I'm sorry devs, but...

[Kerb]

This game isn't "hard", it's broken and imbalanced, it's basically entirely chance based, and not in a good way. I am used to playing Rogue-like games, such as "Out There".....and even that game has more of a skill based component than Tharsis (not to mention more content and replayability). The game has potential, but it falls short and replaces content and innovation with blind repetitive extreme chance.

It's clear there's a lot of issues with the way the game is executed.

First off, the game basically takes place over several turns. The game should have been stretched out with less risk over dozens of turns. (On a side note there should have also been multiple types of ships to unlock too)

Second, the events seem to be completely random, none seem to be programmed to appear more than others....or more accurately, ship damage doesn't appear to be programmed to NOT happen in an overwhelming amount. I mean come on, you start us off with a ship with a couple of bars of health, then the game can immediately throw several bars worth of ship damage in ONE turn, each requiring 20+ repair! The same applies to health. You don't have enough dice or turns to deals with all of the elements, such as bringing up player health, ship health, making food, bringing down stress, etc. Taking care of one always means negating all others entirely, which eventually results in a downward spiral, since they're all almost equally important to survival.

A big factor to this issue is that I find that you're spending soo much time dealing with events, that you basically don't have the time to actually use modules for their abilities, if you're lucky you might have a die left over, but you probably won't even be in the module you want to be in to make food, or put the dice in ship health or whatever else

Since you'll be spending pretty much all your dice on repair every single turn...and events happen in multiples basically every round, and every event effects you enough to not ignore, whether it's degrading ship health, -1 dice, -2 health, etc....they all cripple you pretty much immediately, especially if you don't roll enough to end the event.


Another issue is the penalty rolls......2-3 dice combinations is excessive. For example, if 2,4,5 cause injury (-1 health), that's basically a 50/50 chance of injury since that's half of all combinations. Multiply that by 1-5 dice in a roll, and you're basically guaranteed to get 2-3 health loss, which is about half or more of full health of a player....and the player probably won't have full health either. I'd say most of the time, my crew dies outright from any rolls involving a possible injury penalty. And I don't mean just one....I mean all of them, in the same module, trying to roll enough to repair it, dying from injury on the roll itself, before any dice can even be put into repair.

I'm sure I haven't covered everything that irked me about this game, but I think I covered the majority of it....which sadly, is pretty much the whole game itself. It's clear that huge changes need to be made with the execution of this game and its mechanics.

The game in its current state could barely be called early access level of content and balance, let alone sold as a finished and released game. Feels very much like a money grab.

I wouldn't even call this a game, it's more accurately a fail simulator.

The only positive thing I can say about this 'game' is the graphics are acceptable, although the interface could have had a bit more of a futuristic spacey modern minimalistic look to it.

[Drake]

Wholeheartedly agree!

This is exactly the problem with the game, as is evident by the sheer number of people, posting the same thing.

This is why I played it for an hour, experienced everything you had mentioned, and refunded, as the game is broken as it stands right now.


Would buy it in the future, but only if they addres ALL of those issues, and either add an endless mode with a Start Trek or Battlestar Galactica type generation ship, so you can cruise the universe, build additional ship modules, mine planets for resources, etc.... or at the very least, they add additional ships for replayability, and have an even start, with fully functional ship, healthy crew and events happen along the journey.

[papajack99]

Totally do not agree ..the game seem impossible at first then you realize you have to prepare 2-3 turn ahead ..make hard decision ...above everything to protect the Mission (reaching Mars)..everything else can be sacrifice.... the big fun for me is to find way to over come problems to live turn by turn,,not knowing when it will be my last

[Hicky]

disagree completely. The game isn't always winable, but its about managing risk and playing of stats and thats the fun part. Play something else

[Vexing Vision]

I'm consistently winning every third run at the moment on Normal, most of them without resorting to Cannibalism.

It's not easy to see, but actually planning out your move, considering the order in which you send in people to fix things, which Research you have open, grabbing Assists to tackle the dangerous problems you describe (like 3 dice hazards! Never go into these without full Assists) and generally making sure your crew is healthy enough to take a hit (keep your stress low to get the good between-weeks events!) will do wonders.

I'm liking it a lot, but I agree on one thing - unlocking additional ships would be cool!

[Zedd]

Agreed, it's just frustratingly RNG hard, plan out your moves ahead of time lol what bs, all you are doing is responding to events you don't know the events ahead of time so how exactly are you planning for anything. Don't buy this one peeps.

[Peachtree Games]

I woudln't even dignify this game by calling it "hard." It's hard like steering a train is hard...

[T-Bone Biggins]

Going to chime in. This game isn't a strategy game. It's not even a space game. It's a high-stake low-payout dice game with a space atmosphere attached to it. You can do everything right as far as risk management and strategic thinking goes and still get screwd by injury or void dice rolls. You can do everything right and still lose. You can do nothing wrong and simply have a bad start that you cannot possibly win no matter what. This is not a skill-based game. It's a glorified dice game. What I was sold was a space strategy game, this is not what Tharsis is so I'm getting a refund. I like the atmosphere devs made but if they made it into an actual rogue-like strategy game about going to Mars instead of a pure RNG-based dice game they wouldn't be having the refund problems I assume they are having right now.

[Saintanik]

From reading everything you've written, it seems like you're playing as if you need to fix everything, every turn, this is not true. Choosing what to repair and what not to repair is important.

The situations you describe with punishing injury combinations (i.e. the 50% chance one) can be dealt with using assists or various research cards.. in games where I have made it to Mars I frequently send guys to other rooms to gather food/pick up assists/repair the ship rather than fixing a room.. and if it is a particularly nasty room with void/injury combinations, I'll often leave it unrepaired the whole game.. particularly if it only does one point of ship damage (because repairing it just runs the risk of it being replaced by a 2 damage event)

I think people get fooled into thinking they must fix every event, every turn, and this is not the case.. once you realise that, there is a lot more depth to it. The fun part is figuring out how to do the bare minimum to stay alive each turn.. once you 'get it', you'll likely win more than you lose.

[fredingue]

Originally posted by Hicky:

disagree completely. The game isn't always winable, but its about managing risk and playing of stats and thats the fun part. Play something else

This is the kind of comments that i find rude and agressive, even if said politely.

It is like "i beat the game so shut up or go play Solitaire"

I'm into 66 minutes in the game, that means 7 or 8 games tried. All turned bad after 3 or 4 turns.

= too many events, too many injuries from dice, too few means to regain dice, stress or health each turn, too many negative "side projects" that are not projects but punches in the head.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=599595516
Starting to be fed up

It's absolutely different from hardcore roguelikes where your choices or strategy can save your soul.

So what ? make 100 tries untiil i get the perfect serials of dice rolls ? Pfff

I allways compare this kind of games to D&D : would you play several times with a DM whose dungeons are allways wipe room 1 or wipe room 3 because of too few power for party and OP monsters or traps, never get to floor 2 ?

Since i posted this 30 minutes ago i played at least 5 new games

= feeling like hunting tigers with mashmallows while thunder is not supposed to strike me and my shoes are too small, hurt my feet :(
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=599609490

[moosc]

Absolutely agree with OP.
This game fails for me because its just not fun I'm afraid. If I can't effect the game in a meaningfull way that doesn't rely purely on luck then its apointless exercise IMHO.

[Medvezhak]

I won 5 times on noraml and 3 times on hard. Everything you've described there is managable with some careful planning. As for the "Out there" it is as random as this game. If you don't find a proper ship withing 10 turns you are basicaly ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[Senlin]

I think the problem here is that people do not really realize what are the real odds of getting what number. It's not that intuitive and it might definitely be hard for some people to tell what chance they have at a specific situation to get a specific result. I think it's important to realize that our brains are not good at this and they are really literally lying to us, making us think odds are different then they really are, especially if emotions are involved.

Additionally, I think people are simply not informed properly about some of the game's mechanics.

For example, on the screenshot "no fair events" few post above mine - all crew members have critical stress level. Do you know that that is exactly what is causing those bad events? You need to try and keep stress level low. I know it's not always possible and it's maybe not the most important thing, but 100% level for even 2 crewmembers is basically game over, unless you would do much better overal. With low stress level you get nice events that will help you.

I have won the game twice. The second time I did it without ever eating human meat (BTW, I was disappointed it didn't change the ending :/).

My biggest hint is this: if you loose a crewmember in the first, hmm, 3 or maybe even 5 turns, just restart the game, you didn't make it, you'll just waste time and get frustrated. You really need all crew to keep up with bad things.

Another hint - make it your first priority to always have at least 4 dies on each crewmember, if possible (meaning - unless a crew member would die or ship would be destroyed). This is critical, because dices are everything and they can get you everything. Sometimes you will get to 3 of course, but try not alow situation where any teammember would start a turn with just 2, that's just not enough for anything.

I do agree that the starting of game is not flashed out enough. It is so much easier if you get one or two events in the first few turns in the place where you can grow food, because you can fix the problem and get food at have a chance to grow food (for example you can fix the event with 2 crew and then join with another one to get food and give some bonus to all 3). All in all this part of the game is very random. But if you managed to get to let's say turn 3 with all crewmembers with dices at 4 or 5 and good enough health (this also mean you probably have low stress levels), then it's up to you. The middle-end game then is really really fun and satisfying. It's still very hard, but you have more options to deal with it.

I lost 3 games around middle/late game, by my fault really, I was careless and made some mistakes. Other then that, I of course lost several other games around beginning/middle game, because the start was hard (and I probably didn't do everything perfectly as well).


Overal the game is fine, there is randomness involved (well, a lot of it really), but there is a lot of strategy as well.

[Narkulus]

Originally posted by CORE:

This game isn't "hard", it's broken and imbalanced, it's basically entirely chance based, and not in a good way. I am used to playing Rogue-like games, such as "Out There".....and even that game has more of a skill based component than Tharsis (not to mention more content and replayability). The game has potential, but it falls short and replaces content and innovation with blind repetitive extreme chance.

It's clear there's a lot of issues with the way the game is executed.

First off, the game basically takes place over several turns. The game should have been stretched out with less risk over dozens of turns. (On a side note there should have also been multiple types of ships to unlock too)

Second, the events seem to be completely random, none seem to be programmed to appear more than others....or more accurately, ship damage doesn't appear to be programmed to NOT happen in an overwhelming amount. I mean come on, you start us off with a ship with a couple of bars of health, then the game can immediately throw several bars worth of ship damage in ONE turn, each requiring 20+ repair! The same applies to health. You don't have enough dice or turns to deals with all of the elements, such as bringing up player health, ship health, making food, bringing down stress, etc. Taking care of one always means negating all others entirely, which eventually results in a downward spiral, since they're all almost equally important to survival.

A big factor to this issue is that I find that you're spending soo much time dealing with events, that you basically don't have the time to actually use modules for their abilities, if you're lucky you might have a die left over, but you probably won't even be in the module you want to be in to make food, or put the dice in ship health or whatever else

Since you'll be spending pretty much all your dice on repair every single turn...and events happen in multiples basically every round, and every event effects you enough to not ignore, whether it's degrading ship health, -1 dice, -2 health, etc....they all cripple you pretty much immediately, especially if you don't roll enough to end the event.


Another issue is the penalty rolls......2-3 dice combinations is excessive. For example, if 2,4,5 cause injury (-1 health), that's basically a 50/50 chance of injury since that's half of all combinations. Multiply that by 1-5 dice in a roll, and you're basically guaranteed to get 2-3 health loss, which is about half or more of full health of a player....and the player probably won't have full health either. I'd say most of the time, my crew dies outright from any rolls involving a possible injury penalty. And I don't mean just one....I mean all of them, in the same module, trying to roll enough to repair it, dying from injury on the roll itself, before any dice can even be put into repair.

I'm sure I haven't covered everything that irked me about this game, but I think I covered the majority of it....which sadly, is pretty much the whole game itself. It's clear that huge changes need to be made with the execution of this game and its mechanics.

The game in its current state could barely be called early access level of content and balance, let alone sold as a finished and released game. Feels very much like a money grab.

I wouldn't even call this a game, it's more accurately a fail simulator.

The only positive thing I can say about this 'game' is the graphics are acceptable, although the interface could have had a bit more of a futuristic spacey modern minimalistic look to it.

When you saw dice in the screenshots, you should have known what kind of a game this is.

This is, at its heart, when broken down, a solitaire board game consisting of random dice rolls and card draws similar to cardboard solitaire/co-op board games Forbidden Desert, Elder Sign, Pandemic, etc.

Cardboard solitaire board games frequently have unwinnable conditions. If the devs wished this to not be a board game, they would have not incorporated the dice element. What your'e asking for is more elements to mitigate the dice roll to make the game easy and ultimately, less interesting to play, or removing the dice mechanic in favor of something else.

Heroes of Normandie (based on the cardboard game) had similar rng dice complaints. The devs caved and put in a loaded dice option, lol.

Maybe they could add an option to remove some of the more punishing event cards.

[Team Triss]

Originally posted by Narkulus:

When you saw dice in the screenshots, you should have known what kind of a game this is.

This is, at its heart, when broken down, a solitaire board game consisting of random dice rolls and card draws similar to cardboard solitaire/co-op board games Forbidden Desert, Elder Sign, Pandemic, etc.

Cardboard solitaire board games frequently have unwinnable conditions. If the devs wished this to not be a board game, they would have not incorporated the dice element. What your'e asking for is more elements to mitigate the dice roll to make the game easy and ultimately, less interesting to play, or removing the dice mechanic in favor of something else.

Heroes of Normandie (based on the cardboard game) had similar rng dice complaints. The devs caved and put in a loaded dice option, lol.

This is exactly what I have been saying.

Maybe it's marketed poorly, but I put in my review that if you don't enjoy that ^ type of gameplay, then you won't enjoy this game, but if you still enjoy a hard-fought, drawn-out loss, then this game is for you.

I kickstarted the game Hostage Negotiator[boardgamegeek.com] last year. Each die has a 1/3 chance to give you a success. Usually you roll 2, but you can roll anywhere from 1-5 depending on what's happening and what you're doing, and every time you roll dice you generally need 2 successes or else something bad happens.

It's quick, I've played dozens of games, and maybe I've won 3-4 of them. Everything can be going well and suddenly the abductor decides he's going to kill the last 5 hostages, or you can be on the cusp of losing and suddenly you pull off a daring raid that saves all hostages and kills the abductor.

All you can do is set it up and hope it works.

This game is the same thing, but in video game format instead of decks of cards, mats, and dice.

[dykmoby]

I can see where the OP is coming from. This is a difficult game, and figuring out that fixing issues immediately may not be the highest priority at the start.

That being said, I think the pacing at the start of the game will make or break the game as a whole. As it stands, all too often the third week is the breaking point for new players.

Considering that Steam's refund policy requires less than two hours of play time, that becomes a mental barrier for most players. If they aren't having fun within the first hour, they need to make the decision to request a refund.

Right now I think the only adjustment that needs to be made are the starting conditions. While there needs to be tension right at the start, there also needs to be a certain level of optimism through the first third of the game (weeks 1 to 3). The start of week four is where the effluent hits the rotating device.

To that end I would recommend a slight bump to the astronaut stats at the start of the game:
1) Minimum of 3 starting health per character, minimum total health of 16, maximum total health of 20. Start with 3 each and distribute 8 across all characters randomly
2) Minimum of 2 starting dice per character, minimum total dice of crew of 12, max of 16. Start each character out with 2 die and randonly distribute 8 across all characters

Optionally make the above set up the "Easy" or "Tutorial" mode. In this mode stats etc are not counted to in-game unlocks or Steam achievements.

This sets up a bit more advantagous starting position but more importantly shows new players that there actually is an option to take on other activities other than fixing incidents. This in turn makes players think of other strategies without frustrating them to the point of hitting the "refund" button.

Otherwise, bring the pain.