Tharsis
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Tharsis
Tharsis can never stop reminding you that you don't have control over its interstellar disaster, just the illusion of it. Every time I watched my ship fall apart, and every time I watched new events propagate across the ship that were completely impossible to stop, I felt like, win-or-lose, Tharsis was having all the fun.
Tharsis is well made, but not well designed—an attractive, interesting board game idea, but only the first draft.
Tharsis has a surprisingly addictive quality, and tabletop fans who want to roll the dice on it should find it well-worth the launching sale price of $9.
Tharsis is a captivating but sadistic game of chance that puts your fate at the mercy of dice.
We so very much wanted to enjoy Tharsis. A project with a lot of potential, we've had our eyes on it for a while. Unfortunately, the little satisfaction we could garner was buried beneath a path of frustration.
How you feel about Tharsis probably depends on how you feel about board games, soul-crushing challenges, and shorter gaming experiences. If you love tabletop games, repeatedly dying while learning, or heavily micro-managing resources, Tharsis is a worthwhile way to spend an evening.
Tharsis is a good way to spend 10-30 minutes to see what happens on the next journey. It's a very harsh battle against the unknown, and can be utterly soul-crushing. Perhaps too soul-crushing, actually. Players will, at times, feel so defeated and useless that playing again seems pointless. And maybe that's the point, considering the circumstances. I wouldn't recommend to marathon Tharsis in an attempt to complete its journey, but instead to boot it up every once in a while and hope for the best.
I'm sure the punishing difficulty and numerous unfair dice rolls will turn many gamers against Tharsis, and that's perfectly understandable. However, the reward of actually beating the game truly elevates my spirit. I can only hope that the developers will continue the story with another punishing round that occurs on the red planet itself.
