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.

The stars have aligned – developer Auroch Digital and publisher Secret Mode are proud to reveal that the upcoming space strategy game Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life will be gaining a serious boost to its Science resource with the addition of leading space scientist Konstantin Batygin.

As announced at Tacticon, Batygin – a Professor of Planetary Science at Caltech – will be providing his expertise on all aspects of Mars Horizon 2, from mission design to supporting on research and facts included in the game’s Spacepedia. His invaluable knowledge and expertise will ensure that Mars Horizon 2 is as authentic as possible, accurately portraying space exploration and extrapolation beyond present day as the search for life in the universe continues.

Professor Batygin’s research has advanced the field of Solar System Exploration, and he is particularly well-known for his work on Planet 9, the massive celestial body that orbits our sun far beyond Pluto. This subject is among the most current and exciting topics in space exploration today, with Batygin leading the charge in both its discovery and ongoing theoretical characterisation.

“In the anticipated sequel to Mars Horizon, players will be 'searching for life' and pushing their understanding and expectations of physics and space exploration, so having someone with first-hand experience of that is critical in giving Mars Horizon 2 authenticity,” says Dr Tomas Rawlings, Studio Director at Auroch Digital. “This partnership ensures we are replicating the same novelty and wonder experienced those pioneers of space exploration and those involved in this endeavour today.”

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.