JCB Pioneer: Mars

About

JCB Pioneer: Mars is a single player simulation game. It was developed by Atomicom and was released on September 1, 2017. It received negative reviews from players.

JCB Pioneer: Mars is a survival and construction game set on the red planet. Players must manage their resources, build bases, and explore the Martian terrain using heavy machinery from JCB. The ultimate goal is to help establish a human presence on Mars while battling the harsh environmental conditions and other challenges.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player

Skip User Reviews

40%

Audience ScoreBased on 95 reviews

graphics4 positive mentions

grinding6 negative mentions

The game has a great concept and offers a realistic Mars simulation experience with immersive graphics.
Players appreciate the potential for exploration and resource management, finding the gameplay engaging despite its challenges.
The developers have shown responsiveness to community feedback, indicating a commitment to improving the game over time.

The game has been abandoned by its developers, leaving it in an unfinished and buggy state with no updates for years.
Many players report severe technical issues, including crashes, poor optimization, and frustrating gameplay mechanics that hinder progress.
The lack of a proper tutorial and unclear objectives make it difficult for new players to understand how to play effectively.

story
26 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
12%
76%
12%
The game's story revolves around a survival mission on a harsh, stormy planet, where players must navigate a series of complex tasks to restore a habitat and build a colony. While the setting and premise offer potential for immersion, many players report significant bugs and issues that disrupt mission progress and overall gameplay, detracting from the narrative experience. Despite these challenges, the game features a variety of missions and a trade interface that contribute to the overarching theme of interplanetary colonization, though the execution often feels like an extended tutorial rather than a fully realized story.
- “But the originality is there, and both the impressive setting and complex story allow you to completely immerse yourself in the moment of the game.”
- “Your mission is no longer to collect planetary data, but to survive.”
- “This game is your typical survival/base building game with the twist that you are a pioneer in a partly failed mission to build a colony ready to receive people on a Mars-type planet.”
- “The game itself had potential, but after 3 years of no updates to fix the bugs, items, weather, or the broken storyline, it is also missing the promised music.”
- “One element that adds to the chaos of this quest for survival is the ambiguity of directions.”
- “There's also refining, very basic trading, and a large number of missions that make the whole game seem like an extended tutorial, as they direct you through building up basically everything from scratch.”
gameplay
26 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
12%
76%
12%
The gameplay is a mix of survival and base-building mechanics, offering around 35 hours of fun, particularly in resource gathering and vehicle upgrades, though it can feel repetitive and lacks depth compared to other titles in the genre. Players have noted issues with crashes and clunky mechanics, especially in digging, and while the core gameplay is solid, it currently suffers from limitations and a lack of content, leading to a somewhat abrupt ending. Overall, the game shows promise but requires significant improvements to fully realize its potential.
- “But there is still a fair amount of gameplay (I played for about 35 hours) and it's a lot of fun.”
- “The basic gameplay is similar to most survival-crafting games: find resources, take them back to your base, and turn them into stuff to either help you survive or allow you to more efficiently make better stuff.”
- “No handholding; I had to watch a couple of YouTube videos to find things and generally work the gameplay out, but now I've started I can't stop - one of those games that you think about when you're not playing, so you can try different things next time.”
- “If you just want a few days of gameplay, driving around on Mars, and gathering resources for buildings, and upgrading your equipment, then this game may be for you - but be aware that it ends abruptly, which feels kind of disappointing when you do not expect it.”
- “The gameplay itself is fine; however, I am getting a lot of fatal errors causing the game to crash.”
- “At the moment, it seems more like being a building/exploring game, but with limitations to content, too much handholding, and lots of grinding and silly obstacle-dodging in gameplay.”
graphics
14 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
29%
50%
21%
The graphics of the game receive mixed reviews, with some praising the overall visual quality and stability, while others criticize specific elements like landscapes and jagged textures. The use of Unreal Engine 4 allows for a range of graphical settings, and while the futuristic models are well-designed, certain environments, particularly lava caves, are noted as poorly executed. Overall, the game features impressive graphics but has areas that could benefit from improvement.
- “A graphically lovely looking game with a challenging environment to master.”
- “The graphics are great; this game has completely taken me by surprise.”
- “Vehicle and building models look suitably rugged and realistically futuristic -- no crazy pulsing plasma fields and black-hole generators -- though the giant holographic-style 3D printers and the nano-rifle are perhaps a bit of a stretch.”
- “I would say the landscapes should also be totally redone graphically; they are crappy compared to most. Everywhere you travel, you’ll see jagged lines in all the rocks, very poorly made, and the lava caves are terrible.”
- “While the graphics are not astonishing, the overall aspect of the terrain is what you could expect from a Martian-type planet surface, apart from the obviously shaped bridges and tunnels that allow you to pass through mountain ranges.”
- “Poor visuals.”
grinding
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players find the grinding aspect of the game to be tedious and frustrating, often feeling overwhelmed by repetitive tasks such as resource gathering and building repairs. Issues with inventory management and performance further exacerbate the grind, leading to a less enjoyable experience. While there are hints of future updates that may alleviate some of this grind, current gameplay is heavily criticized for its lack of efficiency and excessive manual labor.
- “Seems like a good game, just can't get past the grindiness of it.”
- “I was repairing all buildings as I do every damn time I get back, which by the way is just plain tedious.”
- “At the moment it seems more like being a building/exploring game, but with limitations to content, too much handholding, and lots of grinding and silly obstacle-dodging in gameplay.”
stability
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game's stability is heavily criticized, with users reporting numerous bugs and glitches that significantly hinder gameplay. Many players express frustration over the unfinished state of the game, citing issues like sound problems and excessive environmental effects. While some appreciate the concept, they recommend waiting for improvements before purchasing.
- “Avoid this game; it is unfinished, extremely lacking in content, and buggy as hell. It feels abandoned!”
- “Very soon you'll discover that this game is way too buggy and frustrating.”
- “There are way too many glitches; I had to restart like five times just to get the sound to work. I know it's early access, but there are too many issues for me to keep it. I'm getting a refund and maybe I'll try again later when they fix some of this.”
atmosphere
5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
60%
40%
The game's atmosphere is praised for its immersive design, effectively capturing the unique conditions of Mars, including its low-density atmosphere and environmental challenges. Players appreciate the clean visuals and detailed modeling of vehicles and the planet, contributing to an overall engaging experience.
- “The game is clean, the vehicle and planet modeling is cool, and the atmosphere is great.”
- “Great atmosphere.”
- “It's not Mars - Mars is deadly cold, has dust storms, and the atmosphere isn't dense enough to shield you from cosmic and solar radiation.”
- “The habitat appears to be a gumdrop spaceship design, which seems reasonable for the atmosphere on Mars.”
music
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
25%
75%
The game's music is described as sparse yet well-produced, with an initial loading track reminiscent of "2001: A Space Odyssey." However, players express disappointment over the lack of promised music and the limited variety, noting only one additional ambient track.
- “The initial loading music reminds me of something from 2001: A Space Odyssey, with slow light melodies interspersed with deep reverberating booms.”
- “The game itself had potential, but after 3 years of no updates to fix the bugs, items, weather, or the broken storyline, it is also missing the promised music.”
- “The game has very sparse music, but it's well produced and fits well.”
- “I noticed only one other ambient background music track.”
optimization
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
25%
75%
The game's optimization has received largely negative feedback, with users reporting significant bugs, performance issues, and poor graphics quality. While some players did not experience graphical performance problems, many noted that the game runs hot and suffers from inadequate optimization overall.
- “I didn't encounter any graphical performance issues while running the game, but it did run rather hot.”
- “Very poorly optimized graphics; vsync won't work properly.”
- “Performance is pretty poor.”
- “Bugs, performance issues, and lack of content, right?”