I’ve rambled enough about the story, I’ll pick one: Denial of childhood. We get the impression that childhood isn’t really a thing in the bunker.

Like many of her peers, the Girl was born on the surface but grew up underground. The bunker is all she knows. That, and the stories her mom would tell her about life on the surface. And, of course, what we find while exploring. The most moving scene is when she comes across a playground.

She'd never been on a slide. She places a boot on the slide's bottom step. Her mother's words echo in her ears: "Focus up." She'd never played on a climbing frame.

All work, no play. After all, everyone must chip to fulfill Mars’ promise. But discovering the (Spoiler - click to show)futility of the bunker’s efforts to return to a life that once was makes one wonder what is being sacrificed. They are surviving, not exactly living.

She pauses to look at the playground.
She continues onwards.

Ultimately, she can only continue onwards.

After looting the playground for materials, of course.

Characters
Who is the protagonist?

Her name, if she has one, is never mentioned. In simply referring to her as “Girl,” the game is reducing her to a mere role stripped of identity. A single unit borrowed from a population of similarly anonymous individuals.

The word “Girl” emphasizes how awfully young she is to be traversing the ruins of Mars. It highlights both her maturity and Command’s willingness to send such a young person out on a dangerous mission. Whether Command’s decision is merely the product of running out of options or not caring about the Girl’s odds of success are left up to interpretation.

Fortunately, the Girl clearly rises to the challenge, displaying wisdom far beyond her years.

She reminds me of the girl in Fabricationist DeWit Remakes the World, a sci-fi Twine game by Jedediah Berry. In that game, the girl is an NPC and was sent on a mission to track down the protagonist, a synthetic human designed to help rebuild a ravaged world. Her determination and mission of trekking through a post-apocalyptic world in search of answers shares similar themes with the Girl in The Promises of Mars. It’s also more light-hearted with few puzzles.

Visuals
While nothing fancy, its appearance is polished and easy to navigate. It uses a black background with white text and orange links. The game’s screen is neatly organized into a grid. Most of the screen is devoted to gameplay while the left side is reserved for the inventory and the clickable map. The map helpfully lights up to indicate your location.

Conclusion
The Promises of Mars performs well in every category: main character, story, gameplay, and appearance. Overall, there is a solid foundation.

But there’s something missing. It lacks the spark that would transform it from a four-star rating to a five-star one. I think adding more worldbuilding would make a difference. Tell us more about the city and what happened to Mars!

Nonetheless, it offers entertaining and haunting gameplay by allowing us to explore a dying world, a world that is supposed to be our ticket to a better life.