Mars is a special planet. It's one you can see with a basic telescope, could conceivably support a colony, and represents an incredible mystery. Who put the face in the Cydonia region of Mars, or are we all just collectively imagining it? Why are there strange bulges all over the southern hemisphere of the planet? How long ago did the obvious rivers throughout the surface of the planet dry up and where did the water go? Why does Mars have such a severe obliquity (how tilted the spin axis is, affecting the severity of seasons), and does that have to do with all of these other oddities? It's a planet shrouded in mystery, so when I saw the announcement for Horizon Journey, it immediately caught my attention. Developer Redivided Studios released two very ambitious videos with full-scale survival and colonization, complete with a multiplayer sandbox and enough mystery to keep you exploring the red planet.
So many invisible walls
I'll be frank — Horizon Journey has had a fairly rough launch. I ran into several issues with missing icons, showstopper bugs, and some stability issues. That happens. What happens after is what determines if you're looking at a game that can recover and deliver on its promise, or if this one is going to run out of oxygen. On one hand, a near-daily patch cadence clearly showcases that the team is working hard to address player concerns, but in its current state, Horizon Journey is a tough pill to swallow.
The game doesn't hold your hand from the second your feet touch the surface of the planet. You're given a short tutorial – gather a handful of materials to craft a battery for a nearby stranded rover. Using a handheld laser, you blast away at some rocks that are placed purposefully into segments to help the player learn. Picking up the resources, you head back to your ship and use a crafting station to cobble them into a makeshift power source. It then tells you to collect water from "storage condensate drain and prepare hydration supplies" when it actually means "Take raw water materials out of the storage box and craft a bottle of water". Trekking to the rover and installing the battery, it seems like the tutorial has reset, asking you for the battery crafting steps again. Putting a second battery into the rover then asks you to extract the computer from the ship, and then travel to a specific location on the map with all players in the rover.
More invisible walls
Heading out of the crater, the game asks you to then travel to a base. I can't rightly tell you where that base is, but having driven around for roughly two hours, I think I've visited just about every facility on the surface.
The team at Redivided Studio has used real NASA imagery to construct the surface of the Martian terrain. It's a stark, barren landscape, dotted with occasional mountains and a near-omnipresent presence of obscuring sandstorms. Unreal Engine 5 brings this to life, and many aspects of the game are gorgeous as a result. Interiors, lighting, the rover, other players — they all look fantastic. The game has the bones of a survival game, juggling oxygen, hunger, thirst, and scarcity. I know this as my dwindling supplies ultimately led to my death as I searched for any idea where to start my journey. Frankly, it shouldn't be this hard.
It looks like I can walk forward...but I can't. More invisible walls
Traveling around the Martian surface, I found several bases. Within lied boxes with supplies and little else. These modular stations ranged from single boxes to interconnected station hubs, though many of them have impassable and invisible walls preventing passage to some of the interiors. Gathering up research chips and materials, I headed back into the landscape and continued to search.
Throughout this preview, you've seen a lot of pictures of my rover upside down or me seemingly looking at various entrances and exits. Those are areas where I was stopped in my tracks, flung into the air, and otherwise stopped from proceeding. Invisible walls would fling my rover into the air, leaving it to rest on its hood. Hitting T on my keyboard put it back in motion, but there's only so much frustration you can put up with before it's time to pack it in and wait for more patches. That's where I am.
This game is very pretty and wonderfully detailed at times, and I want to know what's inside that door!
If you look at my game time, nearly every game I play for hundreds of hours falls in this exact category. I WANT to find out what's inside the hardened door I found leading into a mountain interior. I want to find out how to activate the giant antenna I found on a distant mountain top. I want to engage with the modular building system, electrical grid, synthesizers, crafting engines, and much more. I can see there's a great deal of work being put into this game. I want to bring my friends along for this Martian journey. I just wish the game would cooperate long enough for me to see it.
Despite the challenges I faced in this preview, I am still cautiously optimistic for Horizon Journey. Just know going in what you're in for — supporting the team's development efforts on what is likely a long journey.
Horizon Journey has just launched into Early Access and is available on Steam.
