Haemimont Games & Paradox announce 'Surviving Mars', a management strategy game

Instant buy. It's Paradox!

This is the sort of thing I'm into these days. Gonna keep an eye on it.

Looks really cool. Paradox have been good to penguins.
Only 6 months , 3 weeks and 2 days till 2018. :(

Haemimont Games are the developers of the Tropico series and Victor Vran.
I’m afraid I won’t enjoy it much if it is similar to Paradox games or Tropico 5.

I skipped on Victor Vran because I am not too eager to play games that force me to play a male character, at least not unless premade female characters become just as normal.

Paradox's grand strategy games are not for everyone, I concede that (I love them, though). But what's wrong with Tropico 5? It's nowhere as complex as the average Paradox game. I had fun with it, at least.

Haemimont Games are the developers of the Tropico series and Victor Vran.
I’m afraid I won’t enjoy it much if it is similar to Paradox games or Tropico 5.

I skipped on Victor Vran because I am not too eager to play games that force me to play a male character, at least not unless premade female characters become just as normal.

Sorry but what the hell? There are games where you need gender lock because of the story, Victor Vran is pretty much one of those. Ohh noo why do i have to play as female character in Tomb Raider? ...

thats just seriously stupid if you ask me. Why does the gender in games matter at all. If its designed this way its how you play it, if it has a choice to choose, then you choose what you want to play.

I skipped on Victor Vran because I am not too eager to play games that force me to play a male character, at least not unless premade female characters become just as normal.

Sorry but what the hell? There are games where you need gender lock because of the story, Victor Vran is pretty much one of those. Ohh noo why do i have to play as female character in Tomb Raider? ...

thats just seriously stupid if you ask me. Why does the gender in games matter at all. If its designed this way its how you play it, if it has a choice to choose, then you choose what you want to play.

You sound upset. People have preferences. People like to play games with leads they can identify with. And yeah, there have been complaints by dudes about games that have female leads, even though there still aren't that many of them.

I've only played a bit of Victor Vran, and honestly so far I haven't really come across much that really requires him to be this particular dude. He's a bit of a cipher, you could swap him out for pretty much any gruff, detached character and have very much the same game. Is there something later on that contradicts that?

Since it's not their own Paradox Studio who have some serious issues with Steam lock-in in all their recent games, do they plan to release it on GOG? Other games from Haemimont came out there (Victor Vran for example).


Last edited by Shmerl on 12 May 2017 at 4:59 pm UTC

no no, im not upset. but i find it really weird to skip games you potentially might like just because of character is this or that gender.

I skipped on Victor Vran because I am not too eager to play games that force me to play a male character, at least not unless premade female characters become just as normal.

As @Xpander was pointing out, how can you apply it to any defined story character? It's one thing if you have a generic character builder in a flexible RPG, but it's another thing if some story aspects are locked. Do you also refuse to play any adventure game, because they don't let you selecting the character? Games can be quite different in this aspect.


Last edited by Shmerl on 12 May 2017 at 5:10 pm UTC

This looks good and I like Haemimont's work. I wonder if this will be more serious or follow in the tradition of Tropico's humor?

This looks good and I like Haemimont's work. I wonder if this will be more serious or follow in the tradition of Tropico's humor?

Judging by the trailer, it looks more satirical than serious.

I skipped on Victor Vran because I am not too eager to play games that force me to play a male character, at least not unless premade female characters become just as normal.

As @Xpander was pointing out, how can you apply it to any defined story character? It's one thing if you have a generic character builder in a flexible RPG, but it's another thing if some story aspects are locked. Do you also refuse to play any adventure game, because they don't let you selecting the character? Games can be quite different in this aspect.

Victor Vran as a character is about as "defined" as a dead insect smear on a car windshield. And how does "story" figure in the multiplayer?

Either way, if someone says they don't like playing a game because of whatever, it's nobody's job to argue with them.

Victor Vran as a character is about as "defined" as a dead insect smear on a car windshield. And how does "story" figure in the multiplayer

That may be, I didn't play the game yet. If the story there doesn't have any meaning, then not providing a selection is indeed more questionable.

Either way, if someone says they don't like playing a game because of whatever, it's nobody's job to argue with them.

We aren't coming here to "do the job" of arguing. We are discussing the topic, no? I don't see any problem asking to explain someone's position.


Last edited by Shmerl on 12 May 2017 at 8:43 pm UTC

I'm definitely intrigued by the trailer. I'll be keeping an eye on this as it gets closer.

Since it's not their own Paradox Studio who have some serious issues with Steam lock-in in all their recent games, do they plan to release it on GOG? Other games from Haemimont came out there (Victor Vran for example).

Depends on how much they plan to update it I guess, since that's why internal Paradox games use Steam; with the frequent updates it'd be too much work trying to maintain multiple different versions of the game. I don't have any firsthand experience with Haemimont Games' games, though, so I couldn't guess.

If Paradox is involved I will buy it. Thats good enough for me.

Haemimont Games are the developers of the Tropico series and Victor Vran.
I’m afraid I won’t enjoy it much if it is similar to Paradox games or Tropico 5.

I skipped on Victor Vran because I am not too eager to play games that force me to play a male character, at least not unless premade female characters become just as normal.

Sorry but what the hell? There are games where you need gender lock because of the story, Victor Vran is pretty much one of those. Ohh noo why do i have to play as female character in Tomb Raider? ...

thats just seriously stupid if you ask me. Why does the gender in games matter at all. If its designed this way its how you play it, if it has a choice to choose, then you choose what you want to play.

Victor Vran isn't male because the story demands the lead character to be male. He's male because that's what his creators wanted him to be. It's hilarious that some people still think that 95% of all video game characters are male for no other reason than because the "story demands it". Give me Victor Vran's script and a pencil and I substitute his character with an equally believable female in less than 10 minutes. There is -zero- reason for this character to be gender-locked, except that most studios are still mentally stuck in the early 90s when girls didn't play video games.

Victor Vran isn't male because the story demands the lead character to be male. He's male because that's what his creators wanted him to be.

The story may not demand it, but writing a story without knowing your main character's gender (and sexual preferences where romance is concerned) is a far more complex task than writing for a single perspective. While it can be achieved reasonably well if you plan for it (e.g. Dragon Age), I can understand a studio not wanting to deal with the hassle of making every character interaction dependent on so many variables (does the NPC react differently to different genders? can this NPC be romanced by any gender? can your localization framework account for multiple possible genders in every sentence?). There's also the additional visual work of designing/animating an additional character model, which I presume can be a strain on very small studios. None of the foregoing is meant to defend male protagonists in particular, but I think it's an understandable choice to make a single, preset main character.

There's also simple artistic vision or personal preference involved in choosing what that preset is, which makes this an interesting problem that changes based on scale. If an individual studio feels like making their lead character male, why not? (And the same could apply to any work of fiction.) It's when you look at the industry as a whole that the statistical weight of that choice can become bothersome for some people. As far as I'm concerned, because I wouldn't blame a particular studio for picking either gender for their lead, it doesn't make sense to condemn the industry for it either, or to discriminate games based on it. But I seem to be an odd case in that I've never felt a need to relate to characters in fiction and I'm largely unconcerned by the gender, race, etc. of premade characters. Or maybe it's that I can empathize with anything presented as a character. Hm...

Anyway, I'm not arguing your preferences, just sharing my point of view. If you're tired of playing male characters in general, it makes perfect sense to avoid any given game where they're the only option.


Last edited by Salvatos on 13 May 2017 at 4:43 am UTC

This game looks like it has potential to be really great, but a lot of those we currently have aren't too great, so looking forward to see how this one turns out.

I love that Paradox supports Linux, but damn are they one of the worse offenders of DLC...

This should be fun if utterly unrealistic. Seems like it will be Tropico on Mars

Haemimont Games are the developers of the Tropico series and Victor Vran.
I’m afraid I won’t enjoy it much if it is similar to Paradox games or Tropico 5.

I skipped on Victor Vran because I am not too eager to play games that force me to play a male character, at least not unless premade female characters become just as normal.

Oh common, this isn't the 90s, female characters are quite common in games these days. Maybe it's not a 50/50 split but there are certainly a lot of games out there.