‘Mars Horizon 2: The Search For Life’ announced with a sweeping first trailer

Auroch Digital has revealed Mars Horizon 2: The Search For Life, a sequel that will challenge players with finding evidence of life in space.

A follow-up to 2020’s Mars Horizon, The Search For Life is a space management game that’s set to launch on PC in 2024.

While the first game tasked players with landing an astronaut on Mars, The Search For Life will go to “the farthest reaches of the Solar System” in a race to find evidence of alien life before rival spacefaring agencies can.

This will involve planning missions to search for anomalies, landing on planets, and managing the staff your agency employs. Players will also need to build bases on Earth, Mars and the Moon, and design rockets that are safe for their crew.

There will also be a number of narrative events that can “make or break” missions, along with more technical aspects like choosing the safest launch window for rockets and assessing each mission’s chances of failure.

Discussing the sequel, studio director Tomas Rawlings shared that Auroch Digital is “working closely with the world’s leading space experts to accurately portray the pioneering science used to seek life within the Solar System.”

Rawlings added that players will have the freedom to build an agency to their own preferences, and noted that “every facet of every feature in the game is underpinned by meticulous research.”

Mars Horizon 2: The Search For Life will be published by Secret Mode. Based in the UK, Secret Mode has previously published the likes of A Little To The Left, Dear Esther, and Little Orpheus.

“The vision and quality of Mars Horizon 2: The Search For Life by the immeasurably talented Auroch Digital team blew us away,” said Ed Blincoe, vice president of publishing at Secret Mode.

In other publishing news, Paradox Interactive will be helping Harebrainched Schemes launch The Lamplighters League, the studio’s next turn-based strategy.