Surviving Mars and Metro 2033 are currently free on PC

Each week, the Epic Games Store sets up a free game, which you can add to your library without any conditions. This week’s offer is Survive Mars, the space city building game about … survive on Mars. It will be available until March 18.

Survive Mars, if you haven’t played it, it’s more or less exactly what you imagine when you think Cities: Skylines goes into space. Your goal is to create a lasting human outpost on Mars. You do this by sourcing resources (metal, concrete, etc.) to build survival structures (food, water, oxygen, energy) to support domes of various sizes that can house human life. If you liked Cities, You’ll like it Survive Mars, too much. (Both games are published by Paradox Interactive.)

contrary to Cities, although, Survive Mars put an additional focus on people, rather than structures. You can organize the manifesto of every rocket you send from Earth to Mars. Each person you can choose is randomly generated, down to their traits and vocation. Want a bunch of alcoholic botanists who love to play video games? Or how about some hypochondriac revelers who train 25 hours a day? On your version of Mars, anything is possible.

In his heart, Survive Mars understands that good urban planning is not just about roads and buildings and budget cuts. It’s about people. Funny we have to go to space to learn this lesson.

Killer tunes there too.

In other “games you can get for free”, Metro 2033 is currently available at 100% discount on the other PC showcase, named after a 19th century power source. It will remain at this price until March 15.

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