Surviving Mars is just that, a survival game. Players must create and maintain a Martian colony by constantly researching new tech, gathering and processing resources, and keeping colonists happy. It's a lot to do all on its own, even without Surviving Mars lacking multiplayer or combat.

With one of the major goals of Surviving Mars being to house people on the colony, players obviously need a lot of colonists. These are drawn from a pool of applicants, but there are seldom as many applicants available as players need. Here are a few methods for increasing the number of applicants available to players.

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The Applicant Pool

At the start of the game, the player chooses a Sponsor for the Martian colony, and the choice of Sponsor dictates the size of the applicant pool. This is a grouping of applicants available, and it replenishes over time. This is the main way to get applicants, but it's random and takes time to fill. Players must worry about moving Surviving Mars colonists to the proper jobs once they get to Mars, but first they need the right applicants for those jobs, which means filling the pool with specialized applicants is better than waiting.

surviving mars colonist

"Live From Mars"

An early game technology called "Live From Mars" creates a televised broadcast of progress back on Earth. This attracts more applicants, but it's still a steady trickle, and nothing impressive in the long run.

Completing Objectives

Each Sponsor has specific objectives to accomplish, whether this be obtaining a certain amount of certain resources or other milestones, sometimes with a time limit. Completing some of these objectives will cause a specialized, bulk group of applicants to appear on Earth. These are not the applicants that will be put to work dealing with waste rock, these are the ones who will have dedicated, specialized jobs on Mars. It's a great way to get a boost at any stage of the game.

Playing as Blue Sun

Choosing the Blue Sun Corporation as the Sponsor for the colony grants a unique action: buying applicants. After all, it's a big company, so players can straight up pay for a talent pool. With enough money, players can match Cities Skylines' impressive population stats.

Phasing Out Applicants

While applicants are the major source of new Martians at first, they are not the best Martians overall. Martianborn colonists should be the ultimate goal for any player, as they grow to be significantly more useful and resilient than applicants eventually. They may not match the same supernatural power level of other Paradox Interactive titles like the player crisis of Stellaris, but in the end Martianborn should still be taken over applicants.

Surviving Mars is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

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