I don’t know about you, but I still have nightmarish dreams about my first day at school. In hindsight, it’s not exactly the toughest thing one does in life, but neither is going to the dentist and that sucks too. What if no one likes you? What if the bully doesn’t like your face? What if you spill tomato sauce down your crisped school uniform? What if the world ends?
Mars Underground is a top down, 16-bit styled adventure game about one’s first day at school. But in a twist reminiscent of Majora’s Mask, or Groundhog Day, it’s your first day at school every day. Oh, and the world does actually end at the end of the day.
“Take experimental prescription drugs. Talk to a toilet. Get hit by a car. Humiliate yourself repeatedly. All in the name of figuring out what on earth is going on,” reads the Steam description. Not exactly a walk in the park then, but probably a bit easier than an actual first day at school.
It’s a narrative-driven affair developed by Australian studio Moloch Media. The Steam page insists that it won’t be testing your reflexes. But as that dreaded first day at school keeps on interminably looping, new possibilities and interactions emerge, and “with each cycle new items can be picked up and topics unlocked.”
Check out the trailer below. It launches on Steam tomorrow: