Mars Attracts: I never expected to see this licence again, and it returns running a theme park

Mars Attacks is one of those things you see as a child, file away in a corner of your head, and never expect to meet again. The exposed brains, the transparent helmets, the ack ack ack, and the idea that an alien invasion might above all be a matter of deliberate bad taste.

Thirty years on, the licence returns. As a theme park management game. On Mars.

I do not know whose idea this was, but it works.

The reversal

You are not defending Earth. You play the Martians, and you build a leisure empire.

The principle is simple and frankly cruel: you abduct humans from across history to display them in customisable enclosures, for the entertainment of curious Martian guests.

You can study humanity in its natural habitat, or subject it to whatever twisted experiments you can imagine.

That is exactly the film's tone: no grandiose cruelty, just a cheerful and perfectly polite indifference. The game never asks whether this is right. It asks whether it is profitable.

The management game underneath

And there is a real one, which was not guaranteed.

You are the Martian CEO. You build human enclosures, death-defying rides and amenities, and you will not last long if you cannot turn a profit.

You cater to your guests' diverse needs by unlocking merch stalls, food vendors and colourfully gruesome decorations. You manage supply chains by assigning porters. You balance the books with loans and fine-grained pricing through a detailed financial system.

And you have to win the approval of a colourful Martian board by completing optional missions and passing park inspections.

The part I find most successful concerns the abductions. Humans come from every era, from Ancient Rome to the Wild West, each with their own traits and preferences. So you accumulate knowledge about each period in order to build the perfect enclosure, the one where the occupant never suspects for a second that they left Earth.

It is zoo management applied to us, and that is where the game's real comedy lives: the care you take in making a cage convincing.

What 1.0 brings

The game had been in early access since September 2025, at 24.50 euros, and leaves it today after a year of development fed by feedback.

The full version adds a sandbox mode, heavily requested by players, a new human enclosure, a new map and a special Martian character, alongside substantial balancing work and an overhaul of the red planet's soundscape.

And the reception is excellent: 194 positive reviews out of 211, roughly 92 per cent.

What to know

My reservation belongs to every park game: the loop runs out once everything is unlocked, and sandbox mode arrives precisely for that. It is a good answer, but it is an answer, not a solution.

And you have to like the licence's humour. The game owns the bad taste, the gruesome decorations and the management logic applied to caged human beings. If that register makes you uncomfortable rather than making you laugh, no mechanic will rescue it.

But for the return of a licence absolutely nobody was waiting for, seeing Mars Attacks come back as a competent management game rather than a rushed rail shooter is a far better surprise than anybody could have hoped for.

Who did you abduct first? We compare collections on the InsertCoins Discord.