First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet is a worker placement game of survival on Mars.

This is a quick video overview.

First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet pits players against the hostile Martian environment and a whole host of new adventures and challenges. The immersion experience is further enhanced with an integrated app that maintains the balance and challenge throughout.

This is a brief overview of the rules then I give my thoughts on it.

0:13 – Overview
1:20 – Game Play
7:49 – Summary

First Martians: Adventures on the Red Planet Update July 2018

Talk about disappointing.

I REALLY liked Robinson Crusoe and this was supposed to be an improvement. But an awful rulebook ruined it completely. Overly complex rules didn’t help either.

I love the look, the theme and the integration with an app replacing the deck of cards but it just didn’t work.

Look how pretty it is. The plastic translucent cubes, the colours and everything makes it look great. It feels thematic.

But that rulebook…

The game is fairly complex… Not difficult, just lots of little things you need to know and remember. Most of it makes sense and is game led. So if THIS happens, then do THAT which means you do THE OTHER THING. If you know how to do the THIS part, the rest will fall into place.

Easy, once you understand it.

But the rulebook is HOW you understand it and it’s awful. It’s overly complicated and it’s almost as if the rulebook leaves it up to the app to teach part of the game. But the app seems to assume you learned how to play from the rulebook

I REALLY wanted to like this but it was made so frustrating that I just couldn’t deal with it and sold it. Didn’t even see any of the campaigns.

Jesta ThaRogue