Mars 2120: How a Veteran Indie Team Turned their 90s Dream into Martian Reality

For me, and I believe also for all gamers who find video games an opportunity to experience great adventures, discoveries and challenges, Mars has always been an ongoing source of fascination and mystery. Throughout history, many works of science fiction have placed the planet as the setting for epic adventures in books, films and, of course, video games.

And it’s precisely all of these references, spanning 40 years, since the core of our development team is comprised of 80s kids (I’m almost 50 myself!), that have set the tone, theme and genre for the game Mars 2120, out today.

In Mars 2120 you’ll face an adventure that tries to bring back the nostalgia of the action and science fiction films of the 80s and 90s, as well as a loving homage to the genre known as metroidvania, a mix of RPG elements, platforming and non-linear exploration. And nothing could be more appropriate than encouraging exploration in a game whose main theme is space exploration and the scientific curiosity that drives us as innate explorers towards incredible discoveries about our universe.

Every time you play a game, there is a rich story from the very first sketches to its final form. Mars 2120 was no different. With a very small team and dividing our time between our other projects and games, it took us almost five years to finish the game that we’d love you to experience, explore and feel like, again or for the first time, depending on your age, watching the movies that fascinated us when we were young, or playing the games of the genre that left you in front of the screen for hours trying to find that special item or power up to overcome a challenge that seemed insurmountable at first.

All that time may seem like a lot to you, but for us it also represented a giant step forward. For the first time, we faced a project four times bigger than any other before, as you do in a game that puts you in front of great challenges, while learning and experiencing a new development technology with which we were not completely unfamiliar.

Step into the shoes of Sergeant Anna “Thirteen” Charlotte and traverse scenarios reminiscent of the planet seen in “Total Recall”, feel the fear of facing gigantic enemies like Ellen Ripley did with the queen of the xenomorphs in “Alien”, throw punches like Arnold Schwarzenegger did in his classic action films (Yes! Mars 2120 has hand-to-hand combat!) and feel the abandonment and uncertainty of being lost in space like the character of Willis Davidge (Dennis Quaid) felt in the 1985 movie “Enemy Mine”.

I think you get the message here. We have taken everything that amused us when we were young and brought it back especially for you, in the form of a game. Because we want you to have fun with everything that sparked our desire to make entertainment our job – games! So I’m not exaggerating when I say Mars 2120 is a dream we have been building since we were kids.

The games industry is for everyone, you just have to jump in and make the game you want to play. And that’s exactly what we did and what you can do too! Now it’s time to put on your spacesuit, get your fists ready and go on a great adventure knowing that Mars 2120 is not just a game, it’s also a dream, a piece of our lives that we really want to share with you.

Are you ready to defeat terrifying enemies and discover all the secrets of the first human colony on Mars?

I dare you! And then come back and tell us how it went. Good luck and have a good adventure!