''Per Aspera'' is a

city-building game A city-building game, or town-building game, is a Video game genres, genre of simulation video game where players act as the overall planner and leader of a city or town, looking down on it from above, and being responsible for its growth and man ...

developed by Tlön Industries and published by

Raw Fury Raw Fury AB is a Swedish video game publisher, specialising in the publication of independent video game development, indie games, based in Stockholm. The company was founded in 2015 by Jonas Antonsson and Gordon Van Dyke. History The compan ...

for

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on December 3, 2020. The player takes the role of AMI, an artificial intelligence with the objective of terraforming Mars for human colonization.

Gameplay

The game features a branching nonlinear story and multiple endings.

Release

''Per Aspera'' was announced in June 2019 at the PC Gaming Show. An

expansion pack An expansion pack, expansion set, supplement, or simply expansion, is an addition to an existing role-playing game, tabletop game, video game, collectible card game or Miniature wargaming, miniature wargame. An expansion may introduce new rules ...

, ''Green Mars'', was released on October 21, 2021. A second expansion, ''Blue Mars'', was released on May 2, 2022. A third expansion, ''Home'', was released on January 23, 2023. The game was released on

Meta Quest 2 Quest 2 is a standalone virtual reality headset developed by Reality Labs, a division of Meta Platforms. It was unveiled on September 16, 2020, and released on October 13, 2020 as the Oculus Quest 2. It was then rebranded as the Meta Quest 2 ...

on February 9, 2023.

Reception

''Per Aspera'' received "generally favorable" reviews according to

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. Davide Pessach of Italian

Eurogamer ''Eurogamer'' is a British video game journalism website launched in 1999 alongside parent company Gamer Network. In 2008, it started in the formerly eponymous trade fair EGX (Eurogamer Expo until 2013) organised by its parent company. Fr ...

said that "''Per Aspera'' is a very interesting colony builder narrative game that has a stellar esthetic, a very engaging story and a super cast of actors. The gameplay is fluid, rewarding and rich of surprises and references to cool tech (both fictional and kinda realistic). If you like the genre and the setting you will have a blast." Jonathan Bolding of

PC Gamer ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games m ...

summarized: "''Per Aspera'''s novel adaptation of nonlinear narrative to fit a strategy game goes over surprisingly well. Combined with a novel terraforming mechanic, slick aesthetics, hard science chops, and classic genre gameplay, this one is definitely worth the time." Martynas Klimas of PC Invasion said that "''Per Aspera'' reaches for lofty heights, but I could never shake the impression that the difficulties I encountered were more because of the game breaking down rather than Mars being a hostile place. But who knows, patches do wonders these days." In 2021, the

Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) is a non-profit organization of video game industry professionals. It organizes the annual Design Innovate Communicate Entertain Summit, better known as D.I.C.E., which includes the presentation ...

nominated ''Per Aspera'' for Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year during the

24th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards The ''24th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards'' was the 24th edition of the D.I.C.E. Awards ("Design Innovate Communicate Entertain"), an annual awards event that honored the best games in the video game industry during 2020. The awards were arranged by the ...

References

External links

*{{official website, http://per-aspera.vg/
''Per Aspera''
at Tlön Industries 2020 video games City-building games Hard science fiction video games Indie games Meta Quest games Raw Fury games Single-player video games Fiction about terraforming Video games developed in Argentina Video games set on Mars Video games with Steam Workshop support Windows games