Mars War: Logs is not a brilliant or even very good RPG, but it’s definitely interesting in a way that’s more appealing to me than most blockbuster fare. French eurojank purveyors Spiders released it in 2013 and, like most Spiders RPGs, it didn’t review particularly well. Nevertheless, some players seem to enjoy it after all these years, so I thought I’d boot it up.

I did sample it back in 2013 but was compelled to revisit after playing Greedfall: The Dying World recently. I didn’t love that new RPG, but after fifteen minutes spent with Mars I was completely in my element. This is neither fantasy or rote sci-fi, but something grittier, like a hard boiled ’80s prison film set in an apocalyptic future where everything is unaccountably much browner than a seventh-generation cover shooter. We’re on Mars, you see.