After taking us to the moon with Deliver Us The Moonthe creators of KeoKeN Interactive said to themselves that a short trip to the neighboring planet would do us the greatest good. Deliver Us Mars is not just a sequel with a new environment. The developers have obviously taken advantage of this desert landscape to dig into the atypical experience of their first title. The result is inevitably intriguing, but we would be lying if we told you that we did not finish this first preview by remaining unsatisfied.
Deliver Us Mars is shaping up to be a good sequel.
Yet we knew what we were getting into when taking a one-way trip to Mars. Like its predecessor, Deliver Us Mars is an adventure game that relies heavily on its storytelling. A rather depressing story that does not fail to remind us of topical issues. In short, all of Earth’s resources have been depleted bringing humanity to the brink of extinction. It is in this gratifying context that what remains of our species sends Kathy Johanson on Mars, our avatar and humanity’s last hope. His mission: to recover the ships ARCHESnecessary for our survival, stolen by the organization Outward. We would be unable to tell you more about it. Already because spoiler the story would amount to ruining the main interest of the title, but also because KeoKeN especially insisted on the playability of his new title.
Unsurprisingly, Deliver Us Mars takes up the scheme of its ancestor. Puzzles and exploration follow each other in perfect harmony. Despite the presence of this mysterious organization Outward, Kathy doesn’t look like she’s gone on a punitive mission. To tell the truth, she only took her intellect, a pair of ice axes and a small drone by the name ofAyla. At any time it is possible to take control of this robot to infiltrate small ducts, recover objects or simply gain height and go to places where Kathy is unable to go. Ayla fits perfectly into this gameplay which forces us to rack our brains. The little we were able to do during the preview has also allowed us to see that the tests are quite complex, even sometimes opaque, but it is not impossible that our puzzle skills are blunted.
On the other hand, we were much more receptive with regard to climbing, the real novelty of Deliver Us Mars. Making this feature a spearhead is a daring bet on the part of KeokeN, but it must be said that the studio has negotiated this shift magnificently. The maneuverability is very pleasant, for example. When Kathy clings to a wall with her ice axes, each one becomes individually controllable with the touch of a button (or a trigger if you’re playing on console). Climbing then consists of linking the movements in a synchronized way: while one ice ax is planted, you have to move the other to find your next hold and so on, all this while being careful not to plant your tool anywhere . Very quickly there is an aftertaste of rhythm game that some party game would not deny. Rather refreshing as a concept, we nevertheless wondered if the absence of challenge would not harm our adventure in the long term. To believe that KeokeN heard us, as collapsing platforms and time-limited climbing sequences are quick to appear. This new part of gameplay is decidedly surprising, but above all we must say that it blends perfectly with the rest of the experience in addition to adding a little spice to what some might consider too bland.
So everything is fine in the best of worlds? On the whole yes, but we allow ourselves to be a little finicky. Because if we see that Deliver Us Mars benefited from greater means than its predecessor (in particular thanks to the technical gap which separates them), we would have liked to see the title seduce us with more artifices. Despite a sequence driving a rover, Deliver Us Mars, for example, does not seem to have the ambition to make us visit the red planet, something that would have been much appreciated. Maybe we should expect a means of transport to go from point A to point B, but it seems unlikely to us that we can visit Mars at our leisure. A little contemplation wouldn’t have hurt us though. Hopefully that was just a shortcoming in our preview, thought around the puzzles and the platform, otherwise the slightly open levels that the game claims will remain mirages. We’d be hard on the game saying these are genuine flaws, but as we explained above, these are the kinds of things that leave us with a little taste of coming back to them. This is exactly what we intend to do to find out if the title has more in the belly, as we hope.
Our first impressions: Good!
Deliver Us Mars promises to be a good sequel and a more than enterprising adventure game. The fact that the developers have rolled up their sleeves to come up with something really new and successful leaves us in awe. These new phases of climbing are moreover quite well thought out to give challenge as well as a little spice to an adventure very anchored in the narration. Only here we are frustrated. Frustrated to see Deliver Us Mars try things that make it not much of a remarkable work, but which for the moment make us especially question ourselves as to the harmony of all that we have seen. The question is no longer whether this is an easy sequel for KeokeNbut rather whether his game will be good or excellent.
