First Martians – Standalone Mission summary

In the base game of First Martians, you’ll find 6 stand alone missions. Each of them is very different, both in terms of story and difficulty level. We read on game forums that one of the most common questions is ‘What’s preferred order of missions to play?’ or ‘Which mission is the hardest and which is the easiest one?’

In this article, I’d like to address this questions.

Make Yourselves at Home

It’s tutorial mission. It is super simple, it is very straightforward, it is all about teaching you how the game works. You will build new facilities (learning how to build), you will fix them as soon as you can (learning about repairs, malfunctions, red status markers and that kind of fun) and then you will play with Research deck to reach 100% of Optimum Growth Conditions.
It’s tutorial. Easy, peasy, you will learn how to play. As simple as that.

Probe on the Loose

This one is the craziest one. I like it a lot because it is very thematic and fun. You guys lost contact with your remote probe. The probe has important samples, but you have no clue where it is. Each round players get random (yes, you read it right – random!) signals and they have to create a map and nail down the probe. This is an easy mission, no dreadful diseases, no serious malfunctions in the HUB, no other problems. Just missing probe. If you asked me, I say it is the first mission to play after tutorial one.

Local Materials

Based on the real scientific program – this mission will test your skills to build bricks on Mars. It’s research type mission and we did all we could to make players feel like in the fun chemistry classroom – you will gather minerals, you will mix them, you will look for 100% saturated substances, you will do real freaking science. The task is difficult, but once again, nothing dangerous happens. You have food, HUB is intact, no life put in danger. Just serious science. Very cool mission.

Guessing Game

Let’s talk about danger. Let’s talk about Guessing Game. In this mission crucial supply of food (!), and spare parts to repair the HUB (!!) landed in the wrong landing zone. Landing pod exploded when was approaching the region and got split into three parts, each landing in the different area. Nor you or NASA has any clue where food landed. You are in real danger.
This is the first mission ever designed for the First Martians, this is difficult one, with a lot of hard choices. On one hand, astronauts have zero supply of food and are starving, on the other, they have no spare parts to repair the HUB. They must choose and act quickly. This mission is quite the challenge.

Malnourished Plants

This is my favorite mission. It’s really hard, it is once again based on real science. It took me a lot of work to learn about minerals and possible plants planted on Martian soil, but the effect is quite entertaining. In this mission plants on the farm are dying, there is a lack of minerals and players must find as soon as possible regions on Mars with soil that has missing minerals and deliver it to farm. Each round plants are dying, each round the stress in HUB goes up with ridiculous speed, the tension starts super high in the first round and goes up then! It’s difficult, it’s tense, it’s my fav in the base game.

Landing

And here we are. Landing. From the very beginning, it was to be the hardest one. You just landed. Build HUB. Have fun dying. It was to be the most difficult, epic, challenging mission in the game. Nearly impossible to win.
What surprised me, was your feedback. I read on so many forums players saying: “I thought that landing is the first one because we just landed and we begin.”
No, it is not the first one. If you are not expert player, you will die in the round 2. If you played few times, you will die in round 3. If you are good, you will die in round 5…
Landing is the teaser, the trailer of the idea we have in mind for future development of the game – the famous open world mode in which you just manage the HUB and build new facilities and deal with ongoing progress. If you finish and win Landing, that means, you are ready and I must start preparing for you Open World mode…