See those clouds in the screen grab? That’s the atmosphere at the half-way point on Mars. The goal is to terraform the place, making the red planet habitable for earthlings in this iPhone game by Alexander Winn. Throughout the game, your colony makes cultural and scientific breakthroughs, such as a musician composing a symphony. But the colony also suffers setbacks in the form of marsquakes and asteroids. As the decision maker, you have to deal with all of it.

Playing the game, I find myself making decisions that I hope will benefit the majority of people living in my little off-world settlement. But a lot of those choices come at a cost: corporations and lobbyists want to have a say in planetary policy, for example. Turns out I’m willing to give up quite a bit if it means I can build a new palladium mine to keep our ledgers in the black.

I love this game so much.