Short overview

"After Mars." is a literary narrative RPG with no combat, set in a fading town on Mars. Play as a junior Commissioner sent to investigate local cases through dialogue, evidence, disputes, and official reports. Decide what becomes truth in a place where history never fully ended.

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Not the Mars you expect

This is not a world of clean domes, heroic pioneers, and shiny sci-fi certainty.

Jazin is a Martian town built from extraction, patronage, revolution, and compromise. Its air is held by old infrastructure. Its politics are local, bitter, and unfinished. Its children draw history on the ground because there is no paper to waste. Above it all looms the Mammoth — a colossal burned machine that still decides too much.

Mars is not a frontier here. It is already lived in.

What you do

As a Commissioner, you are sent to review three local cases:

• a conflict over the fate of the Mammoth

• a dangerous contraction of the town’s safe zone

• a set of breathing complaints that official science dismisses

To resolve them, you will:

• speak with citizens, officials, workers, believers, and local eccentrics

• gather testimony, samples, records, and conflicting documents

• use disputes, warrants, and requests to the capital to make progress

• solve practical local problems, not just abstract mysteries

• decide what conclusions can be formally filed

Each case begins small. None of them stays that way.

A document-driven RPG

"After Mars." is built around narrative systems instead of combat systems.

You do not clear dungeons or chase loot. You read, compare, inspect, argue, classify, and report.

Core interactions include:

• Dialogue with branching responses and skill-gated options

• Disputes, where evidence and social leverage matter

• Warrants, used for practical interactions with the world

• Requests to the capital, which may return delayed answers

• Cases, which collect evidence and eventually become formal reports

• Conditions, time passage, and local routines that shape how the town is navigated

Your companion, CAR-TER, is not a voice in your head or a comic sidekick. It is a field terminal: part witness, part machine bureaucracy, always present when the town needs to be read, recorded, or argued with.

Key features

• A literary narrative RPG focused on writing, tone, and human contradiction

• No combat — progress comes through observation, dialogue, evidence, and choice

• Three interconnected main cases that unfold into a larger local crisis

• A distinctive Martian setting shaped by air cores, old infrastructure, and post-revolutionary culture

• A document-based structure where reports and classifications matter as much as discoveries

• A diegetic interface built around your terminal companion, CAR-TER

• Meaningful local politics without simple heroes or villains

• Exploration through atmosphere and detail, from counterfeit bird-sound devices to named town trees, regolith drawings, and shrinking district borders

• Choices that shape official truth, not just private morality

Tone

"After Mars." is melancholic, strange and humane. It is inspired by literary fiction and narrative RPGs that take people seriously.

It is about:

• what remains after ambition

• what survives after systems fail

• how institutions shape memory

• and how ordinary people keep living inside decisions they never got to make

Current state

The game is currently in development.

The narrative foundation, setting, and core systems are defined, and work is underway on prototype content, writing, visuals, and a vertical slice.

If the project speaks to you, please consider wishlistling, following updates, and joining the community.