What is Tharsis?

In Tharsis, you live and die by the dice. Tharsis is all about crisis management after your ship is damaged on its way to Mars. The game was released on January 12th, 2016; it was developed and published by Choice Provisions.

Events

At the beginning of each turn, Events spawn. Every event has a repair score and one or more negative effect. If the event is still active at the end of the turn its effect activates, which can harm your crew and your ship. In order to stay alive, you'll need to complete these events by deploying your crew to modules.

Deployment

When you deploy a crew member to a module, they move from their current module to the selected one. Be careful, if your crew moves through or exits a module with an active event they will lose 1 health. Once inside a module you can roll your dice. Each character rolls a number of dice equal to the number of white squares under their portrait. That number can either increase or decrease by events and abilities. After rolling your dice, you have many options on how to use them. You can: complete the event, use the module's ability, use your crew member's ability, store for research, store in the dice hold, or re-roll.

If you put your dice towards the event, your dice will subtract its value from the event. If an event reaches 0 it will be completed and removed from the ship. Don't worry if you can't complete it in one go, the repair value wont reset between deployments or turns. Placing your dice in the ability slots will grant your the crew member or module's ability. Any dice placed in the research section will grant you 1 research point, which you can spend on research cards for bonuses. Dice in the dice hold wont be re-rolled, and you can only re-roll dice left in the center. Depending on the event, rolling specific numbers will either: freeze the die and prevent it from re-rolling, void the die and remove it from play, or injure the active crew member.

Once you've completed deployment for each crew member, any remaining events will trigger their effects.

Side Projects and Food Distribution

After each turn, you'll be presented with choices from the remaining crew. The choices given are based on your crew's stress levels, you'll be given worse options the higher their stress is. Each project has it's ups and downs, but a choice must be made every turn. After your project is chosen, you can distribute food to your crew members. Each piece of food will give the chosen crew member 3 more dice, up to a max of 5.

Wrap Up

That is the general flow for each turn of Tharsis. Will your crew make it to Mars, or will the ship tear itself apart in the void? Oh also you can cannibalize the crew.

If any of this has interested you, I suggest looking at the game on Steam.