Proof that not every lab rat makes it to space
So, there I was, half-awake, guiding my mouse with my right hand, coffee in the other, staring at a game that looked like it escaped from a Saturday-morning cartoon asylum.
Earth vs Mars opens like it’s allergic to silence, bright colors, goofy faces, and characters who will not shut up until you click every last speech bubble. It’s cute until it’s torture.
You’re still trying to figure out how to move your unit, and these bubbleheads are debating the ethics of alien invasion. And you can’t skip it. You click. Again. And again. Welcome to Earth vs Mars, where even the tutorial feels like detention.
Once the chatter ends, the game drops you into your first mission, move to a city, take cover, and save humanity from red-planet punks. Straightforward enough. Until you attack, then you realize you’re not really attacking.
You’re watching two sprites slap each other like puppets in a zero-budget soap opera. You move your unit, wait, and boom, the fight’s over before you even blink. It’s like watching your little brother play with toys and calling it strategy.
That’s the first shock. The second is that this comes from the same minds that once gave us Company of Heroes. The studio that made tank warfare feel like jazz improvisation now wants me to play checkers with aliens. I kept thinking it had to open up, right? Deeper layers? But no, the early missions play like a board game that forgot what suspense feels like.
Still, there’s one glorious idea here: the Splice-O-Tron. It’s the DNA blender that lets you fuse animals to your soldiers, and it’s easily the best mechanic in the game. Want a rhino-headed grunt with cheetah legs and fly wings?
Sure, doc. Go nuts. It’s silly, weird, and actually smart in concept, like someone fed Pokémon to a war simulator and hoped for genius. You get four body slots, head, arms, legs, and flair, and each species gives its own stat twist.
Rhino head for brute power, cheetah legs for speed, fly wings for flight, and tails that trigger counterattacks. On paper, it’s the kind of system that should dominate your thoughts for days. In practice, it’s more like a cool science exhibit behind glass: you stare, you poke, and you move on.
The real problem is pacing. Battles feel like cardboard chess. You capture cities, you earn income, you pump out units from your industry tile, and you dance the same rock-paper-scissors you’ve played since 2001.
Infantry beats recon, recon beats artillery, artillery beats tanks, and tanks beat your patience. Even when the commander powers kick in, temporary buffs, reinforcement drops, or Martian gravity beams, it’s rarely exciting.
The AI telegraphs its moves like a bad magician, and the maps don’t push you to adapt. You win not because you’re clever but because you showed up.
That said, there’s a pulse buried under all the noise. The multiplayer map Barge Bay proves this game can bite. Two players start close enough to smell each other’s chips, each racing to capture the four middle cities.
It’s tense, fast, and brutal in the best way. You can see Relic’s design DNA peek through, the tempo shifts, the counterplay, the moment you outthink an opponent, and feel that old Company of Heroes spark. If Earth vs Mars had ten maps like this, it might have been the next cult obsession.
Visually, the game is committed to its bit. Big chunky outlines, flat colors, and UFOs buzzing like they just left a Hanna-Barbera episode.
It’s all deliberate goofball energy, and honestly, it works until it doesn’t. The art is charming but not memorable. Every unit blends into the next, and the hybrids, the supposed stars of the show, look like interns glued horns to mannequins.
Animation is the biggest sin. When your bio-monster attacks, it just stands there swiping the air like it’s fanning itself. No dash, no impact, no motion. Relic used to make explosions that could knock coffee out of your hand; now their monsters attack like they’re afraid to wrinkle their costumes.
The audio follows suit, half-retro, half-placeholder. The UFOs make cute pew-pew noises, mortars have a decent thump, but everything else sounds like toy guns in a pillow fort. The soundtrack goes for campy sci-fi and lands somewhere between charming and forgettable. It fits, but it doesn’t elevate.
UI design? Functional if you squint. The splice lab should make you feel like a deranged scientist, but instead, it’s all bland menus and whispering tooltips.
Stats are unclear, numbers hide behind vague icons, and the game does a poor job explaining how your gene mashups actually translate into combat behavior. Half the time, you’re muttering, “Did that do anything?” after a fight. And that’s never what you want in a tactics game.
But let’s talk about what actually works, the bones, the intentions. Under the fluff, there’s a solid structure: asymmetric factions that genuinely play differently. Earth’s human forces rely on buffs and brute stats, while Mars brings in saucers, bomb-heads, and gravity tricks that warp the battlefield.
When the systems collide, when your spliced army meets a Martian commander who detonates his own troops, it clicks. For a few turns, you see what the designers were aiming for: chaos you can control. If only they had the courage to make the campaign lean into that.
The campaign’s biggest crime is being safe. Three maps, zero surprises. No environmental hazards, no “oh shit” moments. Just predictable escalation.
Where’s the map that floods halfway through? Where’s the turn timer that forces desperate plays? Where’s the mission that teaches you something new, then slaps you for learning it too slowly? Relic used to excel at that, tutorials disguised as wars. Earth vs Mars gives you chores disguised as missions.
It’s a weird identity crisis. The developers clearly wanted to make something smaller, faster, and cheaper. Fine. I love experimental side projects.
But small doesn’t have to mean shallow. Into the Breach was small. It was also perfect. Here, everything feels like an early prototype that nobody had time to refine. The kind of project where everyone said, “We’ll fix it in the next patch,” and then release day happened.
The Splice-O-Tron still carries the weight. If Relic Labs adds depth, more creatures, crazier abilities, clearer feedback, it could anchor the entire experience.
Imagine a mutation tree where your hybrids evolve mid-campaign or missions that force you to build around environmental DNA. There’s so much potential in that idea it hurts to see it sitting half-baked.
Now, multiplayer. Here’s where hope lives. The pacing is snappy, turns are short, and the back-and-forth flow scratches that “one more match” itch.
You start recognizing patterns, predicting builds, and baiting commander powers. That’s the kind of addiction loop that made old RTS games legendary. If they nurture that with ranked ladders and balance tweaks, Earth vs Mars could quietly become a cult competitive title. But it needs attention, polish, and some actual teeth.
Relic’s reputation casts a long shadow. This is the studio that gave us elegant space warfare, cover-based theology, and sync-kill ballet. Earth vs Mars doesn’t reach those heights; it barely leaves orbit.
But you can feel the ghost of their brilliance twitching underneath. A studio this experienced should be able to iterate fast. Give them six months and a patch roadmap, and maybe we’ll get the version this was meant to be.
Until then, what we have is a fascinating failure, a game bursting with ideas, half of which actually work, the rest gasping for air.
I wanted to love it. I wanted to feel that rush of discovering a new tactical obsession. Instead, I felt like a lab assistant watching someone else’s experiment sputter and smoke. Still, when it hits, it really hits.
The splice system sings, the small maps crackle, and the core loop is just fun enough to keep you tinkering.
If you’re into build craft, asymmetry, and weird science, give it a shot. Just temper your expectations. This isn’t Relic’s next masterpiece; it’s their messy side project that accidentally stumbled into charm.
I’ll be watching it, waiting for the update where the monsters finally move like monsters and the missions finally think like Relic.
