Tharsis

Tharsis can never stop reminding you that you don't have control over its interstellar disaster, just the illusion of it. Every time I watched my ship fall apart, and every time I watched new events propagate across the ship that were completely impossible to stop, I felt like, win-or-lose, Tharsis was having all the fun.

Tharsis is a captivating but sadistic game of chance that puts your fate at the mercy of dice.

Tharsis is well made, but not well designed—an attractive, interesting board game idea, but only the first draft.

The thin storyline around it is entirely superfluous, I'll admit to tiring of the spaceship looking identical every single time I play and it's fair to say there's less motivation to keep on going back once you finally beat it, but even if you only get a few days out of it, right now the price is right.

Tharsis is a good way to spend 10-30 minutes to see what happens on the next journey. It's a very harsh battle against the unknown, and can be utterly soul-crushing. Perhaps too soul-crushing, actually. Players will, at times, feel so defeated and useless that playing again seems pointless. And maybe that's the point, considering the circumstances. I wouldn't recommend to marathon Tharsis in an attempt to complete its journey, but instead to boot it up every once in a while and hope for the best.

If you're a fan of constant raising stakes with no reprieve, then this is certainly the sort of thing that will appeal to you. Even if not, it will still appeal, but in smaller doses. Either way, Tharsis is a compelling, but polarizing, game.

We so very much wanted to enjoy Tharsis. A project with a lot of potential, we've had our eyes on it for a while. Unfortunately, the little satisfaction we could garner was buried beneath a path of frustration.

Tharsis has a surprisingly addictive quality, and tabletop fans who want to roll the dice on it should find it well-worth the launching sale price of $9.

There would be a good story to be had if Tharsis was developed to involve more than just trying to survive a few rounds. The theme of surviving on a spaceship and figuring out how to keep everything—and everyone—together should make for a good game. Unfortunately, Tharsis fails on too many points to be really worth playing.

Tharsis is a time-waster. Nonetheless it is a time-waster that's thoroughly recommended wasting time on - particularly good for fans of strategy and decision-based titles.