After a long and prosperous voyage originally pioneered by Auroch Digital and The Irregular Corporation, Secret Mode is excited to announce that the original Mars Horizon is returning home to roost, with the publishing rights for the hit space management game transferring over to Secret Mode on all platforms.
For those of you looking for more updates about Auroch Digital and Secret Mode’s next venture – Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life, work on the much-anticipated sequel is progressing along at faster-than-light speeds, with new info expected to drop soon™. In fact, eagle-eyed astronomer types may have noticed that there’s been a few new tidbits to pore over on the game’s official Steam page. Check out the latest developer update for more and stay tuned for further updates in the very near future.
Mars Horizon is available on PC (Steam, GOG, EGS), PlayStation®4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch
Tess and John from Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life were joined by European Space Agency experts, Alexia Mallet, Modelling and Simulation Engineer, and Pantelis Poulakis, Mission Project Manager discussing the risks and challenges with missions to Mars and how this real science translates to Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life.
DTFest's Event - Mars Horizon 1 and 2 Panel with ESA 🚀👨🏻🚀
The European Space Agency Panel - It’s Just Rocket Science – Risk in Real Life and in Games 🚀👨🏻🚀
As part of Digital Tabletop Fest 4: Roll of the Dice, Tess and John from Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life are joined in an exclusive panel by Alexia Mallet, Modelling and Simulation Engineer, and Pantelis Poulakis, Mission Project Manager, from the European Space Agency (ESA).
Our guests will discuss a range of topics from the on-going mission to find life on Mars, and how real-life rocket science (and its challenges) play a part in the game design of Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life. Mark your calendars - this is one you don’t want to miss!
📆 Date: Sunday 10th March
⏰ Time: 7:00am PT | 10:00am PT | 1:00pm PT
Panelists
Moderators
John O'Donnell - Lead Designer at Auroch Digital - He/Him
Win a bunch of our games to celebrate our birthday 🎂🎉
Enter the Auroch Digital 13th Birthday giveaway 🎂
It’s Auroch Digital’s 13th birthday! 🎂 It’s been a wild and wonderful 13 years, we grown loads in that time, learned a lot, and released a load of great games. Check out our recent Birthday Blog Post to learn more about the history of our studio and what we’ve been up to over the years. 🎉
To celebrate the fact that our studio is now old enough to have it’s own Steam account, we are doing a giveaway to our loyal Aurochnauts. Enter our giveaway and you could win a digital bundle of a bunch of Auroch Digital games from over the years.
The Auroch Digital Birthday Bundle prize includes:
But how do you enter this awesome Auroch Digital birthday giveaway? 🥳 All you need to do is sign up to our official Auroch Digital newsletter. We will be randomly selecting one lucky person, who is signed up to receive our monthly Auroch Digital newsletter, to win the Auroch Digital Birthday Bundle prize as a thank you for supporting us.
The Auroch Digital Newsletter comes out around the end of each month and is full of all the latest news about our studio including new game announcements, launches, beta and alpha invites, giveaways, jobs at the studio, as well as loads more exciting news. So by signing up you’ll get to stay up to date with all of our great goings, as well as be in with a chance to win the Auroch Digital Birthday Bundle prize.
Ts and Cs
The giveaway closes on 26th October at Midnight so make sure to sign up before then to be in with a chance to win. Please see here the giveaway terms and conditions. You can see the Auroch Digital Privacy Policy here for more info: Auroch Digital Privacy Policy
We’re partnering with the European Space Agency for Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life!
Hey everyone, we hope you’re having a great August so far!
If you're one of those space lovers, you might have seen that the European Space Agency (ESA) are at Gamescom this year, which seems like a fitting time to let you all know that we are partnering with them once more for Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life!
The European Space Agency is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
We are going to be working with the folks at ESA to make sure we can bring authenticity and real-world science into our sequel to Mars Horizon. As the sequel focuses on The Search for Life, we are excited to talk to them about biosignature detection, sample return, and much more. Their partnership ensures that we can create an authentic game in Mars Horizon 2, as we did with the first!
We are excited to announce that we are supporting WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation for World Oceans Day!
The WDC World Oceans Day Sale starts today and runs until 15th June, 10am PDT 2023, and you can save a fin-tastic 50% off Mars Horizon 1! We will also donate 20% of our net profits to WDC to support their conservation work.*
Photo credit: Christopher Swann
WDC, Whale and Dolphin conservation is the leading global charity dedicated to the protection and conservation of whales and dolphins.
Their expert-led teams in the UK, Europe, the Americas, and Australasia work across the whole spectrum of threats, from climate breakdown to accidental entanglements in fishing gear. They bring together, and work hand-in-hand with, businesses, philanthropists, scientists, NGOs, governments and grassroots communities to find solutions to the problems faced by whales and dolphins.
Their aim is to reverse the global decline in whale and dolphin populations by:
Stopping cruelty from deliberate harms such as whaling and captivity.
Creating safe seas, free from the threat of pollution, collisions with vessels and accidental entanglement in fishing gear.
Winning recognition of whales and dolphins as sentient, socially complex beings, and our allies in the fight against climate and nature breakdown.
Whales and dolphins are awe-inspiring. They are intelligent beings, vital for the health of the ocean and planet. They have suffered from terrible harm - deliberate and accidental - and their homes and populations are under threat. But it's not too late.
Together we can still help them recover and flourish and they can help us reconnect with the wild, and repair the damage we have caused.
Thank you for joining us and for supporting WDC! 🐳
*20% of our net developer revenue from this sale will support WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation. Whale and Dolphin Conservation is a UK registered charity (no. 1014705)
You, our community, are the driving force behind Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life. Without you, there would be no sequel to the first Mars Horizon. You all gave us such good feedback on our first game - from the alpha to the full release, and all the surveys in between.
So that's why we'd like to ask for your input once more. We're currently running a survey where we’re looking for answers on what you would like to see in our new game Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life. We will also be asking about your gaming habits, and what you thought about Mars Horizon 1.
This survey will only take around 5 minutes of your time, maybe less, and they help us so much! To say thank you for your time, one lucky entrant will be selected to win a £25 Steam voucher, make sure you give us your email to be able to be entered!
Entries will close Monday 15th May 2023 at 11.59pm BST.
Learn more about what Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life is going to be about, what the “search for life” means, how it will differ from the first Mars Horizon, what’s going to be bigger and better, and listen as the devs explain what they are most excited about.
Tess and John have so much more that they can’t wait to share with you, but for now you can listen to this more-in-depth discussion on what’s already been announced 🚀
Make sure to check out the rest of Digital Tabletop Fest: Blood and Dice - there's other great let's plays as well as some brilliant panels. Alongside this you can get great deals on a whole host of games.
🔴 PANEL: 🩸 Blood on the Cards: Conflict and Competition in Card Games 🃏
🩸 Blood on the Cards: Conflict and Competition in Card Games 🃏
Card games boast a huge array of types of gameplay from solo to cooperative - but many of the most famous uses of card games are for play that brings the participants into competition and conflict! What is it about encapsulating some symbols, possibly rules, perhaps some lore and sometimes a cool image that lends itself so well to games that result in metaphorical blood on the table? In this panel, we'll explore why card game make such good competitive play and why there's such a sweet feeling to ending a game-based conflict with a flush of cards that results in a total win!
Mars Horizon 2 coming 2024 🚀 wishlist our space agency management game sequel
Hello Aurochnauts!
Long time no speak, but for good reason. We’ve been quietly getting our heads down over at Auroch Digital and have been working on our brand-new game we think you’re going to like the sound of...
Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life is an authentic space management game where you take on the role of the head of a space agency on your mission to Search for Life. Building on the journeys you took in Mars Horizon, next you will become a multiplanetary space agency that is equipped to take on the ultimate question; the search for life in our solar system. Search for evidence across the solar system to prove there’s life on other planets. Manage your staff, build your bases, design and launch rockets, and plan missions. You’ll be writing a new space history every time you play.
Following on from Mars Horizon where you were able to re-write history, now you’re going to be making history. Will you be the first to find evidence of life out there?
Mars Horizon was published by the amazing people at Irregular Corporation. Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life will be published by Secret Mode. Us at Auroch Digital want to say a huge thanks to the team at Irregular Corporation for helping us to launch Mars Horizon and supporting us to where we are now and beyond!
