Admittedly, Mars Attracts sounds a bit ridiculous on paper: build an alien amusement park on Mars, abduct humans from different time periods, and use them as both exhibits and test subjects to entertain Martian visitors. It’s a bizarre mix of dark humor and management simulation, and somehow, it works brilliantly. After about a dozen hours of playing, I’ve gone from shaking my head at the premise to losing an entire evening fine-tuning my human enclosures and researching new “experiments.” It’s messy in places, but there’s something with the early access of Mars Attracts that already feels addictive.
Welcome to the Park
Mars Attracts drops you into the role of a Martian overseer with a small patch of dusty Mars terrain. From there, you expand outward, plopping down pathways, food stalls, rides, and—most importantly—human enclosures. Unlike your average zoo sim, these aren’t lions or giraffes. Instead, you’ll be housing abducted humans pulled in through UFO raids on Earth. One of my first groups was a set of ancient Roman soldiers who had no idea why they were suddenly trapped in a glass dome while aliens gawked at them. A bit…cruel, yes, but admittedly fun as well.
The humans have their own needs: food, water, cleanliness, and socialization. Ignore them and things go sideways quickly. Too little attention, and they get sick, refuse to cooperate, or worse, break out of containment. Too much indulgence, and you risk slowing down the all-important experiments. That push and pull is where Mars Attracts finds its teeth in the genre. You’re always weighing whether to treat your humans as semi-respected exhibits or as disposable lab rats.
The Martian Loop
The rhythm of Mars Attracts settles in quickly. You start by sending UFO expeditions down to Earth, targeting different eras to bring back humans and bits of cultural detritus. It’s a lottery each time: sometimes you’ll return with a cluster of medieval peasants, other times with a cowboy posse or even Victorian townsfolk. These abductees become the backbone of your park, and building habitats to keep them (relatively) content is as important as dazzling the Martian tourists who come to watch.
Once your humans are secured, the next stage is experimentation. Each enclosure can be outfitted with bizarre Martian contraptions that probe, stretch, or prod your captives in the name of science. These experiments generate research points in disciplines like biology or chemistry, and those points are the lifeblood of progression. Unlocking new rides, attractions, and facility upgrades all depend on the knowledge squeezed out of the terrified masses. It’s a darkly comic system, and while the animations are intentionally absurd, the stakes are real: if research stalls, so does the entire park.
Balancing the needs of two very different audiences is where the game’s tension lies. The Martians visiting your park demand spectacle, and their satisfaction drives your income. The humans, meanwhile, demand survival, and mismanaging them too severely leads to sickness, escape attempts, or outright chaos. In one session, I let the experiments run too aggressively on a group of cowboys, only to have them break free, topple a food stall, and scatter horrified aliens. Watching my security team scramble to mop up the mess was both hilarious and a sobering reminder of how fragile my carefully built machine really was. It’s this cycle of abduct, contain, experiment, and entertain that defines Mars Attracts, and while it can drift into repetition, the underlying systems are robust enough to keep you invested.
The Ups and Downs
Perhaps the biggest shocker is how much personality the game actually has, even in EA. The art direction leans into pulpy sci-fi—bright neon colors, exaggerated designs, and a clear nod to the old Mars Attacks! trading cards. The tone is tongue-in-cheek but never completely throws away the simulation side. You laugh at the absurdity, but you also sweat the details of managing staff schedules and balancing budgets.
The first time I had a breakout, it was chaos. A group of cowboys burst out of their dome, trashed a snack stand, and sent Martian tourists fleeing. Security scrambled to contain them, and I realized how fragile my setup was. That kind of emergent disaster is where the game shines. It forces you to actually think about layout and staff efficiency, not just plop down enclosures and hope for the best.
That said, the Early Access state does show at times. Staff AI is flaky at best, sometimes ignoring jobs or getting stuck in loops. The UI can be clunky, especially when you’re trying to assign specific scientists to machines. And a few objectives felt grindy, repeating the same “collect X humans” pattern without much variation. I also wish there were more theming in some of the facilities; too many of the rides and shops feel generic compared to the imaginative human exhibits.
A Progression Problem
Where Mars Attracts stumbles most is in its sense of continuity. Each new map wipes your research progress clean, forcing you to rebuild the same tech tree from scratch. The logic is understandable as you’re building fresh parks in different locations. But after investing hours unlocking advanced experiments and elaborate facilities, it feels deflating to start over at square one. In my case, I had just unlocked a set of powerful biology upgrades when the campaign pushed me to a new site. Watching all that vanish made the transition feel less like growth and more like punishment.
What’s missing is a sense of legacy. Carrying over even partial research, or rewarding players with persistent perks for finishing a park, would help stitch the campaign into something that feels like a continuous arc. Right now, it risks burning out players who don’t want to grind the same early unlocks repeatedly. For a management sim that thrives on momentum, that reset button hits harder than it should.
But It Still Works
Despite those issues, Mars Attracts works because it commits to its absurd premise while building it on the bones of a competent management sim. The balance between cruelty and care of keeping humans just comfortable enough to keep producing knowledge while wringing them for research is unlike anything else I’ve played in the crowded genre. It constantly asks you to walk a moral tightrope, even as you chuckle at the ridiculousness of it all. The fact that I found myself genuinely worried about overcrowding an enclosure, only to gleefully flip on a new experiment moments later, says a lot about how cleverly the systems feed into each other.
There’s also a charm to the unpredictability. Every abduction feels like rolling dice, and every escape is a miniature disaster story waiting to happen. It creates the kind of “one more turn” mentality usually reserved for strategy games. Even when I was frustrated with bugs or grind, I kept pushing forward, because I wanted to see what new experiment would unlock or which poor souls I’d snatch up next. That underlying loop is strong enough to survive its Early Access blemishes, and if the developers can build on it, Mars Attracts has the potential to be something genuinely special.
Ack Ack
Mars Attracts is weird, a tad rough around the edges, and absolutely worth watching as it progresses through EA. As it stands now, it’s a compelling management sim with a unique hook that sets it apart from the usual zoo or theme park builder. The humor won me over, and the core gameplay loop is strong enough to keep me engaged for hours. But the thin soundtrack, occasional bugs, and grindy objectives with a lack of true progression or continuity remind you this is still a work in progress.
If you’re comfortable with Early Access quirks and you like your sims with a heavy dose of dark comedy, you’ll probably have as much fun as I did. Just don’t get too attached to your Romans, because chances are they’re about to be strapped into a Martian centrifuge.
