"Tharsis" is a great game for strategy lovers. You have to think several moves in advance or you lose ground quickly. It takes a lot of patience and a good bit of luck to play and survive long. This is a single-player only game where the player controls all of the characters. The unique part of Tharsis is that you must roll virtual dice in order to play.
In Tharsis, you are one of a small space crew sent to Mars to answer a mysterious radio signal. Your ship is damaged in transit, and you must complete tasks before you can make it to Mars. You start with four crew members and each one has strengths and weaknesses. Each member has three things: Stress, damage, and dice (food). These are random at the outset of the game, but you can increase or decrease each as you go along.
Once you have a crew, you are shown a cut scene which opens the mystery. You then see your ship, and are shown the damage that has happened to it. Your new goal: SURVIVE.
Each section of damage shows what will happen to the crew or to the ship if not repaired. It gives a number, such as 11, which is the dice roll goal to negate the damage. You must choose one of the crew, assign them to the ship section, and roll your dice. You can assign dice for only one crew member at a time, and must do all the rolls of that member at once. You can assign dice to the damage, to the member's special effect, to the special feature of the ship section itself, or to an excess area that will give you a bonus as you go. It seems complicated, but your dice rolls can be tricky and fast. Some members have only one dice, some have five. You must choose very carefully how to proceed.
There are more choices in between 'rounds' of damage. You must make difficult decisions for the crew as a whole, or for one crew member. You can add food (which adds dice), if you have food. If you don't have food, you can eat crew who have died for extra dice. (Your dice become bloody and messy from then out, which is kind of amusing.) Everything has a penalty or helps you progress.
I enjoy the early stages of the game. It's a challenge, but even on "easy" level I was unable to progress past about 5 incursions. I did advance enough to get a new crew member, but I never resolved the mystery of Mars.
Overall, it's a pretty good game for very short bursts. The artwork is very lovely and the cut scenes and story are interesting. The graphics are solid, although the crew members look shocked and alarmed all the time. (I enjoyed the bloody dice, and the 'meat' of eating a crew member vs a green blob of processed 'food'.)
I would recommend it for anyone who enjoys games of strategy such as chess. It requires a lot of thought and planning, and it's entertaining and a challenge. I don't recommend it for anyone who has a tendency to rage-quit games as the dice throws can be frustrating, and the increases in damage to your ship can raise your real blood pressure.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Lovely artwork and great mechanics.
Creepy thrumming noises in the background; strong character voices; good big explosions.
Easy was extremely hard.
Different every time. Not easy to complete. Simple to load and play. Good graphics. A solid value for the money.
PROS / CONS
- Unique game play using dice.
- Great artwork and easy graphics.
- Interesting story line.
- Not able to manage multiple damages at major dice roll numbers.
- No way to increase crew members once you lose them.
- Dice rolls are completely random numbers so there is no control.
- Damage multiples out of control after about round 5 or 6.
