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

Posted by ariaalam 7 hours ago

Show HN: I created a Mars colony RPG based on Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books(underhillgame.com)

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!

102 points | 43 commentspage 2

jimnotgym 3 hours ago|

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

jimnotgym 3 hours ago|

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

lazyasciiart 5 hours ago||

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 5 hours ago|

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

lazyasciiart 5 hours ago||

Much better, now it opens up the game. Is this open source?

number6 5 hours ago||

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

ariaalam 5 hours ago|

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

lukan 3 hours ago|||

It seems you draw everything every frame onto the canvas? The result is quite GPU heavy, for your next game I would recommend looking into a graphic libary like pixijs, to make use of the webgl/webgpu .. then it would run smooth even on old mobile phones.

evilhackerdude 2 hours ago|||

check out raylib, it should be amazing for this :)

UltraSane 2 hours ago||

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 2 hours ago|

Spoilers! But yeah, that was a memorable scene.

oug-t 5 hours ago||

Interesting game, love the design.

Struggled a little before understanding the instructions.

ariaalam 4 hours ago|

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.

tantalor 3 hours ago||

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

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

deafpolygon 5 hours ago||

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

ariaalam 5 hours ago|

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

Vaslo 4 hours ago||

Made me think of this gem:

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

desireco42 5 hours ago||

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 4 hours ago|

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.

Aeolun 2 hours ago||

I think on mobile it’s natural to walk to the guy and tap on him. Not helped by the fact that the screen shows ‘tap’ over the highlighted tile, which does nothing. You need to walk and position the guy under your cursor, then press ‘act’.

The position yourself, then long press on ‘act’ to build when you can’t see where to put the building anymore is pretty awkward too. I’d expect to click to build, position it, then press confirm or reject or something.