You manage a theme park for aliens where humans are abducted and put on display. As you advance through the different human eras, bring their culture for the aliens to enjoy. You are also conducting research in some not-so-great ways to gain insight and bring thrill-seeking park adventures a show they will never forget.
This one is a bit of a strange one, and that is why it caught my eye. It’s not every day you get to play a game where humans are put in exhibits like animals for aliens to watch. You can even go out and decide which era of humans you want to abduct from.
Be warned, those who go to such a theme park are quite picky. At one point, I stopped trying to put down enough bathrooms, trash cans, and benches to keep the aliens happy. It’s almost like they all expect their own personal ones. Perhaps as a human, I don’t understand their desire for so many.
The game's campaign has you complete a series of tasks before allowing you to move on to a different area to rebuild and turn it into a theme park. Most of these areas are run down and sometimes even require a little effort on your part to clean up before you can start putting any roads or buildings down.
With each fresh start, you have a decent-sized loan to get you started. The interest rates are also quite reasonable. While it might be tempting to let the game run for a bit so you can just pay off that loan, things get going. Be warned, the worst thing that can happen to your theme park is the humans escaping and murdering everyone.
Before you can do much, you send our crew out on expeditions to Earth to find some humans to collect. The cool part is that you can even pick different time periods depending on how far along you have advanced. Early on, you just have access to Ancient Rome.
You can do more than just steal humans as well. You can send out expeditions to steal artifacts. There are also cases where any humans you do capture, you don’t end up putting on display. Some of your more advanced buildings in the game require human parts to create. A bit grim, I know. These aliens are truly disturbed!
Once you have some captured, it's time to set up some exhibits as if they were zoo animals. The last thing you want is them getting bored in their exhibit, so you want to make sure they have some things to do. Along with a place to get food and water.
Like many things in this game. There is also a bit of a support system needed. You will need to hire and place some building restock the food inside each exhibit. You might also need to run water pipes or electric cords, depending on what you have placed inside.
You might also notice I added some windows and paths along each exhibit. Along with lots of places for the aliens to sit down. They do just love sitting and watching the humans interact with human objects. It gets the aliens in a good mood to drop some extra money into donation boxes that I have set up throughout the park. A huge part of the park's total income.
To advance in the game, you need to conduct different kinds of experiments. While it’s not cheap to do so, it has a nice bonus of the park's guests being quite excited to see those experiments take place. They will, however, cause a lot of discomfort in those that you have captured in your zoo. Trying to gain too many research points quickly can cause them to riot and break out if they become too unhappy.
How would I know? It happened to me. While you can call in a special team at quite a heavy price tag, a special team to take care of any escaped humans. Once they help break out other exhibits, they have enough numbers to defend themselves from a few waves of you trying to get things back under control.
With this being a management game, there are also a few different screens to help you stay on top of different things occurring in the park. Quite importantly, the guests' page gives you overall thoughts those aliens are having about different aspects of the park.
I was not joking about them wanting lots of bathrooms. I must have over twenty in my game, and I'm still not at the fulfilled part of the meter bar. Most of the bathrooms also sit empty. So, I don’t know why they are so picky! Perhaps they don't like the smell!
Almost all buildings you place down will also require hiring staff to run them. That ends up being the biggest cost, then most buildings. Even more so when the current requirement pool has some nasty traits, and you decide to reject them all and pay for another round of applicants for your park.
You also can’t forget hiring enough janitors who play a dual role of clearing up and performing needed maintenance. Despite all the trash bins you put everywhere. You can have quite a few guests who have a nasty trait to “vomit at random.” They create quite a massive mess wherever they go in your park.
A big part of the fun of this game is just watching the wacky stuff going on. Between the strange aliens walking all over the place. There are even stranger experiments going on. Such as this group of humans, they are being sprayed with water. Quite an odd way to earn some research points, but I'll take it. It seems less curl than many other things going on in other exhibits have in this park.
Occasionally, you unlock a couple of rides for the aliens to enjoy as well. They are more of a side thing to add to your park than anything else. The aliens are more interested in having lots of places to eat and drink. These things, however, can be a nice way to make a little extra income.
This game sure puts an interesting twist on managing your own theme park. It also seems to be a little less ethical of an adventure than most of these types of games tend to offer. Hopefully, you won’t anger any humans you abduct and bring to your park too much. The aliens really are quite small, and just one of them can take out dozens of them in a short amount of time. It was almost like I was rooting for them to escape in the first place and cause total mayhem in the park.
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Mars Attracts.
Disclosure: A review copy of the game was received for free.
Disclosure: This content is based on early access to the game.
