I briefly thought of writing this article as a farewell to Deliver Us Mars, a indie sequel to the game Deliver Us The Moon. The game is rough, some gameplay choices were just not hitting for me. But, I ended up seeing the game through to the end. So now I get to review a game that didn’t quite connect with me.

Why? Because I started this site to try and write more positively about gaming compared to the discourse I see online from fans of this form of media. I wanted to add some thoughtful discussions to the discourse. Instead of just saying a game is bad, explain why and maybe highlight positive parts of games that might be missing some polish. Not every game is made by a AAA studio with huge budget and veterans at the helm. But, for the most part, most games out there were made by some people doing their best and who wanted to put out a project that someone, somewhere, would like.

So I want to write about where this game doesn’t work and where it shines and I’ll be honest, I don’t want to feed negativity by spending too much time on what doesn’t work, the people that made this game didn’t set out to make a bad game and I can see that.

Let’s get the negative out of the way. I’ll start by saying I’m not a huge fan of the character design. By this, I mean that some hair textures look off and aside from the main character, faces leave a lot to be desired. I will say the first game got around this by having everyone in space suits, with helmets on. So could be their first time having to do distinct character designs. Another issue was a set of puzzles that involve a hologram circle with segments cut out. You need to move yourself around the circle to get all the pieces to reconnect and it just was not clear how it was supposed to work. The first time I did the puzzle, I actually had to quit, because I just couldn’t figure out what the game wanted me to do. I will say that later on, I did get the hang of it, but I think one thing that hampered the first puzzle was that it was in a large room, where your character is floating in zero gravity. Once I was back on solid ground and these puzzles were contained to much smaller rooms, they got easier.

The last thing I’ll say in this section is regarding animations. I get that animations are hard to do and I could tell they didn’t do motion capture for their character movements. Which is totally fair, that has to be pretty expensive and I figure that having to do this all manually had to be hard. It’s just moving around the world at times felt cumbersome and climbing felt very stiff. At times it felt that animations were getting in the way of navigating the world or the few platforming sections.

The one thing that pulled me through the game was the story. It wasn’t a huge sprawling story, but rather a small one centered around a family. I definitely had some struggles here as well, but to discuss it, I’ll have to just fully spoil the game. What I liked about the story, is maybe not what the developers intended, but you can’t always pick how someone interprets your content. So with that said, let’s get into it.

So you play as Kathy, a young woman who was essentially trained from a young age to be an astronaut. Your father, Isaac, is a brilliant scientist who helped create a lot of the technologies that are Earth’s last hope at survival. Isaac is portrayed as a selfless man that wants to save humanity and laments what humanity has done to Earth. You also have your sister Claire who through her own will and perseverance follows in your father’s footsteps and it’s important to stress how much she just kind of did her own thing, compared to you, who were thrust into it. You also have a mother, but they don’t get a lot of screen time, other than to show her selflessly supporting her husband. This family dynamic was supposed to be portrayed as the idyllic, maybe eccentric, family. But the cracks eventually start to show. There’s an odd dynamic where Isaac is hyper focused on Kathy, teaching her to rock climb at a young age and having her do some diving to explore submerged space stations. Claire objects to all this, after your mom passes during a sandstorm, Claire takes over care as your father isn’t around, always helping on some project that needs his expertise. He’s portrayed as a man married to his work, but that’s not how I took it. I saw him at this stage as a man that liked to be needed, that was thinking he was doing it for his whole family, when over the course of the story, that’s just not true. He’s really only doing it for Kathy, in a heated argument with Claire, he states he has to get Kathy off Earth and to the Moon to save her, she’s his daughter and she has to be okay. Ignoring that he’s having this heated argument, with his other daughter, showing Cathy where she stands.

Eventually, you do end up on the Moon and your dad, along with other scientists try to steal these Arks, huge spaceships that are the key to humanity’s survival, and take them to Mars. He attacks some fellow astronauts and works to take you from Claire, to the red planet. Eventually you two get separated and he is forced to leave you behind. Years later, you’re back on Earth, going through the motions of ensuring only those with the wealth are getting the dwindling electricity you can provide. Your team receives a message from Mars, from your father and you’re able to decrypt it and it’s him calling out for you, specifically.

What I think drove me to go through this game was wondering if they could land the execution on Kathy realizing that her father isn’t the hero she always envisioned. You start your mission to Mars with your sister, who is disillusioned with your father after years of trying to protect you and knowing that he did not care for her the same way he cared for you. Sarah, a fellow astronaut who was attacked by your father when he was fleeing the moon and her husband who serves as the only true neutral party, but still has reservations about a man that abandoned humanity. Kathy is portrayed as naive, desperate to see her father and feeling like if he could just explain himself, it would all be okay. She doesn’t ever really commit to arresting him and his fellow scientists and you’re left wondering up until the last moment if she’s going to let him have a free pass on his actions. Which worried me, I didn’t want it to be a happy ending. Because the more you find out about Isaac, the more you’re desperately hoping he faces some consequences.

Going through the hologram puzzles, you piece together the start of this new colony and its collapse, Isaac is typically at the center of each flashpoint. You start by learning that there was a portion of scientists taken against their will to Mars and that Isaac was onboard with that plan. That immediately changes the notion that all these scientists were traitors, some were taken against their will. Over time, you see Isaac try to play both sides of the conflict, trying to appease those in charge and trying to encourage those taken to Mars by force. I think the game wanted me to see this as Isaac trying to keep the peace, but I saw him as a coward. It felt more like he was trying to appease both sides, because he didn’t want to upset either and I honestly think he inadvertently helped push the whole colony to collapse. You have the leader of the colony, who was the sole survivor of another attempt to save humanity and their chief medical officer, who was brought to Mars against her will. Isaac’s inaction and inability to pick a side made both sides feel like he was in their corner. Each conversation you come across when he talks to either side shows him trying to defend the other side or he shuts down, becoming complacent to the worst tendencies of both groups. It’s not until the very end of these conversations that you see him finally make a choice and it’s to kill both groups, something that could have been avoided if he stood up for his own beliefs.

This all culminates in Kathy finally reaching her dad and you realize that the game is finally on the same page as you. This man is selfish and simply doesn’t realize his mistakes or the full damage he’s caused. He walks you through his actions as being inevitable, that there was nothing he could do, which Kathy knows not to be true. But also, you spend the whole time thinking he sent out a distress signal asking for rescue and that makes sense with what you’ve seen. One of the major spaceships was damaged in the chaos of the power struggle, lots of people died. But your dad actually sent out the signal asking for you to join him, he missed you and no one that survived the power struggle wants to go back to Earth. They know they’d be arrested for what the did and they’re happy using these tools that could have saved Earth for themselves.The problem at the core of this group, even when they first arrived on Mars, is that they felt that they could bypass the worst parts of humanity, that if these tools stayed on Earth there would be conflicts still over resources or only the wealthiest would be allowed access to them. But we see similar conflicts arise among the scientists and yet even after everything, Isaac feels that him and his fellow survivors are the only ones who can use these tools responsibly. Once Kathy hears this, the game does show that she is unnerved by all of it. The idea that her father wanted her to join him on Mars makes no sense, it might have been a desperate plea from a lonely man, but he doesn’t question it once she arrives. He even makes a wooden replica of Kathy’s favorite teddy bear, not willing to accept that she’s grown. That part actually was well done, because the whole game leans into the toy whenever there’s a flashback. She always has it or is always looking for it as a child, but once she sees the replica from her dad, it’s the last thing she wants.

But the final bit of growth that I was happy to see is how Kathy treats these Ark ships. She knows it’s not right that these scientists made a decision for all of humanity, no matter how they try to explain it, it’s just selfish. So she defies her father, the person she spends the whole game looking for, saying she’s taking these tools back to Earth. Here you see Isaac finally crumble, fully. He says that they are the best stewards for these tools and that Kathy can’t leave him just after she’s arrived and that he can’t go back to Earth. In the end, he does go back with Kathy, but only because he betrayed the trust of the surviving scientist. Again, to avoid conflict, he kept things secret and once it was all revealed, he runs away. I wish the ending was a complete ending, in the final moments they leave a lot of seeds of what would be the next game in the series. I hope they can revisit it, learn from this game and maybe drive back the scope of the next entry. Figure out what worked in this game and what didn’t, lean into what did work, see where you can improve on what didn’t. Not every sequel needs to be bigger than the last, this game shows how that can go wrong. I’m glad there was still a beating heart at the core of the game. Maybe I didn’t interpret the story the way the developers intended, but at least I could see what they were going for.