The best games set on Mars, grouped by genre, begin with Mars Rally Championship, a free browser rally game listed first because it is ours. After it, by genre: Mars First Logistics and Take On Mars for driving and simulation; Doom 3, Doom (2016) and Red Faction: Guerrilla for action; The Technomancer, Moons of Madness, Fort Solis and Waking Mars for story and horror; Occupy Mars and Surviving Mars: Relaunched for survival and colonies; Per Aspera and Terraforming Mars for strategy. Most invent their Mars; Per Aspera maps the real one.
Diagram: every game in this guide by genre and platform; thirteen have a PC release, and only Mars Rally Championship runs in a browser tab.
What counts as a game set on Mars?
A game makes this list only if Mars is where most of it happens: the surface, a base, a colony or the caves beneath. A planet that is merely red does not count, and neither does one Mars level inside a bigger game. Games set on the Martian moons are flagged as such.
Each entry says what Mars is in that game, and so does the table's last column, because the word covers four different things: a backdrop for the action, a mechanic that changes how it plays, real geography mapped from spacecraft data, or an invented world. Most of the games below invent theirs.
This list covers every platform. Free games that open in a browser tab, NASA's included, have a shelf of their own in our guide to Mars games you can play online.
Games set on Mars at a glance
Years are first full releases, with early access, remasters and ports noted; platforms list each game's main releases. Mars Rally Championship is first because it is ours; the rest follow the genre sections below.
| Game | Genre | Year | Platforms | What Mars is in it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mars Rally Championship Play | Rally driving | In development, 2026 | Browser, desktop and phone | A mechanic: 0.38 g and thin air, on invented terrain |
| Mars First Logistics | Transport sim | 2025 (early access 2023) | PC | Open ground for cargo runs |
| Take On Mars | Space sim | 2017 (early access 2013) | PC | The mission, from rover operator to colony |
| Doom 3 | Horror shooter | 2004 | PC; Xbox in 2005; PS4, Xbox One, Switch in 2019 | A research base overrun by Hell |
| Doom (2016) | Shooter | 2016 | PC, PS4, Xbox One; Switch in 2017 | A UAC facility, with trips into Hell |
| Red Faction: Guerrilla | Open-world shooter | 2009; Re-Mars-tered 2018 | PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch (Re-Mars-tered) | A colony in revolt, built to be wrecked |
| The Technomancer | Action RPG | 2016 | PC, PS4, Xbox One | A cut-off society ruled by water guilds |
| Moons of Madness | Cosmic horror | 2019 | PC; PS4, Xbox One in 2020 | A research base, not the moons |
| Fort Solis | Narrative thriller | 2023 | PC, PS5, Mac; Xbox Series X/S in 2025 | A mining station in 2080 |
| Waking Mars | Exploration platformer | 2012 | iOS, Android, PC, Mac, Linux | Caves full of invented alien life |
| Occupy Mars: The Game | Survival sandbox | 2026 (early access 2023) | PC | A hostile planet to settle |
| Surviving Mars: Relaunched | City builder | 2025 (original 2018) | PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S | A colony to keep alive |
| Per Aspera | Planetary strategy | 2020 | PC; Meta Quest 2 in 2023 | Real geography, from NASA's geographical data |
| Terraforming Mars | Digital board game | 2018 (board game 2016) | PC, Mac | A hex map to warm, flood and green |
Three of these reached their current form between September 2025 and January 2026: Mars First Logistics left early access, Surviving Mars: Relaunched replaced the 2018 game, and Occupy Mars reached version 1.0.
Mars Rally Championship: rally driving on Mars, in a browser
Our game, listed first for that reason. This is Mars Rally Championship's own site; everything below it is grouped by genre and judged on its merits.
Mars Rally Championship is a free 3D rally game that runs in a browser tab, with no download, no install and no account. You drive a pressurized rally rover against the clock on timed stages, race up to 8 pilots live on one stage, and can watch any leaderboard run rebuilt from its recorded inputs. It plays on a keyboard, a gamepad or a phone's touchscreen.
In this game, Mars is a mechanic. Gravity is 3.72 m/s², 0.38 g, and the air is 0.020 kg/m³, about 1.6% as dense as Earth's, so downforce is impossible at any speed. On loose regolith the rover needs about 125 metres and 9 seconds to stop from 100 km/h, roughly 2.4 times the distance on Earth gravel with the same tyres. What driving on Mars would actually feel like works through the rest.
Its geography is invented. The terrain is a hand-sculpted heightmap shaped to Martian morphologies, not a map of a real place, and no stage is a real Martian location. If real geography is what you want, Per Aspera has it and this game does not.
In-game screenshot: free roam by day, the rover small on a knoll away from both stages; the ground is sculpted to Martian morphologies, not mapped from a real place.
It is also small. Two stages are open: Stage 1, The Opener, at 1,164 metres, and Stage 2, The Long Run, at 2,306 metres, where a new pilot's first timed run starts. There is one rover and one handling model, with no story and no upgrades. It suits racing players who want Mars to change the driving rather than the scenery.
Play free — no downloadDriving and simulation games set on Mars
Games set on Mars are seldom about driving it. The two here are paid PC games on Steam, one a tinkerer's sandbox and one a space-programme sim; rover games sorted by what each one actually simulates are in our guide to Mars rover simulator games.
Mars First Logistics
Mars First Logistics is a transport simulation from Shape Shop, a Melbourne studio: you build a rover from parts to suit each load, then drive the cargo across Mars without dropping it. It went into early access in June 2023 and left it in September 2025. Mars is the open ground every delivery has to cross; the engineering is the game. It suits players who would rather tinker than race.
Take On Mars
Take On Mars, from Bohemia Interactive, starts you as a rover operator and runs through the first crewed mission to the foundations of a colony. It spent August 2013 to 9 February 2017 in Steam Early Access, and it is a Windows game. Mars is the job here: a programme to run, not a backdrop. It suits simulation players more than action players.
Action and shooter games set on Mars
In shooters, Mars is a battlefield, and the trouble usually starts with a corporation that dug too deep.
Doom 3 and Doom (2016)
Doom 3 and Doom (2016) are the Doom games where Mars is the main setting. Doom 3, from id Software in 2004, puts you in a Union Aerospace Corporation research base on Mars in 2145 as Hell breaks through, and plays as a slow horror shooter in dark corridors. Panic Button ported it to PS4, Xbox One and Switch in 2019.
Doom (2016) returns to a UAC facility on Mars, with trips into Hell, and plays as fast arena combat. It launched on PC, PS4 and Xbox One on 13 May 2016 and reached Switch in November 2017. In both, Mars is the backdrop for a demon invasion.
The original Doom (1993) is the one to flag: its first episode is set on Phobos and its second on Deimos, the two moons of Mars, before the third descends into Hell. The real pair, seen from the ground, is covered in what Phobos and Deimos look like from the surface of Mars.
Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered
Red Faction: Guerrilla is an open-world third-person shooter in which an insurgency on Mars fights the Earth Defense Force, 50 years after Volition's first Red Faction (2001), where miners rose against the Ultor Corporation. Its physics-based destruction takes buildings apart piece by piece. Guerrilla came out on PS3 and Xbox 360 in June 2009 and on PC that September; the Re-Mars-tered edition followed in 2018 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, and on Switch in July 2019. Mars is the backdrop; demolition is the point.
Story and horror games set on Mars
Mars stories run on isolation: a base gone quiet, a colony cut off, nobody close enough to help.
The Technomancer
The Technomancer (2016) is an action RPG from the French studio Spiders, set on a Mars cut off from Earth for decades, where guilds that control the water supply rule the planet. You play a Technomancer, a fighter with electrical powers, and settle quests by diplomacy, combat or trickery. It is on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, and follows Spiders' Mars: War Logs (2013). Its Mars is an invented future society, the most lived-in world on this list.
Moons of Madness
Moons of Madness (2019) is first-person cosmic horror on a working Mars base, whatever its title suggests. You are Shane Newehart, an engineer at a secret research installation, handling computers, electrical systems, rovers and solar panels until a routine day turns into a nightmare. Rock Pocket Games made it and Funcom published it, in the same universe as Funcom's Secret World Legends. It came out on PC in October 2019 and on PS4 and Xbox One in March 2020.
Fort Solis
Fort Solis (2023) is a narrative thriller at a Martian mining station in 2080, where an engineer, Jack Leary, arrives to answer an emergency alert. It runs on Unreal Engine 5, with Roger Clark and Troy Baker in the voice cast. It came out on PC and PS5 in August 2023, then on Mac, and on Xbox Series X/S in December 2025. It is cinematic and deliberately paced; players who want action should start with Doom.
Waking Mars
Waking Mars (2012), from Tiger Style, sends you by jetpack through caves beneath the Martian surface, where alien lifeforms behave as an ecosystem you learn to grow. It began on iOS in March 2012 and reached PC, Mac, Linux and Android that November. Its Mars is invented and alive, and it is the gentlest game here.
Survival and colony games set on Mars
In survival and colony games, Mars is the opponent, and air, water and power are the score.
Occupy Mars: The Game
Occupy Mars: The Game is an open-world survival sandbox about settling Mars, from Pyramid Games, inspired by the technologies and companies working to make humanity a multi-planet species. It left early access on 30 January 2026, almost exactly 1,000 days after entering it in May 2023, and version 1.0 added chemistry with rare minerals, new crops, vertical building and cooking. It is a PC game on Steam. Where the real companies and agencies stand is tracked in the race to land people on Mars.
Surviving Mars: Relaunched
Surviving Mars, the 2018 city builder from Haemimont Games and Paradox Interactive, is now sold as Surviving Mars: Relaunched. Paradox released it on 10 November 2025 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, as a remaster with all the earlier DLC and new systems such as Martian governance. The 2018 original can no longer be bought, though owners keep it. Mars is the colony's problem to solve, dome by dome; it suits anyone who already likes city builders.
Strategy games set on Mars
Strategy games pull back until Mars is a single map, and the question becomes what to do with all of it.
Per Aspera
Per Aspera (2020) casts you as AMI, an artificial consciousness ordered to terraform Mars for human colonisation, planning across the whole planet rather than one valley. Its Steam page says the map uses geographical data from NASA, so this is the real Mars where most games here invent one. Tlön Industries made it and Raw Fury published it, on PC in December 2020 and on Meta Quest 2 in February 2023.
Terraforming Mars
Terraforming Mars is the digital version of FryxGames' 2016 board game: rival corporations raise the planet's temperature, oxygen and oceans card by card, placing cities and greenery on a hex map of Mars. It has been on Steam for PC and Mac since 17 October 2018, and a Colonies expansion arrived there in January 2026. Mars is a board to redraw; it suits board-game players more than video-game ones.
Mars games by decade: a release timeline
Set on one time axis, the games on this list arrive in waves, and each decade has its own favourite kinds of game.
The 1990s: next door. The original Doom (1993) fought on the moons of Mars, not the planet.
The 2000s: shooters and horror. Martian Gothic: Unification (2000) put survival horror in a Martian base gone silent, with three characters who must never meet. Red Faction followed in 2001, then Doom 3 in 2004 and Red Faction: Guerrilla in 2009.
The 2010s: stories, sims and colonies. Jamestown (2011), a co-op shooter for up to four players on a 17th-century British colonial Mars, came first, then Waking Mars (2012), Mars: War Logs (2013), the 2016 Doom and The Technomancer, Take On Mars (2017), Surviving Mars and Terraforming Mars (both 2018) and Moons of Madness (2019).
The 2020s: planning and surviving. Per Aspera arrived in 2020 and Fort Solis in 2023. Then Mars First Logistics left early access and Surviving Mars: Relaunched launched in 2025, and Occupy Mars reached 1.0 in 2026.
Racing is the gap. Across three decades of games on this list, Mars Rally Championship, in development in 2026, is the only one that races.
Diagram: the guide's games by release year, from Doom on the moons of Mars in 1993 to 2026; the racing lane stays empty until Mars Rally Championship.
Where to try this
Mars Rally Championship is the one game on this list that starts from a link: it runs in the browser, free, with nothing to install. The game has no menu screen of its own, because the site is its menu.
Screenshot: the landing page's six mode tiles, from Mars Cup to Settings; the site is the game's menu, and the game itself has no menu screen.
- Start driving in your browser: free, with no download and no account.
- Explore in free roam, with no timer and no checkpoints.
- See both open stages before you pick one.
- Race up to 8 pilots live on one stage, as translucent rovers that never collide.
- Low-gravity games, where weaker gravity changes how a game plays.