Some impressions for Waking Mars:
The gameplay: You'll notice the tags on this one are all over the place. Action, Adventure, Puzzle, Platformer, Exploration, Metroidvania...I'd say that's not entirely accurate. How you play is by collecting "seeds" from various "plants" (the game mentions they're not exactly seeds and plants, but it'll be close enough for your purposes) and planting them elsewhere in various fertile spots. The puzzle is to get enough biomass (plant points) to open cerebranes (plant doors) to get to the next room(s.) It's tougher than it sounds since there are various plants whose sole existence seems to be based around fucking up your day. Some plants produce explosives and shoot their seeds all over the place, destroying plants. Some plants produce spores that change the acidity of the soil, destroying anything that might be planted there. And of course there's dripping acid and fireballs, because what puzzle game would be without dripping acid and fireballs?
If I had to frame the gameplay at all, it would be a puzzle game with strong resource management and light exploration elements. And it mostly works. The biggest frustration would be the physics of the floating seeds - getting them to fertile spots is like herding cats.
The story: The year is 2097. You play astronaut/botanist Dr. Liang Qi (or is that Qi Liang?) who is tasked with studying these plant things ("zoa") with the help of Dr. Amani Ronga, who is a computer engineer of some kind, and ART, a computer who had his speech patterns reverted to a build from the 2040s as a practical joke. At first, researching is exactly what you do - you get to experiment with the plants to fill out checklists like "diet" and "vulnerabilities," but, as with most games, things suddenly get more complex and you're forced to step outside the bounds of the original mission. It's not terribly deep, you don't get too far into the characterization of the protagonist and assistant, but they keep a nice balance between a personal and professional relationship, and the voices are well done. It's interesting that one of the major revelations is finding liquid water on Mars - something we found for real just this year - so the story is already partly obsolete in that regard.
The length: It took me 9 hours to finish the normal ending. There's a "special" ending but I'm not sure if I'm even gonna try for it. Getting enough points to open doors is easy. Getting maximum points varies from challenging to hard as shit, for reasons that aren't always your fault (if a floating plant gets hit by an errant drop of acid, say goodbye to 40 points.) so I'm sure if you're aiming for the "special ending" you can probably get a few more hours of mileage out of this game.
The graphics: Simple. Indie. Some better than others. Some of the animations are reminiscent of a latter-day Flash game. The character portraits are great. The landscapes can be repetitive, for obvious reasons. All the plants have a distinct look so it's never unclear just what you're dealing with. The only thing that's not always clear is the thickness of the doors. Sometimes it's hard to tell which level of biomass (how many stars' worth of points) you need to open them, so in that respect each level becomes "Okay, three stars, did I do it? Nope? Okay, moving on."
The verdict: It's currently on sale for 2 bucks on Steam. It's a neat little adventure with good puzzles. Is it worth that price? I'm inclined to say yes.
