‘Deliver Us Mars’ Preview: Space-Age Puzzles Get Grounded

As I gaze across the rocky desert vista of Earth’s red neighbour, I spy a wall that leads down into the canyon below. I take my pair of pickaxes and descend slowly down what would otherwise be a sheer drop, edging closer to the remnants of a human-built, puzzle-filled base in the waiting gorge. Welcome to Deliver Us Mars.

See gameplay of Deliver Us Mars here

Sequel to KeokeN Interactive’s Deliver Us The Moon, this new title from the Dutch developer puts you in the role of Kathy Johannson, an astronaut who has crash-landed on the game’s titular orb. 

Playing a demo of Deliver Us Mars on PC at Gamescom 2022, it was immediately clear to me that things are different from the last game. While Moon was largely puzzles inside a space station with a few sections outside these relatively comfortable areas, Mars seems to focus quite heavily on traversing the planet’s harsh terrain.

Frontier Foundry

The aforementioned pickaxes are key to vertical mobility, but also for some puzzle sequences, such as when gripping a rotating wall as our hero is carried to a far platform. The problem is, this new movement mechanic isn’t really fun.

Granted I only played a short segment of the game, but the way in which Kathy scales walls with these tools never feels anything other than slow and janky. Such was my frustration with them that I took to falling and intermittently digging my pickaxes in, so as to speed things up. 

Frontier Foundry

When I got inside the base and the puzzle elements from the first game came back, I quickly started enjoying the game again. Deliver Us Mars serves up physics-based trials that require lateral thinking and focused investigation, making for some truly satisfying ‘eureka!’ moments. 

We’re still a way off the game’s release date of February 2, 2022, so I’m crossing my fingers that the outdoor sections of Deliver Us Mars are few and far between. Coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One and PC, I just hope all that red dust doesn’t get in the way of the game’s potential to sparkle.