It's not delivery, it's Deliver Us Mars! No, not Mars bars, though they're good too. We call it a Milky Way in the US because we're inclusive. The nougat, caramel, and chocolate are delightful. Sometimes you don't really want a Snickers bar, but you also don't want a full-on nougat experience like a 3 Musketeers bar. THAT is where a Mars bar hits. Or if you've gotten Halloween candy, you'll usually have some from a multi-pack of minis.

Oh, I'm supposed to be talking about the game here. Let's get on with it.

Adventure, Not Action

I read that this was an "action-adventure" game before playing it. There isn't really action as such. It's an adventure game that involves solving (relatively simple) puzzles and doing some light platforming. Action implies there's going to be some intense stuff going down that you'll either be FIGHTING or actively dodging/avoiding. 

Story

This game is a story-driven game at its core. The fact that it's a game is probably due more to the fact that its creators aren't film makers. It feels very theatrical in its execution. I mean this in a good way - you really do feel like you're part of a movie, guiding your character along its pre-defined path to reveal more of the story.

And while the story is about Mars and space more generally, it's also a story of humankind and their drive to wipe each other out for some reason. It's a story of a woman and her relationship with her family. It's a story of hope, betrayal, and sadness. There's a lot of depth to it.

Part of that can be chalked up to great voice acting, particularly by Kathy's voice actor (and face model, apparently) Ellise Chappell. 

The other voice acting was pretty good overall, though there were definitely a few shakier bits. The main cast was pretty well "on" the whole time, delivering us emotion (YOU GET IT?). 

Graphics

The environments in this game are really quite good, helping you feel immersed in the game. There's an early sequence where you take off from earth in a rocket and you are helping to control things as it goes up. You slowly breach the upper atmosphere before fully being in space and as you go and rotate around earth, you get to watch it through the observation deck. It's pretty cool. No cutscenes there, just pure gameplay. I enjoy that kind of stuff. 

The bleak earth future was pretty well laid out, though there were some odd clipping issues with leaves at times and some of the battered window areas looked a little off. The spaceships were probably the most consistently well done, though it's a limited set of textures and models that they had to deal with. The lighting was fantastic throughout those areas. Mars is also pretty awesome, especially for those of us who grew up with a fascination of going there. It's cool to be able to see what it could be in the future, both in how desolate it is and in how dangerous it can naturally be. You want some dust storms? YOU GOT EM, BUD.

Character models are very hit or miss. They feel like they spent the least time on them, but maybe they're the most difficult to create. I genuinely don't know, so I'm not going to put too much on them about it. The fact is that this is a small studio and they put out a really great game overall. I can deal with some weird hair textures, some eyelids that look oddly glossy, or even some goofy child-with-face-of-adult stuff (though that did annoy me). 

Gameplay

Gameplay in Deliver Us Mars involves jumping across platforms, looking around for hidden objects, "decrypting" holograms by moving your little assistant robot around, solving puzzles with lasers, and occasionally (though frustratingly at times) using ice picks to climb up/down/across walls. 

Let's start with the platforming since it's the base of what you'll be doing outside of walking around. Jumping is kind of "off." You float more than you probably should, and due to hit boxes that are a bit loosey-goosey at times, you're going to get stuck in weird positions more often than you'd like. If the game could use polishing, THIS would be the biggest area. There were more times than I'd like to admit that I was stuck inside a mountain briefly, or moved into the middle of a ship's hull before snapping back to where I should be. There were also a handful of times where the nebulous hit boxes made me appear to be floating while walking rather than actually being on the ground. Out of the 8 hours I played this game, it probably only happened for 20-30 minutes total, but it's long enough that it's jarring and pulls you out of the game.

The "hidden object" finding is pretty easy unless you're looking for all collectibles. I am not a completionist, so things like the NASA rovers went mostly undiscovered by me (I did see them but I didn't interact to get anything for it). For story-driven pieces, it's usually pretty obvious what you need to look at, although there was one particular part while looking at a giant water tank that I couldn't find the last of 4 points of interest to move the story along. It took me way too long. I get why they put it into the game, it gives you some interactivity and lets you explore a bit to find things like comic books and texting devices, adding a bit of life to the story. But personally, I don't want to jump through hoops when I'm trying to move the story along.

Speaking of jumping through hoops, I'll briefly touch on the "decrypting" that you will have no choice but to do in many areas to move the story on. The problem comes with how many times you have to do it. There are quite a few holograms throughout, and usually you'll have to do 2-3 decryptions. It gets annoying, especially when other parts of the game have you "decrypt" things by telling your robot to do it and that's that. Maybe there should be an option for it to keep it less tedious. I think it would've been fine to have 1 decryption round per hologram. 

The laser puzzles are such a large part of the game that it's really the second biggest piece of gameplay that you'll have behind platforming. Generally they're not very difficult to solve, but they can be a bit annoying. I'm thinking of one in particular that had multiple levels and use of the robot to move splitters around. Initially I thought they were pretty interesting, but they get old when that's the only major interaction you're doing.

Climbing is probably the worst part of the gameplay, though. It's not really difficult, but it's SLOW. And near the end, you're going to be doing a lot of it at once. I distinctly remember moving the camera to see where I had to go and saying "ugh why" to myself. A little bit here and there spruces up the platforming, but they overdid it in chapters 8 and 9.

Holograms

I already complained about HOW you view them, but this is another point of the game that I found odd. Once you decrypt them and play them back, it shows you, in the same room as you, very "low res" versions of past events. The people appear to be filled with a sort of TV static. I wish they would've used real models and put some sort of filter over the screen so you could easily distinguish between current reality and flashback. 

That issue aside, the holograms reveal all of the backstory to what is going on. Why did this happen? Who made this decision? What is going on!? All of it is in the holograms. I liked that aspect, it's an interesting way to get some exposition without having someone retell it in some sort of cutaway. Although if you think about it too much, you'll start wondering how the holograms even work in the game universe to begin with. Why are they there in the first place? It seems.. odd.

Controls

You can use the keyboard and mouse, but I found it more difficult and sort of clunky. I switched pretty much immediately to a controller. There are times in the game where you're trying to switch controls in the spaceship to do things like turn on thrusters or change oxygen levels. That's probably much easier to do with the kbm. 

This sort of combines with what I said about platforming, but a lot of the movement is too gummy. When you move, there's too much "floatiness" that goes with it. Obviously that's expected in a zero-g environment (which has a much different feeling with controls), but walking around on Mars or Earth shouldn't feel like my character weighs 20 pounds. 

The zero-g controls are interesting because you have a mix of regular movements and then you have "roll" movements. It makes sense when you're in space and have to move between corridors that may or may not look "upright" when you enter, but it also makes movement a bit clunky at times when you're trying to be precise. It can be frustrating, though there isn't any real rush on getting things done.

Is It Worth Buying?

At the current price, probably not. The game lasts about 8 hours, so you'll have to do your own mental math on whether it's worth that or not. However, I got this bad boy for free on Epic Games, so it was definitely worth it for me.

The fact is that the story is so engaging that you're not going to care that it has some clunky character models or gummy controls. They're garnish on an otherwise delightful dish. The frustration they bring is minimal in comparison to the richness of the story and the quality of the voice cast. Like I said, I felt like I was part of a movie and I really enjoyed all of it. 

The problem with this type of game is that it suffers on replay because you know what's going to happen. It might be worth going back to see how people react or check their facial expressions during different discussions, but since I know what happens, I don't see myself going back. I would watch it as a cutscene type of movie again, for sure. It would be a great candidate for a TV series that starts with the Deliver Us The Moon story and moves into this one. The ending also left it open for another chapter. I guess we'll see how sales go on this one. The studio is small from what I understand, so it won't be years before we see another one if we ever do.