Welcome to Mars 9 – Review

Welcome to Mars 9 is a short, story-driven sci-fi adventure from Sonomio Games. You wake up on a space station, orbiting Mars, with no recollection of how you got there. Throughout the 1-2 hour game, you will try to discover its dark secret, work through moral dilemmas, and discover 1 of 5 possible outcomes.

You are River; you meet BrAId, the artificial intelligence, who explains that you are on the space station with everything you could desire, and it is a place full of luxury. There is an anomaly that has occurred, simply referred to as The Event, and every satellite has been destroyed in the sky, except Mars 9.

Immediately, I am suspicious, and rightly so, it seems. Small details start to stand out; inconsistencies are noticeable; questions are not being answered. The people on board are not grateful to be alive, but more resigned to just going through the motions and living on board. There is a lot to unpack in the short game.

I am immediately suspicious of BrAId. They know too much and don’t tell me anything. When they sense I’m stressed, they direct me to a sauna/spa where I get locked in and almost die. Once I manage to escape, I’m informed that ‘someone’ tampered with the door…hmmmm. They also use ‘you will’ a lot, making things sound vaguely threatening even if the topic seems like it shouldn’t be.

How you choose to investigate and react will determine your outcome and the end of the game. Whether you find these endings good or bad is up to personal opinion, and it’s truthfully hard to talk about this game without spoiling things, as it’s so short.

Through its point-and-click gameplay, you will explore, interact with the people living on board, face moral dilemmas that challenge your perspective, solve environmental puzzles built into the exploration and discover the station’s deep, dark secret.