Surviving Mars Relaunched crashes on Steam as the strategy game's paid remaster doesn't even fix the original's flaws

Paradox Games and Haemimont Games recently released Surviving Mars Relaunched to largely middling Steam reviews, maintaining a worrying trend of titles from the publishing giant behind many of the best strategy games not quite hitting like they used to. Worse yet, the release of this remaster treads another fine line - scrubbing the original version of a product in favor of a new edition that some are finding to be virtually identical in the worst ways.

Released on Steam on November 10, Surviving Mars Relaunched is the second coming of a sci-fi city builder first launched in the spring of 2018. I was invited to play it (or watch a developer play it, I'm not sure, it's been a while) at PDXCon back in 2017. And while I never did dive into the full version, I was fully on board with what it was-a warm-toned and slightly goofy settlement sim on the big red planet Brad Pitt would land on just one year later. In a movie, not the game. That's not the point. But that would have been cool, right?

The point is that the release of Surviving Mars Relaunched has rubbed players of the original strategy sim the wrong way, and they're making sure any new or returning colonists know it via the Steam reviews. Now sat at a 'mixed' 42% positive from close to a thousand responses, players are primarily complaining about "core bugs and issues" being left in from the original. One also jokes that maybe they'll see improvements if they "buy the game for a third time…" It begs the question, if bugs return intact, does it officially make them a feature?

Another reads, "This should've been early access", which is a bewildering idea for a game released seven years ago, stating that "not only is charging twice for the same game a shady tactic, but the 'reworks' aren't really good" and that, echoing the sentiment of the top review, "the game is riddled with bugs." Again.

Outside of one positive review, which basically says it's a good deal if you're upgrading from the base game given that the remaster includes the previously paid-for DLC, multiple people point out that many of its major bugs only kick in long after the typical Steam refund period has passed.

Now, I'm not saying it's part of some wider conspiracy to defraud the player. Not at all. But you only need to look at games like Civilization 7 to realize how the cracks of complex strategy games can begin to show as a save goes from a blank canvas to the detailed diary of thousands of tiny decisions performed over just a few hours. It's terrible timing and poor optimization for the most part, but it's an understandably bitter kick in the groin for those who've paid again for a remaster you would expect to fix all the problems the original allegedly required unpaid modders to figure out.

With titles like Stellaris, Hearts of Iron IV, Cities Skylines, Prison Architect, and Battletech all releasing mere years apart, Paradox Interactive was at the helm of a golden era of strategy sims when I started my career in games ten or so years back. But after the woes of games like Cities Skylines 2, Empire of Sin, Star Trek Infinite, and Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2, player trust in the niche publishing giant seems to be at an all-time low.

It would be unfair to say the studio is on a downward spiral, though. Europa Univeralis 5, developed in-house by Paradox Tinto, released to 'very positive' user reviews just one week before this underwhelming remaster. The Surviving Mars team has also outlined plans to fix bugs "in the days ahead," with hotfix 1.0.1 releasing just two days ago. But with Surviving Mars Remastered seemingly solving nothing while charging players of the now-unavailable original release for not a whole lot else, it'll continue to face justifiably disappointed players delivering judgments that "Paradox's reputation should be cemented as a horrible publisher of great games." Ouch.