PLAY

With space travel, as with all human endeavour, momentous achievement inevitably leads to the question of what’s next. Landing on the Moon may have been a giant leap for mankind, but it was only ever going to pave the way for more far-flung ambitions. Keoken clearly follows the same line of thought: after delivering us the Moon with its debut, its instinct is to go farther and bigger, this time targeting the red planet. Yet as much as the Dutch studio expands its scope, it does so without the taint of ego and hubris that accompanies certain real-world space pioneers. In Deliver Us Mars, it’s the personal stories that make the journey worthwhile.

The biggest evolution from its lunar predecessor, in fact, is the physical presence of people. Where the first game gave us a silent, helmeted cipher to unveil a story via holographic recordings, this trip centres on the characterful Kathy Johanson and her father, Isaac. Kathy is motivated by a yearning to reunite with the man who abandoned her as a child, after he and a rogue group jetted off from an ailing Earth on three ‘arks’ housing tech that may have saved the environment. When a communication reaches Earth from the arks on Mars years later, a mission is launched to retrieve the stolen gear, and trainee astronaut Kathy joins the team.