Mars After Midnight Review: Pope Is Perfect For Playdate

I was late to the party with the Playdate. Panic’s little yellow console always tickled my fancy, but I could never justify the $200 expenditure. However, Lucas Pope’s new game releasing exclusively for the hand-cranked console was enough for me to pull the trigger. The Return of the Obra Dinn and Papers, Please veteran has made more classic games than many devs make in their careers, and I needed to see what he did with that little handle that I can’t stop cranking.

It surprised me, however, that so many Playdate games barely use the crank handle at all. I really enjoyed SatOlite, but the only use for the handle is positioning your satellites. I suppose there’s not loads of other use in a tower defence game, but still. Other games use it even less. Suddenly, I was a little more cautious about Mars After Midnight.

I needn’t have worried. Mars After Midnight takes the tried and tested formula of Papers, Please and deposits it onto the red planet with a complete makeover. Instead of poring over paperwork, you’re staring intently at your screen to see whether the alien in front of you has a farting problem, says the secret password to show it’s a spy, or just whether it blinks or not – actually, wait, are those even its eyes?

Mars After Midnight strips away all those layers of political intrigue from Pope’s earlier work and focuses on making this fun. You pick an alien community to help each night, slap flyers up wherever they live, and pick a food to serve that they’ll like. Once you’ve totted up the costs, it’s time to get cranking.

You’re the bouncer now, and this is where the proper gameplay – and the cranking – comes in. Use the crank to open up the letterbox-shaped peephole in the door and look upon the alien before you. At this point, you have to decide whether they fit the bill. This is great fun, largely because of the designs of the aliens. No two creatures are alike, and that’s crucial when you’re studying them in such depth to work out whether or not they’re allowed entry to your counselling session. Looking out of your little letterbox is like leafing through a child’s sketchbook, brimming with creativity and fun.

There are six aliens per session, but don’t worry if you accidentally turn them away. They’ll be back for more, again and again, until you realise whatever mistake you’ve made. It’s easy to get carried away with slamming the hatch down in the face of every alien who knocks on your door, as the opening and closing is perfectly satisfying with the Playdate’s crank handle.

When you welcome an alien in, you’ll also have to clean up after them, as they all make a mess of your buffet table. This minigame is less engaging than the puzzle mechanic involving the door hatch, but the game would feel a little light without it. However, neither the doorman nor the janitor portions of the game feel like they have any consequences.

If you turn a community member away from their support group, they’ll come back. If you buy the wrong food for a certain group meaning they don’t eat a thing, they still leave the same tip and are happy with your service (and you get to skip the cleaning minigame). I never came close to running out of funds, and the money is only used for paying for food, flyers, and equipment rather than utilities or your kids’ birthday presents. Nothing is pressing, nothing has consequences.

That’s the point of Mars After Midnight, but it can’t help make the finished game feel lacking, especially when compared to Pope’s previous games. Taken in isolation, it’s a really fun game – and fun is vital on the Playdate – but you can’t help but compare it to Pope’s catalogue. I feel a bit mean making those comparisons, but that’s what expectations do to a game.

Mars After Midnight is perfect for the Playdate. It embodies the console’s whimsy with great design and clever use of the crank. I’m incredibly glad that Pope has no plans to release the game on any other console because it utilises the Playdate’s unique properties so well and embodies the core premise of the playful console. As a game to whip out on the commute and play for ten minutes, you can’t get much better than this – Mars After Midnight is up there with Root Bear as the best Playdate game. But if you were looking for the biting dystopia and political commentary of Papers, Please, or a dense puzzle like Obra Dinn, you’re cranking up the wrong handle.

Mars After Midnight is immensely enjoyable. It’s a perfect showcase of the Playdate, and a beacon of creativity that all developers should look to for inspiration. It leans so far away from triple-A sensibilities with its hyper-simple concept and hand-drawn design philosophy. But I can’t help yearning for a little more depth. Something to sink my teeth into. A connection between the support groups, something larger at play. I don’t need deep lore, but I’d like the game to say something, even if it’s in a Martian language. As it is, though, I’m left wanting. Mars After Midnight is one of the best games in the Playdate Catalog, but one of the most one-dimensional games in Pope’s catalogue.

Mars After Midnight

Pros

• Brilliant designs
• Exemplary use of the crank handle
• Fundamental understanding of the console
• Fun

Cons

• Lacks depth
• Mistakes go completely unpunished

Score: 3.5/5.

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