Mars Attracts Early Access Review – A Fun Twist to the Genre

Mars Attracts is an intergalactic park management sim set in the iconic universe of Mars Attacks, developed by Outlier and launched on Steam early access on September 15, 2025. This is a brilliant blend of the cult-classic and comedic chaos of the 1996 film Mars Attacks! with a theme park management sim. It achieves this will with a tongue in cheek inversion where the Martians are the park owners, and humans are the exhibits.

Stepping into the big-brained boots of a Martian CEO, your core job is to turn a patch of alien dirt into a lucrative tourist destination. You begin with a mandatory money loan from your Martian superiors. This creates immediate financial pressure forcing you to prioritise revenue generation from day one. You then start an expedition to gain human specimens for your enclosure and can then do research on them for research points. As you progress, you will unlock new enclosures and biomes to create fuutre parks in.

The fundamentals of laying foundations and paths, building stalls, managing utilities, and hiring staff all hark back to those early memories of playing the Bullfrog’s Theme Park in 1994. The sense of responsibility quickly hits home, especially when you see piles of Martian puke and litter accumulating on the sidewalks, reminding you to frantically hire more janitors. At least I know with today’s computing power, too much puke isn’t going to crash the game like in the DOS days.

The twist is what makes the game special. Your patrons, the big-headed aliens, are entertained by human misery. Your revenue stream depends on donations, attractions and rides while abducting humans from different time periods (Ancient Romans, American Frontier, and more) via expeditions and placing them in themed human enclosures. You must balance the needs of your human displays by supplying them with food and water to prevent breakouts, with the Martian desire for high-octane entertainment.

This is where research and experimentation come in. Glass windows allow the alien patrons to peer in at the human activities as experiments are performed to gain research points, and the humans eating out of troughs. Completing these provides research points that unlock new rides, amenities, and upgrades. This creates an addictive and morally flexible gameplay loop: capture, display, experiment, and profit. An unhappy human might be a threat to your park’s pristine pathways, but a screaming human makes for excellent television for your Martian guests.

Despite being in early access, the game’s presentation is polished and runs smooth with mouse camera controls and zoom. The art style perfectly captures the retro sci-fi aesthetic, and the alien speech from overlords, initially written with “Ack ack” and then translated, reinforces the franchise’s signature tone. The interface is easy to grasp and control, though if I had a few nights between gaming sessions, it took me a little to click through the build and menu icons to get myself back on track.

So far, Mars Attracts is an excellent and highly engaging management sim game that is equal parts management puzzle, dark comedy, and a nostalgic tribute. The twist of humans being the attraction and you needing to keep the alien’s happy and entertained is a fresh and fun take on the genre that has spanned 30+ years. This is a must-play for fans of classic management sims looking for a twisted new challenge. More décor and biomes are coming in the coming months and into 2026 so definitely keep an eye on this one.

This review utilised a key provided by the developers and Mars Attracts is available now on Steam early access.

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