Surviving Mars is free-to-keep on Steam for a limited time

surviving mars below and beyond
(Image credit: Surviving Mars/Paradox Interactive)

Surviving Mars, the colony building sim about surviving on Mars, is free-to-keep on Steam right now. In this age of constant free game giveaways, it can sometimes feel like too much work to open the Steam client, search a game title and then click 'Add to Account'. But you can do it. I believe in you. Besides, Fraser loved it: "Surviving Mars is a lot of hard work, but managing a burgeoning colony never stops being compelling," he wrote in his review.

The offer lasts until September 8, and is well worth taking advantage of unless you already grabbed it free on the Epic Games Store a couple of years ago. Still, you could always own it twice.

It's a wise time for Paradox Interactive to give away the base game, because Surviving Mars' new Below & Beyond expansion released today. That lets you explore under the surface of Mars, boring tunnels, setting up underground bases, and hoping against hope that nothing collapses. It also introduces heaps of new buildings and resources, and looks quite cool

Shaun Prescott
Australian Editor

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.

Read more
Adventurers exploring a fantasy world
I missed this co-op open world base-builder when it first came out, but it's got over 10,000 positive Steam reviews and it's free to play all weekend
A screenshot of the listing of most-played games on the Epic Games Store, as of January 2024.
What's free on the Epic Games Store right now?
Company of Heroes 3
Company of Heroes 3 is free to try and 50% off, so it's the best time to check out the beefy 2.0 overhaul
A set of colored blocks representing an operating system under construction.
Zach-like automation puzzle game ABI-DOS is available on Steam for free
A city from 1800
One of the best city builders of the last decade is currently 90% off on Steam
Best Free Steam Games - Marvel Rivals - Black Widow aims down a sniper scope.
The best free games on Steam
Latest in City Builder
A citizen of a city
Cities: Skylines 2 celebrates 10 years of Cities with more nuanced homelessness and six new DLCs
doctors treat plague-stricken peasants in the medieval-ish city-builder Nested Lands
Nested Lands is a 'brutal' survival city-builder about guiding villagers through a plague-infested world, and you can play its open alpha right now
A medieval city
'It may seem like a whole new game': One of my favorite medieval city builders just got a huge update with a ton of new features
All Will Fall - A concrete and wood ramshackle city in the middle of an endless ocean
This 'physics-based survival city builder' stuffed all my favorite words into its title so I'm automatically psyched
People swimming in a pool and lying on floats
Planet Coaster 2 isn't the financial success that Frontier needed, according to a report, which means there's more pressure on Jurassic World Evolution 3 to bring in the big bucks
A flying city fighting off small airplanes
High-flying RPG city builder Airborne Empire has launched on Steam, and it's testing my balancing skills in more ways than one
Latest in News
Dwarf Fortress adventure mode art
After 23 years of making Dwarf Fortress, even its creator is still 'terrified' of drowning all his dwarves with heavy aquifers: 'Part of the problem is we are just not good at videogames'
A unique aspect of Japanese architecture turned out to be a key reason the Like a Dragon games can reuse assets so effectively—and deliver more compact, memorable open worlds than western cities
Pacific Drive Endless Expeditions spring 2025 update trailer still - a sexy, tricked-out 1980s station wagon being blasted with magic healing electricity
Pacific Drive developers change their mind: A year after refusing to give it mid-run saves, it's getting mid-run saves
Starfield's companion robot giving a thumbs-up
Former Bethesda dev who quit Starfield to go solo says it's 'much less stressful as an indie' without daily meetings or 'office politics': it's 'very refreshing to just care about the game'
Schedule I drug deal going down
Forget REPO, Monster Hunter Wilds and Assassin's Creed Shadows, Steam's current global top seller is an early access game about managing a drug empire
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 characters with their bodies replaced by skeletons, thanks to the KCD2 Skeleton mod.
Here's that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 mod that turns everyone into skeletons you asked for