The Martian Job Reviews

Feels right Shiny, Captain

Boring, Time consuming and your actions are meaningless

This text-based adventure game is fun and interesting and well-written. It's a science fiction story about a heist, with drama and romance elements. The included characters are diverse with regards to genders, sexual orientation and ethnicity, and you are free to choose your own gender and sexual orientation for the romance elements of the story. I really appreciate that, but I have seen that it has caused a lot of bad reviews. So if you prefer games that are only for white males with mainly white male characters (and some sexy females for the guys to ogle), you might not like this game.

I won't say the game is spectacular, but it's alright and entertaining. The story and prose can be janky and awkward, but I like the games that are more chill about consequences of your actions

The Martian Job is exactly what I thought it would be. It can be a sort of "Ocean's Eleven on Mars" type of story, or it can be "expose corporate corruption sci-fi style" story depending on your choices. One reviewer complained that the story switches gears from one to the other in the middle. It really does not. If you want to keep the plots from mixing, you have to simply be consistent in choosing the options that stick to the path you choose to play through the story. It is true the "corporate corruption" story line is offered later in the story, but once you switch, consistently choose the new path from then on will give you a satisfying plot to follow. Add in the various romance options and you have good replayability for a cheap price. Since I have always liked the "professional gentleman thief" type characters, "The Martian Job" is a solid buy for a surprisingly compact story.

It's really interesting, could do with an expansion on the story as a whole with more content but for what it is, it's short and sweet. My only two complaints is that the stats don't really feel like they matter as long as you're doing things you have 55% and above for, it'd be nice if you got bigger stat boosts for things and specialized a little more in certain areas. And [spoiler] the conversations with Mads while rekindling your romance seem very unnatural for everything that happened in the past. The dialogue was just strange but not super unpleasant. [/spoiler]

SO frustrating- trying to pick the middle ground ever lead almost exclusively to failure, there was no chance to build relationships so if you were like "let me wait and see" it feels like you get locked out of that option forever, and it feels like whatever you choose it doesn't matter. Even though I consistently chose to try to help the rebellion [spoiler]in the end Jammer and Nalani just said "no we should give it to the Mars Consortium" like why the fuck did we bother to get the microbes if we can't even choose what to do with them?[/spoiler] Ultimately it felt like waiting after every choice to see how you failed this time for reasons that felt impossible to predict and disjointed from the overall story. There was no sense of cause or effect or like anything you did mattered. The game pulled you along to whatever place it had predetermined you should be. More of a personal take but knowing full well the inherent dorkiness of CYOA games this one didn't fuck even a little bit. Was just kind of lame and didn't really have much cool or creative to it. The writing was very subpar and heavy handed too like at one point there was a line like "you saw the options spreading out before you like the multiverse theory" lmao. As much as I hate to criticize something the author obviously put a good amount of work into ultimately I hated the game so much it made me salty enough to write this long ass review. 2/10 would not recommend. Also I wanted to [spoiler]hate romance Mads and I didn't see any option after the interrogation to even speak to them again and for that I will never forgive this game.[/spoiler]

Definitely the worst Choice of Games game I had the misfortune to play/read yet, and I've experienced many of them. The plot is paper thin, the choices don't matter because you always succeed no matter what or other characters will tell you 'no' and decide for you, the characters are dull as dishwater, and I even saw a few grammatical errors. How this was nominated for a Nebula award, I will never understand.

First thing to say: I'm a really appassionate reader of this kind of fictions. I say reader because from what I've seen so far the CoG and Hosted games in comparison with other games companies are very limited in their gaming experience to the ability of the single writer and the story he or she (or any pronouns they like to use) want to tell and to The Choicescript Engine that from my perspective have so much unseen potential that even if some stories aren't really great is an experience i like to come back to. Because It is fun to see with each "game" (I think at them more like movie scripts at best and some I've seen are pretty shitty B-movie qualities to be honest) how different writers try to convey their story, some of them have a good "base" material, put together a interesting world and create good quality characters the player is involved with and generally give the player the illusion of changing the story (pretty much for me this illusion is good based on how many endings there is to the story and importantly how you can reach them) the more skilled writers I've seen even add "mechanics" that make their games memorable. Unfortunately This "game" isn't one of them. With "The Martian Job" we have one of the CoG games I like to call - "The Pointless Big Dilemmas" (To mention the other games I see in this category are: Congresswolf and Rent-A-Vice) They generally suffer of weak stories hidden by a good marketing campaign that try to sell what "in-game" is just a little part of the story, not even the main focus: The story here "should" be about a generic named and "not more than" defined from pronouns character with a thief skill past There is no clear meaning behind the name of the stats: Like "Face" or "Wheels" (that I "guess" means "Charm" and "Reflexes" but I'm not really sure) but to be fair the author try to suggest what you need in the choice given (like "doing this should be the smart thing to do" meaning this choice use the "Genius" skill) from what I've seen there is 2 approaches to this game: the smart\tech kind and the brute force kind. So this guy\girl\thing protagonist find himself on a bad situation (no job, no friends and evicted from home) and is recruited as Vault breaker by a old fellow thief to make the Heist of the millenium: Rob A casino on Mars. that is cool right? Well after meeting your team characters: I mean they are 5 cool and different fellas BUT in terms of "choices" about them you have little to nothing to share aside that you have the task to open the vault. To make it clear The Game don't provvide a true "Romance" mechanic and the interactions here are pretty much limited on "how much you liked this character" from the FIRST meeting as the Game openly ask you "Do you like him\her\they?" this single question define your relationship with that character for the whole story. No possible changes whatsoever later. But all this excitment of the heist with each going on Mars, separate under "cover" jobs (not choice you're a bartender) waiting to gather information and make a plan is short lived. Because The "plan" go in action too quickly. Don't take me wrong the game is not badly written: if you like scenery of Mars and the main character trying to feel attachment to a planet it never went before then after few days of cover job, serving drinks hears about the struggle between miners and the company for who they work for, the main character suddendly feel like he\she\it\they should take action and rob the Casino no more for the money but because he suddendly despite a guy he never meet before (despite the fact you meet later a person that DID betrayed you and don't do 1 thing about it) and the game prompt the player the only question that seems to care about: "Could I join the rebellion?" or "Could I join the corporation?" SEVERAL times. I just say "Game" don't shove your pile of pointless dilemma on me. The Truth is in fact that this whole story is around the rights of people to live on mars without be under the government of the Company that pay them. There is this underclass "the Miners" that live like rats but don't want to go away from the red planet because reasons (seems earth is worst place ever) but never ask for syndicate or better conditions. This Miners instead take proud saying "only the tough bitches could live here" ad feel like they should be "martians" and live on the only settlement with Oxygen on the whole planet without be under surveilance of the guys that for obvious profit reason build that same settlement and supply the air that let them live there. The Miner leader really think the bartender who served his\her\their last drink should take this job of helping them win this Rebellion and For the whole game I try to say: I just want to rob the casino. And if that is the case (this big branch of Rebellion story seems to wait behind a corner, with the hope you player finally change idea and let her out but as she ask if you "really" want go and be a robber and you player just pointless click the same choice over and over "YES", it goes behind the corner and let you continue your "side job" heist) it turns out however: The Robbery is pretty short: 2 tryes, you're In, whohoo\celebration, get rich, en..Want to join the rebels? WTF GAME! In short: Not badly Written but the whole heist/thief setting is deceiving and for me at least the whole Miners vs Corporation situation is pointless. Voted 5/10

The biggest crime in universe... has to be such a boring story game. Honestly, Text games live from their story/writing and choice of freedom ideally. I´ve played quite a few by now, but rarely have i felt so much forced to do, what the writer wants, no matter what i would actually chose. I think i tried five times the offer to join the bad guy, and the story always ignores it in the most stupid way.. why in hell do you even offer that option then?? Just for seemingly offer choices? Ugh.. Fitting to this are also the bland characters (especially since you are working with a team, there should be some connection, but they are all paper thin schablones) and the "romances" which fit to the rest of this charade. "Do you wanna go with me? Yes/No/Dunno" Of course also your skill sets don´t really seem to matter much.. in the end, nothing seems to matter anyway. Conclusio: Really a bad one, sorry to say, go watch Schwarzeneggers "Total Recall" instead (which this story seems to heavily steal from, anyway). Point 2/10