Mars Horizon
Fair · Strategy · 2020
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $19.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Length
- 15.3h
- Value
- $1.31/hr
- Reviews
- 84% positive
Watch this gameOne alert when it is worth buying.
Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, GeForce GT 740 (2048 MB) / Radeon HD 5770 (1024 MB) or equivalent, 4 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
Lead a major space agency as you guide humanity to Mars in this strategy simulation game. Construct a base, design and build rockets, conduct missions throughout the Solar System, and write your own history of Space exploration. Created with support from the European Space Agency.
What drives the score
How to read this
Grades run S to D, read from the buyer's side. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
The value story
December 2024 is where it bottomed out, at $4.99. It has been discounted 45 times in the 6 years tracked here, typically at 50 percent off, with about 6 weeks between sales.
On value it sits in the top 8 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 91 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 87 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Kerbal Space Program ($9.99, scores 95) beats it on value, while it beats The Last Starship ($11.99, scores 31).
71 from critics against 84 percent from players, and the player number comes from people who own the game.
Steam's global achievement data puts about 12 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. On a 15.3-hour game, the hours short of it still count in its price per hour. This site sampled 722 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 6 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written November 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 67 percent of the 157 reviews written there were positive, against 84 percent overall, and those are 6 percent of everything written about it.
The main story runs 15.3 hours. Doing everything runs 64, 4.2 times as long.
The drop-off
86% start to 12% finishA normal fall-off for a game this long. Steam global achievements
Players
12 players online when we last checked, on Oct 1, 00:48 UTC.
Player counts from the Steam Web API.
What players say
If KSP was a management sim instead of flight/orbit sim, this would be it. I thought I would miss the flight and orbital mechanics more than I did playing this game. This game does a great job of putting you at the entry point of the space race and all the milestones seem to hit in a reasonable time frame. No achieving low orbit in 1958 then landing someone on the moon in 2006. The pacing is perfect, if not a little...
Look, if you're wondering wether you'll enjoy it or not, play the demo, and just know that it's basically just more of that. The major con of this game is that the gameplay does start to feel a bit tedius around the half way mark. Although there is an option to have auto complete, it's almost always a better idea to do it yourself to get the extra resources, which is important if you're playing to win. But other...
Great fun, until I got a mathematically impossible objective for my final mission.
Steam reviews, mixed to match its Steam ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
Mars Horizon scores 60/100 on the BANG Score (fair value) as of Oct 2, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/765810/mars-horizonReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 26, price as of Oct 1.
A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.