Lead your space agency in The Search for Life in this authentic strategy simulation game. Investigate the solar system and collect evidence of life. Manage base building, rocket designing, launches, staff, and mission planning to Mars and beyond, leading the way in the future of space exploration.

Search for evidence across the solar system to prove there’s life on other planets. Manage your staff, build your bases, design and launch rockets, and plan missions. You’ll be writing a new space history every time you play.

Following on from Mars Horizon where you were able to re-write history, now you’re going to be making history. Will you be the first to find evidence of life out there?

From the comfort of Mission Control, you’ll guide your agency through the solar system to look for signs of life. Gather evidence of fossils, microbes, unusual atmospheres, minerals, stromatolites, molecular structures, energy disequilibrium, and more. Each time you play, the places you find evidence will be different, keeping you on your toes for each playthrough!

In Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life you’ll be writing history that hasn’t happened yet. Lead the future of space travel with your team, split into Science, Engineering, and Lead. Assemble these experts as a team, or have them work across their specific areas: you decide the best way to achieve your objectives. Which directive should you follow next? Where should your team be focusing their specific areas of Leadership, Engineering, or Science? Should they come together to work on one project that needs support?

You’ll make key decisions as the head of Mission Control. Important story moments will affect your relationship with other agencies: helping them with research or refusing their requests can lead to very different outcomes. Space exploration is full of unexpected challenges. Will your rocket explode on its first flight? Or maybe a woodpecker ruins the launch for one of your biggest missions? Each playthrough will give you different scenarios that could throw off your course of history in the making!

Choose which agency to play as or create your own. You’ll decide which country your agency is based in, as well as which unique advantages your agency has! Compete or cooperate with rival agencies who are also searching for life. Customise your flag, customise your vehicles, and customise your staff with our amazing, in-depth, inclusive character editor. You’ll be able to customise their skin, hair, face, jumpsuit, body type, and prosthetics.

“At Auroch Digital we pride ourselves on making authentic, entertaining experiences,” says studio director Tomas Rawlings (He/Him/His). “We’re working closely with the world’s leading space experts to accurately portray the pioneering science used to seek life within the Solar System. Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life launches players to the forefront of human endeavour and hands them the freedom to build an agency of their choosing, but every facet of every feature in the game is underpinned by meticulous research.” 

Ed Blincoe (He/Him/His), Secret Mode’s Vice President of Publishing, says: “Two years ago this week, Secret Mode was founded on a pledge to publish great games not just from external indie studios, but from Sumo Group’s award-winning development teams. As we begin our third year of operations, we are working closer than ever with our internal studios. The vision and quality of Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life by the immeasurably talented Auroch Digital team blew us away. Its announcement is the perfect way to underline Secret Mode’s commitment to publishing exceptional titles from studios within Sumo Group.”

Key Features:

• You’re in charge of mission control, plan all the aspects of your missions to find anomalies, use flybys and satellites to look for them, land on planets to collect them
• Manage your staff: hire, fire, train, and customise your own team of experts with different skills and roles
• Build your base on Earth, Mars and the Moon, with important buildings like testing facilities, launch pads, and more
• Design multi-stage rockets using cutting edge components, reusable boosters and a variety of payloads
• Decide when is best for your mission with launch windows, and then decide closer to the time the best day for launch, based on weather, and climate
• Make key decisions in tough narrative events which will make or break your mission and impact the future of space exploration
• Every mission has a different reliability with different points of failure such as fuel, guidance, engines, and more
• Follow the clues, collect anomalies and discover biosignatures that get you closer to discovery of life - signs of life can include fossils, microbes, unusual atmospheres, and more
• Process anomalies in the lab, and research a huge tech tree to help you in your journey

Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life is coming to PC (Steam) in 2024.