Limbic Entertainment and 505 Games released Memories of Mars into Early Access on Steam. The sci-fi survival game sees players taking on the role of a cloned colonist attempting to survive on the harsh surface of the red planet.

You’ll start with very basic materials and must research and expand the habitat to become a sustainable colony. You’ll research new weapons, build out structures, and develop defenses against foreign hostiles and other players.

It’s basically like Rust but set on Mars.

The hook, however, is that every so often, there are solar flares and other environmental hazards that sweep across the surface of the red planet, destroying everything in its wake. If you happen to get caught up in the solar flare and die, you can spawn in as another clone and relearn all your skills and tradecraft by downloading your memories into the new body. Of course, you’ll also have to deal with other players also attempting to build up their own colony, and defending it to their last dying breath, as depicted in the trailer below.

Like most other survival games out there, you’ll have to monitor your vitals, attempt to upgrade your weaponry in order to take out your foes, and always keep an eye out for hostile dangers.

Now if you head on over to the Steam store page, you might notice that the game has a mixed rating so far. This is because a lot of people spawned in and got spawn killed right off the bat. Also, they’re noting that at the moment, this iteration of the game does not feature PvE elements… yet.

So there’s more of a focus on player-vs-player content rather than teamwork oriented player-vs-environment content.

I imagine the PvE issue will be resolved with future updates.

Another problem is the server serviceability. Many players are reporting that there aren’t servers available for certain regions, which inevitably means that certain gamers from certain territories will get hit hard with lag spikes.

Bramhastra seemed to sum up what a lot of other people were mentioning in their reviews, writing…

“Unplayable at the moment with so much lag you’re basically rubber banding from one point to other and not moving. Might give it another try after issues are fixed.”

Others noted that server stability was also a problem, and that every half hour or so they would experience server disconnections.

Once again, this is part of the Early Access teething problem, and with a few updates they will likely have these issues ironed out.

In fact, according to their Early Access FAQ, they’re taking in feedback right now and plan on making adjustments throughout the development cycle so that by the end of 2018 they would like to graduate from Early Access.

The game is currently available for $29.99. But if you’re interested in Memories of Mars but would rather experience a more polished version, it might be best to wait it out until a few updates roll in and then check out a more complete version.