Surviving Mars’ development resuming after a two-year break surprised most of us. After the release of the Green Planet expansion – which focused on terraforming Mars – developer Haemimont Games moved on to work on a new title with Frontier Developments, while the series shifted to a post-apocalyptic setting with Surviving the Aftermath, developed by Iceflake Studios.
Paradox Interactive announced earlier this year that new content was coming for Surviving Mars, now handled by Dutch studio Abstraction and, courtesy of the company’s Q1 2021 financial report, we now know that the publisher believes Surviving Mars capable of joining its portfolio of core games.
“In recent years, the core games have consisted of Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, Stellaris, Hearts of Iron and Cities: Skylines. We also have several franchises in our portfolio of management and strategy games that have great opportunities to establish themselves as core games, such as Surviving Mars, Age of Wonders, and Prison Architect,” reads the interim report.
“At the other end of our portfolio, we have not-yet-released games based on new brands that are partly outside our current core areas. The development of these games is often associated with higher risk, but when they become successful, they attract new players and expand our core areas. For us, it is therefore important to have a good balance between building on our existing core games with new content and sequels,and at the same time growing the portfolio with new games.”
The publisher has shifted “a larger part of our investments” towards its strategy and management titles, which was one of the reasons behind Surviving Mars’ development resuming. Even without new content, the game still retained a healthy player base, which likely also contributed to the decision.
“Surviving Mars recently reached five million unique players and we see great opportunities for the game to establish itself as part of our core portfolio,” the publisher said. Two unannounced games, developed by external studios, have been canceled as a result of this change of focus.
Surviving Mars is slated to receive a new expansion at some point later this year. With a bit of luck, we could hear more about it during PDXCON Remixed, which takes place between May 21 and May 23.
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