Surviving Mars is a city building simulator that was first released in 2018, with a few DLC packs coming the year after. Things went quiet after that, and once the next Surviving title Surviving the Aftermath released in beta, it seemed Surviving Mars was truly finished. However, much like the red planet itself these days, Surviving Mars is looking more lively than ever with a plethora of content recently announced.

The updates are coming courtesy of the new team in charge of Surviving Mars, Abstraction, which has taken over from Haemimont Games. The first batch of new content to be released will feature a tourism industry, coming on March 15, followed by additional DLC and expansions at some point during 2021. The tourism expansion will add customer ratings to the game, with higher ratings giving the player the ability to build hotels and amusement parks, similar to the way the rating system works in RollerCoaster Tycoon 3.

It is unclear what new elements the other planned updates will bring to the table and whether Abstraction will add the long hoped-for multiplayer mode to Surviving Mars, but at this point many fans are happy to be getting updates at all. For any gamers who haven’t given the space sim a try, now is the perfect time to do that.

Surviving Mars is currently free in the Epic Games Store until March 18, so any would-be astronauts should act quickly to take advantage of the deal and be ready to play when the tourism update drops. Regardless, with more than five million players, Surviving Mars is proving there’s life on the red planet after all.

Surviving Mars is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Source: ParadoxPlaza