Deliver Us Mars had everything it needed to become one of my favorite experiences in narrative science fiction. The first game, Deliver Us The Moon, genuinely surprised me when I played it. With no great expectations, I found an intimate, atmospheric, and emotionally engaging adventure, capable of telling a human story in a futuristic setting without depending on big explosions or constant visual spectacle. So when the time came to embark on Deliver Us Mars, I admit my expectations were quite high.
Perhaps too high.
The truth is that this sequel tries to be bigger in practically every way. The narrative's scale grows, the settings are more ambitious, the gameplay seeks to introduce new mechanics, and there's a clear effort to turn the series into something more cinematic. The problem is that this ambition isn't always matched by the execution needed to sustain it.
Even so, it would be unfair to call Deliver Us Mars a complete disappointment. It's far from that. There are evident qualities throughout the adventure, moments that manage to capture some of the previous game's magic. It simply never reaches the same level of impact with any consistency.
The narrative remains, without question, the heart of the experience.
This time we follow Kathy Johanson on a mission to Mars that quickly proves far more personal than scientific. The game seeks to explore themes like family, sacrifice, responsibility, and the consequences of choices made by previous generations. These are interesting concepts that fit perfectly into the kind of science fiction the series has always tried to tell.
During the first half of the campaign, I felt the story took a while to find its rhythm. There are several moments of exposition and a few sequences that seem to drag on longer than they should. However, once the narrative finally begins to deepen the family conflicts and develop the relationships between characters, the quality rises considerably.
It was precisely in the second half that I felt most emotionally invested. There are important revelations, well-constructed moments of tension, and a few scenes that manage to convey the emotional weight I had been hoping to feel from the start.
Unfortunately, not everything works as well as it should.
The voice work is one of the game's most inconsistent aspects. Some dialogue is genuinely well performed, with the characters' emotions coming across naturally and convincingly. But there are also moments when the delivery feels artificial — almost as if the actors were simply reading script lines without much emotional context.
That inconsistency ends up hurting some important scenes, especially in an experience so focused on narrative and character development.
Another problem lies precisely in how those characters are presented.
The facial animations are, at several points, quite odd. There are expressions that seem stiff, unnatural, or simply incapable of conveying what the scene demands. The most glaring case ends up being the depiction of Kathy at different stages of her life.
On several occasions, the child version of the character looked like the adult's face placed onto a smaller body. The result is uncomfortable and breaks part of the emotional connection the game tries to build. It's hard to fully sink into a dramatic scene when there's something visually strange constantly pulling your attention.
On the gameplay side, the big novelty is the climbing sections.
On paper, the idea sounds interesting. Crossing Martian cliffs using specific tools should add tension and variety to the adventure. And during the first few hours it does work reasonably well.
The problem arises when we realize how frequently these sequences appear.
What initially feels like a refreshing mechanic ends up becoming repetitive. Many of the sections follow exactly the same structure, demanding little more than advancing between specific points and repeating familiar movements. Instead of adding depth to the experience, they often end up interrupting the narrative's rhythm.
It was one of the areas where I most felt the game could have benefited from greater variety or creativity.
Visually, Deliver Us Mars presents mixed results.
On one hand, the Martian surface is very well realized. There's a constant sense of isolation and vastness that helps reinforce the adventure's atmosphere. The red landscapes, the dust storms, and the abandoned structures scattered across the planet create visually appealing and convincing settings.
At certain moments, the game manages to convey exactly that feeling of smallness before the immensity of space that made the first title so memorable.
But once again, ambition frequently runs into technical limitations.
During my playthrough on PS5, I encountered several performance issues that became hard to ignore. Even in performance mode, frequent stutters appeared that affected the fluidity of exploration. We aren't talking about minor occasional hiccups, but interruptions frequent enough to break immersion.
To make matters worse, I also ran into a few crashes over the course of the campaign. None of them cost me significant progress, but these are situations that should never be part of an experience so focused on narrative and atmosphere.
The soundtrack, on the other hand, does a good job accompanying the adventure. It may not reach the most memorable heights of Deliver Us The Moon, but it continues to contribute to the sense of isolation and discovery. Some themes are particularly effective during the more emotional sequences, helping to reinforce the impact of certain scenes.
The overall sound design also deserves recognition. The silence of space, the hum of technological equipment, and the Martian environments help create a very convincing atmosphere.
In the end, Deliver Us Mars ends up being a game that lives permanently between what it is and what it could have been.
There is a good story here, characters with potential, and emotionally effective moments. There's also a clear desire to expand the first game's formula and offer something more ambitious. The problem is that many of those ideas don't receive the level of polish needed to reach their full potential.
Where Deliver Us The Moon managed to hide some of its limitations thanks to the simplicity and focus of the experience, Deliver Us Mars frequently exposes its weaknesses by trying to do more than it can support.
That doesn't mean it's a bad sequel. Far from it.
For those who appreciated the universe created by KeokeN Interactive, there's still plenty of value in this adventure. The narrative ends up compensating for much of the trouble, and there are genuinely interesting moments along the campaign.
But it's also impossible to ignore the feeling that something was missing. Missing a consistent emotional impact, missing the technical polish, and missing that capacity to surprise that made the previous game so special.
In the end, Deliver Us Mars is an experience worth having, especially for those who enjoyed Deliver Us The Moon. It's just wise to go in with tempered expectations. Because despite its qualities, this is a sequel that never quite manages to escape its predecessor's shadow.
And perhaps that is, at the same time, its biggest problem and its greatest injustice.
out of 10
Pros
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Game Deliver Us Mars Released 2023 Available on PC · PlayStation 4 · PlayStation 5 · Xbox One · Xbox Series X|S Reviewed on PlayStation 5 |  Cover: IGDB |
| PL | Pedro Lopes Writer · Portugal |
A games writer from Portugal running on a highly irresponsible amount of coffee — his blood type is officially "espresso". He has been a content creator at Lisbon Games Week, a jury member at Over & Out ’25 and an attendee of DevGAMM Lisbon 2025 (mostly for the free coffee). He has a Pac-Man tattoo on his finger, which contractually obliges him to chase ghosts forever.