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The Martian, both the Ridley Scott film and the Andy Weir novel it's based on, has been quite the hit lately. The story of a marooned astronaut solving a series of nearly impossible science problems in order to survive and make contact with his homeworld is a charming mixture of inspirational perseverance and outright horror. It's also the basis for a pretty smart mobile game with The Martian: Bring Him Home.Bring Him Home doesn't place you in the rank space suit of stranded astronaut Mark Watney, however; probably because anyone who's read or watched his tale already knows how he solves his various challenges. (Also, because nobody wants to play a game where you grow potatoes by using your own fecal matter as manure.) Instead, Bring Him Home places the player in the role of Mission Control back at NASA, corresponding with the barely alive Watney "scienceing the s***" out of Mars (to put it in his words).
The Martian: Bring Him Home is primarily a linear text adventure, but there's some smart - albeit divisive - deviations from other visual novels like 80 Days. For one, Mark will often disappear to go handle various herculean tasks on his end. When this happens there's literally nothing to do in the game, so you just have to move on with your life and wait for him to contact you later - not unlike a Tamagotchi. The touch-and-go nature of your relationship to the game really grounds you in the fiction as you receive text from this fake person throughout the day. It can be a little annoying at times (you may want to silence your phone for the few days you're playing it), but it's a smart way of breaking the fourth wall that takes advantage of the portable communication-focused device that it's on.
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