Starting today on March 1st, and ending May 30th, we will be adding a brand new Season Promo Card to each order from the web shop. Here it is: Bio Printing Facility!
First off, Prelude is now launched for the digital version! This long awaited expansion has finally landed, and lets players kickstart their engines and makes the game faster. Prelude is by far the most appreciated expansion for Terraforming Mars, and we’re thrilled to have it out there.
On another note, Brexit is soon final, and the coming week up until Thursday is the last week we’ll be able to send orders to the United Kingdom without adding heavy export costs to each order. So make sure to buy your Christmas gifts soon!
Talking about Christmas gifts, we’ve also added Gift Cards to our web shop. If you don’t know what to give, give a gift card and let them choose for themselves!
Lasly, we’re also preparing the next quarterly newsletter. Please consider subscribing if you want the latest news from FryxGames. Head on over to the subscription page now! 🙂
Our collaboration with Hexy Game Studio has reached the start of our first Kickstarter Campaign together. Our game Space Station sees its 2nd edition, and it is now called Star Scrappers: Orbital. We’ve streamlined the rules and the cards, and Hexy has made awesome new graphics for the game.
The Kickstarter Campaign is now live: (follow THIS link to see it).
We’re very happy for this collaboration, and hope the best for the campaign.
It is very exciting for us to announce that we’ve entered a cooperation with Aconyte Books to produce a book series based in the Terraforming Mars universe. The first book is planned for release next summer (2021), with more books coming later. Here is a link to their own press release:
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A. Big. Box. Check it out on Kickstarer the 16th of June!
You can already visit the page on Kickstarter and sign up for notifications on updates (visit it here).
FryxGames on Patreon
We’ve launched a Patreon page where you can sign up and join us behind the scenes to get sneak peeks etc. Right now, we’re revealing some new tiles coming in the Big Box to our patrons. We also have a special deal until June 30th that all new patrons get a 50% discount code on any 1 game, expansion, or accessory on our webshop. So we hope to see you there!
Jacob Fryxelius, designer of Terraforming Mars, reveals some of the easter eggs hidden in Terraforming Mars in this weekly article series.
Starry backgrounds
Here’s another cool science fact about Terraforming Mars, and I leave it to Isaac to explain since he was the one who did it:
Thanks Jacob! When I first developed the design for the gameboard… I have to halt here to say that the development of the gameboard is a chapter of its own where I only came in at the end, building on my brothers prototypes… anyway, I put in some random stars for the background. But then I thought, why not have a real background? So I downloaded a space app, Celestia, and travelled to the future Mars, to around 2400, to find a correct and interesting background. So in the main game you can find Mars in the fishes constellation, with the connecting and important star Al Rescha named. I’ll leave any deeper meaning of choosing that star to you… After our first printrun I came across an astronomy book that pointed out that Al Rescha is actually a blue star, so I felt obliged to change that.
I used the same procedure for the Hellas & Elysium map, where I named one star on the map for reference, so it could be possible (if yet very hard) to figure out what stars you are looking at. Those larger stars on the maps are the ones that you can connect to constellations, but even the smaller ones are correctly placed.
Jacob Fryxelius, designer of Terraforming Mars, reveals some of the easter eggs hidden in Terraforming Mars in this weekly article series.
Mining Guild
As with Tharsis Republic, the Mining Guild is not a typical corporation, but rather a cooperative of smaller actors in the mining business. This of course makes no difference in the game.
Its logo is a Mars symbol with a drill into Mars, alluding to metal exports from Mars.
In contrast to CrediCor, which has a lot of business on Earth, the Mining Guild logo can be seen in cards such as Rover Construction, Carbonate Processing, Mining Rights, and Power Supply Consortium.
UNMI
Being an extension of the World Government, the United Nations Mars Initiative will initiate terraforming before other corporations are ready to step in.
Its logo and color scheme is very similar to the UN logo, but with a mesh between an Earth and a Mars symbol, indicating its intent to make Mars earthlike. This symbol is very similar to the terraform rating icon, as well as the Terraforming Committee emblem.
Jacob Fryxelius, designer of Terraforming Mars, reveals some of the easter eggs hidden in Terraforming Mars in this weekly article series.
CrediCor
Corporations are sometimes lead by eccentric CEOs, and this is true for CrediCor. This has the effect that CrediCor prioritizes big and spectacular projects!
The CrediCor logo is based on one of the many alchemic symbols for gold, which, suitably, is also similar to the symbol for Mars. It was only slightly altered to have ‘credits in the core’, and even more resembling an asteroid impact – a typical project for CrediCor.
CrediCor’s business activities can be seen in cards like Earth Office and Business Contacts… and they are of course your Allied Bank of choice if you play with PRELUDE (which you do, right?)
The CrediCor logo is based on one of many alchemic symbols for gold, which also resembles an asteroid impact, and also the symbol for Mars. Very suitable!
Most of our publisher partners for Terraforming Mars have their logos somewhere in the artwork. Our first 3 partners Stronghold Games, Rebel Games and Schwerkraft Verlag are featured on the cards Corporate Stronghold, Hired Raiders, and Mass Converter. The cards seemed like obvious choices, but seeing their logos may not be as easy, even though Stronghold Games actually has its logo 3 times, and the face of its CEO Stephen Bounocore 3 times as well!
Our first 3 publishing partners. NOTE: Rebel Games has since changed its logo.
After the first year of success, more partners joined Terraforming Mars, and are in later printings featured on cards such as Colonizer Training Camp, Peroxide Power, Media Group, Artificial Photosynthesis, Dust Seals, Import Of Advanced GHG, Energy Saving, Invention Contest, and Medical Lab, just in the base game. Can you find them?
