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While building your traditional affair of rollercoasters, carousels, and hot dog stands is mighty enjoyable, I feel like the best tycoon games and theme park sims take you somewhere no other game in the genre does. Jurassic World Evolution, for example, puts an exciting prehistoric spin on the formula. However, upcoming management game and theme park creator Mars Attracts might be one of the most unexpected and weirdest new games of 2025, and your first opportunity to try it is just around the corner.
Revealed earlier this year during Gamescom, Mars Attracts really was one of those ‘what the fuck?’ announcements. One of the most bizarre upcoming PC games of next year, it’s a Planet Coaster-style experience, but set on Mars, and all based around a long-forgotten IP that spawned from a big budget box office flop from the late 1990s. Mars Attacks was a star-studded, black comedy alien invasion movie, and to see it get randomly resurrected 25 years later as a theme park sim is just… strange.
That’s absolutely not to say, though, that Mars Attracts will be as crap as the old movie. The game sees you build a theme park for hordes of Martian guests, and while they’ll have rides to enjoy, you’ll also be building enclosures and themed exhibits that feature abducted humans. Yes, for once, it’s the humans that are the attraction.
You’ll be abducting these poor folk from across various famous periods of history, ranging from Ancient Rome to the Wild West. That means no two humans are the same, so you’ll have to design enclosures that can keep specific people penned in – for example, a flimsy bit of Martian glass isn’t going to hold back a squad of Roman gladiators now, is it?
You can also choose to keep your humans happy and comfortable or you can terrorize them – and yes, that does involve probing… Your alien guests may find either method entertaining.
Of course, on top of curating the perfect Martian theme park, you’ve got to manage it. The gameplay loop so far looks exactly like what you see in the majority of tycoon games, but things are still early on in development and we’ve only got one trailer to go off so far, so there may be surprises in store.
To help developer Outlier make not only a great management sim but a charmingly-weird one too, you can sign up to be part of its first playtest which is kicking off very soon.
The Mars Attracts closed alpha playtest begins on Wednesday, December 4. The game itself is set for an early access launch at some point in 2025.
If crafting and creating is what you love, our guide to the best building games will certainly have something for you. For more titles that will test your multitasking and management skills, check out our lists of the best strategy games.
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