Show HN: I created a Mars colony RPG based on Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars books

[ariaalam]

I built a desktop Mars colony survival game called Underhill, in homage to Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Land on Mars, build solar panels and greenhouses, and try not to pass out during dust storms. Eventually your colonists split into factions: Greens who want to terraform and Reds who want to preserve Mars.

There’s Chill Mode for players that just want to build & hang, and Conflict Mode that introduces the Red v. Green factions. Reds sabotage, the terrain slowly turns green as the world gets more terraformed.

Feedback welcome, especially on performance and gameplay!

[ahhhhnoooo]

Lovely series. One of the first science fiction series I read that gave a proper anarchist culture a shot. (A big thing most people don't understand about anarchism is that it's not a violent, crime ridden, disorderly society without rules, but rather a society built on the idea that everyone deserves care, and we should all put in some effort to achieve that in a self organizing way.)

Loved seeing things like gift economies, self organization and free association, and a general care for both the people and the planet in those books.

[Tossrock]

Indeed, sci fi has always been a way for KSR to explore and animate his politics. But he's so skilled a writer that the spectacle and incredible technical detail of the sci fi wrappings can obscure subtlety of the political philosophy (as it should be, imo).

[vogtb]

Same. I thought his portrayal of anarcho-primitivism was really cool and interesting as well. Also, other people called it boring but one of my favorite parts was in Blue Mars as they hammer out the Martian constitution.

[api]

Going off on a huge nerdy tangent but... people think that about anarchism because the violent dystopian image is what you would actually get in most scenarios.

Anarchism is the politics of ignoring game theory. If you study game theory even a little one of the big lessons is that cooperation at scale is incredibly hard, and that most highly cooperative states are highly unstable. A small number of defectors can easily collapse the whole system back to a more stable tit-for-tat or all-defect state. All-defect states, meanwhile, are often stable.

This probably explains why it took billions of years to get multicellular complex life. It took billions of years for evolution to figure out how to make something that doesn't instantly defect.

It's related to the second law of thermodynamics. An all cooperate state is highly ordered, and thus higher energy and prone to collapsing into a lower energy less ordered state.

A living system that wants to be all-cooperate is going to have to expend huge amounts of energy to maintain that state, which leads me to the final problem with anarchism: most anarchists I've read or met are at least to some degree anti-growth / anti-industry / primitivist types. That math doesn't math. If you want a society where everyone cooperates and is taken care of, that society is going to have huge energy needs, much larger than totalitarian-slum or crime-ridden-hellhole.

I mean, poor people use less energy for starters. Dead people use even less.

The last part is why all the most socially realistic depictions of societies like this are post-scarcity where they've mastered some kind of sci-fi energy source (cheap easy fusion, antimatter, tapping the zero point, etc.). They can create an all-cooperate utopia by using embarrassing amounts of energy to not just police and stamp out defection but render it unnecessary to begin with.

[strogonoff]

Which sci-fi series give proper anarchist culture a shot, other than the Mars trilogy?

[CSMastermind]

Not sure who is downvoting you. You're experessing a valid opinion even if I disagree with it.

I read this book series as a kid and was enthralled by the sci fi aspects of it. When I reread it as an adult the political undertones completely ruined the series for me.

[dominicrose]

Isn't that dangerous, to write about a fictional society that works while being based on ideas that don't work in real life?

[mmastrac]

I have a popup saying "terraforming complete" after 10 sols, but I want to keep playing and I cannot dismiss that popup.

The game is definitely fun but there's some papercuts that make it tough: no dismantle I can find, placement is difficult to understand.

Some feedback:

Colonists are really tough to talk to - you have to be in just the right spot.

There doesn't seem to be a downside to spamming buildings if you can afford it. There needs to be some ongoing cost to everything you place OR a downside.

Music shouldn't change in menus, or at least shouldn't restart constantly. That gets a bit annoying.

[mmastrac]

EDIT: Looks like these were almost all fixed, awesome.

I'd say there's a few QoL improvements you could make:

- The building choice for a colonist could probably just be a type of building, otherwise you're scrolling through 90+ buildings

- Add key repeat for scrolling long lists

- Draw a rectangle for the building footprint you're about to build to help position, allow mouse placement to shift it around if you need

- Maybe consider re-selecting the same building type because building an array of buildings requires a lot of keys (or a hotkey per building type?)

- Lists should probably wrap around too

[saltwatercowboy]

This is so cool. How are you going to simulate Michel's longing for Provence? Seriously though I adore the trilogy. I started a Mars storymapping project which incorporated Underhill, Senzeni Na, the Moholes etc. a little while back too:

https://saltwatercowboy.github.io/marsinplace/

[ch4s3]

It’s BYO longing for Provence.

[ariaalam]

wow i absolutely LOVE this. what an awesome resource for readers. and TBD on longing for Provence... maybe v2 of the game will include a space elevator...

[pmontra]

I visited the site on my Android phone with Firefox. It loads and the UI fits the screen, however it seems slow. Words appear at 3 or 4 characters at a time, then there is a pause, then another 3 or 4 characters. Some music when characters appear, then it stops, then it starts again. I muted it soon.

It looks nice, so I hope to give it a try from my laptop. The Mars trilogy was a great read. When I saw the title of this Show HN I said, oh wow!

By the way, dust storms could be a plot device but are they really that bad with so low air pressure?

[ariaalam]

Thanks for giving it a click! Let me know how it goes on desktop. Actively trying to improve the phone experience now...

[gus_massa]

If I go near a building, like a solar panel and press E then I get the information status, press E and more information, press E and more information, press E and more information, press E and more information, press E and get a menu [Destroy]/Cancel, press E and the building get destroyed!

Important feature request: When I reach the menu, the default action must be "cancel" in case the user is pressing E without reading the messages.

[junon]

Same thing on mobile, just immediately destroyed the thing I just built :D

[sointeresting]

Loud music warning for those wearing headphones.

[michaelteter]

You weren't exaggerating! I didn't even have headphones on, and it scared the sh*t out of me when I clicked on the little man.

[mNovak]

Very cool! A couple notes from my first few sols:

- I had a really hard time building a greenhouse, because I hadn't realized it'd be bigger than 1 square like all the previous buildings, and it just wouldn't build despite having materials etc. Maybe a footprint outline while hovering a build option?

- There were a lot of instructions from Dr. Kimura right off the bat. Hard for me to remember all that, and I was hoping talking to the doc again would replay those hints.

- My population seems to be stuck at 2.. I have landing pads and habitats and plenty of food etc, but don't really know what I should be doing next.

- that menus continue beyond the first couple lines was not obvious to me. Possibly because I'm on laptop, so the existing hint was way far to the right

[ariaalam]

Got it, thanks for all this. There seems to be a bit of a bug with new colonists arriving so trying to fix that now. And agreed on your other points as well.

[magicmicah85]

Played for a bit, liked the aesthetics so I bookmarked it to come back to it later and discovered a bug. On mac/chrome, I hit CMD + D to bookmark. By doing so, I setup some kind of autowalk bug where I kept walking to the right. I couldn't stop myself from walking, even pressing WAS temporarily stopped me but as soon as I let go, I kept walking right.

[ariaalam]

Thanks for this, I'll address it now.

[AnotherGoodName]

Terraforming Mars is a board game that heavily references these novels which i highly recommend.

[baq]

It’s great but really needs the expansions, don’t play without

[captn3m0]

Got power water and o2 but can’t seem to scroll the list of items to build for food on Firefox/iOS (should also be Safari/iOS) since it selects on tap before the scroll.

[ariaalam]

Another person just mentioned this to me, looking into it.

[yuppiepuppie]

Wow, the mobile experience is great!

Really like the feel of the game.

FWIW, I have added this to the HN Arcade https://hnarcade.com/games/games/underhill

[ariaalam]

Thank you!!

[lazyasciiart]

Hmm, I just get a black screen on my iPhone when I click your link.

Did you use any existing stuff like the mars-sim project? https://mars-sim.sourceforge.io/

[ariaalam]

Try it now! And no I didn't but that is very cool.

[desireco42]

It is hard to understand and play... maybe make it more obvious. I made a solar panel, it says I should assign staff...

I would love to play if it would work. And music, thank god for the mute button.

[ariaalam]

are you on mobile? it looks like there's a bug where the opening scene/dialogue is not loading, so the instructions aren't clear. working on it now.

[foxglacier]

I hope you did most of it in AI. I pasted your post verbatim into Claude free (except changed "I built" to "Build" and it made a similar looking game that seems to work on the first try.https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/7420f435-3d5f-4b33-bb43-d...

[UltraSane]

When the mars space elevator was brought down and wrapped around mars TWICE was one of the most memorable moments of any book I've ever read.

[Aeolun]

Spoilers! But yeah, that was a memorable scene.

[savgore]

This is one of my favourite book series ever; it has so many points for learning and humanity. Thanks for making this!

[ariaalam]

Thank you for checking it out!

[deafpolygon]

It’s not really clear how it’s played.

[ariaalam]

Thanks for trying it out. Can you say more? Was it the controls or more about what you're supposed to build/do first?

[xcf_seetan]

I am on Firefox and it does nothing, no movement, just flashing resource monitors with zero values...

[Jimmy6929]

Hey it looks cool but for some reasons I cant play it? Is it because I use brave browser?

[justinclift]

Tried briefly with Firefox here, and I think it's just a game that starts out incredibly slowly.

As in, it needs to go through the whole "What is your name? ____" type of sequence first before any of the WASD/arrow keys actually do anything, even if the instructions earlier on give the impression they should be functional right away.

[Vaslo]

Made me think of this gem:

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/ultima-worlds-of-adventur...

[thinkingtoilet]

I could only get two colonists to come. I built a ton of every structure I was able to, housing, landing pad, energy, water, O2, and greenhouses and still only two came. Perhaps a bug?

[ariaalam]

Working on this. Thanks for clicking!

[ajkjk]

dear god make the music quiet by default

[3eb7988a1663]

I must have missed something because my HP keeps ticking down until I pass out and get warped back to the command center. Eating food and resting do not seem to change the situation.

[number6]

Great, how did you build it? Also I have to read the books

[ariaalam]

vanilla JS and canvas plus a hefty bit of technical help from Claude.

[arethuza]

You could also do a version of this for the KSR novel "Antarctica", which is effectively "White Mars". ;-)

[mkl]

Do you have permission from the publisher for an adaptation? If not, you're taking a legal risk basing it off the books.

[cantalopes]

It's based on it, it's not an adaptation.

Also, this would very well fit within fair use

[nealmueller]

I really enjoyed my first few Sols. Good work! How did you build it? How long did it take? Will it make money?

[jimnotgym]

I'm on mobile (Android, Brave), and I can do everything but interact with the people. Am I doing something wrong?

[jimnotgym]

Oh and I can't scroll down on the hq menu. The engineer guy only spoke to me after 15 mins

[addedlovely]

Is hard to talk to the engineer, I can't select him, stuck between the base and a solar panel.

[personjerry]

Had 1000 of each resource, lots of income, landing pads and habitats, but never got more colonists?

[emaro]

Same, I'm stuck at 18 inhabitants.

[skrumblito]

I'm full HP and hunger and slept - why is the character now walking so slowly?

[Self-Perfection]

Feels really laggy on desktop. Tried both Firefox and Brave. Like 3-4 FPS

[oug-t]

Interesting game, love the design.

Struggled a little before understanding the instructions.

[ariaalam]

are you on mobile? it looks like there's a bug where the opening scene/dialogue is not loading, so the instructions aren't clear. working on it now.

[linuxguy2]

Dvorak support/autodetection would be nice.

[good-idea]

Well, here we are!

[tantalor]

Surviving Mars (2018) is another really good game in this category.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5djTZfKVIKQ

[the_biot]

Agreed, very nice. Turns out the whole game is written in Lua (minus rendering and such I assume). The source is fully readable, I was amazed how high-level that code was. Writing mods was ridiculously easy.

[juanpabloaj]

I love it! thanks for sharing.

[ariaalam]

Thanks for clicking!

[mekod]

i'd prefer to live in a game where i could sleep during the day too..

wp btw

[TIPSIO]

Awesome work love it