This theme park sim based on a 30-year-old sci-fi movie is so much better than it has a right to be

Before billionaires decided they'd quite like to transform Mars into a tax haven, the red planet was pretty cool. The disgustingly youthful among you might not even remember its heyday. It really peaked in 1996, when Tim Burton and Jonathan Gems created Mars Attacks!, a B-movie pastiche based on the ancient TCG.

OK, maybe I'm rewriting history a wee bit here. Mars Attacks! largely bombed, likely not helped by the fact that it launched in the same year as Independence Day. But it was fun and weird and probably gave a few people nightmares after it grafted Sarah Jessica Parker's head onto her dog's body.

Fast forward three decades and Mars Attacks! doesn't have much of a legacy, despite its exceptional cast—Jack Nicholson, Glen Close, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Michael J Fox, to name but a few—and its cult status. At least until now, because it's finally getting a videogame adaptation, Mars Attracts.

Open for business

Developer Outlier has smartly avoided going down the simplest route that so many adaptations have sauntered down before: a by-the-numbers action game. Instead, we're getting Mars Attracts—a tongue-in-cheek theme park management romp. And having played the early access build—which you'll be able to check out for yourself on September 16—I'm surprised. Impressed, even! Mars Attracts is a good time.

Like that Twilight Zone episode where astronauts get trapped in an alien zoo, Mars Attracts tasks you with the important work of filling new theme parks with disgusting human attractions for diminutive Martian families to enjoy. This is not a respectable zoo however; these critters aren't going to be treated very well.

At first it all seems above board. Grab some humans from across time, build enclosures for them that match their historical time period, and provide them with a mix of necessities and luxuries to keep them happy. I'd be down for this. Just stick me in front of a PC with a trough of poutine by my side and I'll be happy.

But Martians are inquisitive. They want to know what makes humans tick. And that's where the experiments come in. Though can we really call dismembering humans in front of an audience an experiment? We can if it's on Mars, where regulations seem incredibly lax.

While Mars Attracts is not a million miles away from games like Planet Zoo or Planet Coaster, the Two Point series is a much closer relative. There's a bit less flexibility and complexity, but a lot more silliness.

The Martians aren't the only ones getting a kick out of watching humans being tortured. Hovering over the enclosure and watching an ancient Roman being beaten up by a boxing machine for science is, I can assure you, an excellent lunchtime diversion.

Putting on a show

Outlier's clearly had a lot of fun with its human test subjects, and even when they aren't being spliced with animals or carved up into pieces, they're a delight to watch. When I mentioned that trough of poutine earlier, I wasn't just trying to summon a long-held dream into existence. Mars Attracts really makes its humans eat out of troughs. Their humiliation is our entertainment.

New human subjects are abducted during expeditions, but decor can also be grabbed from different time periods, which can be placed in enclosures to keep the humans happy. Sure, you can make them sleep on what looks like a cold surgical bed, but they might be less inclined to escape and trash your beautiful park if you get them a comfy Roman lectus.

These experiments generate scientific knowledge—split into chemistry, physics and biology—which can then be turned into new rides and amenities for your burgeoning park in the research menu. Which is, I'm sure you'll agree, a lot more fun than just hiring a scientist and telling them to research something.

You can also dissect humans, which obviously leaves you with one less human in your stable. These fatal surgeries yield specimens, which can be spent on discovering new rides in the workshop—essentially it's a second research system with its own discrete menu.

Sadly you do not get to see the show, and I'm not really sure why dissections couldn't be part of the experiment system, since they largely achieve the same goals. They really should have been bundled together in a single research screen.

There were other moments of unwelcome friction during my tenure as theme park CEO, too, like the speed at which buildings degrade, requiring a janitor to come and fix them, which means they're not spending time cleaning up Martian puke or emptying the bins.

Warehouse woes

Shops and human food sources also need to be continually restocked by porters, who can be assigned to either human or Martian storage facilities. But the porters never seem to completely fill them up, and they deplete rapidly, reducing the contentment of the human exhibits and Martian visitors.

It's an extra micromanagement step that feels unnecessary, though these wrinkles—along with other more welcome ones—do make staff hiring decisions more important, and I do like having to think for a second about who I'm welcoming into our theme park family rather than just grabbing the cheapest candidate.

See, a lot of your prospective employees have positive and negative traits. So for porters you'll want some fast walkers, as they'll be able to keep your amenities stocked at a faster rate. Some traits are even more beneficial, like a scientist who might count as two scientists, allowing you to conduct experiments that normally demand more staff, or an employee who reduces the wages of all workers of that type.

For the most part, the broad park management elements are solid and serviceable, but they are dramatically elevated by the premise, with your human captives worming their way into every aspect of Mars Attracts—in turn making even basic features feel novel. Unlocking a new shop in most theme park sims is a forgettable experience, but when you've paid for that shop with the pain of a human getting electrocuted it's weirdly satisfying.

You can even plonk down objects that run continual experiments just for fun, like a table full of human food that quickly reveals itself to be a cruel trap, grabbing the diners with metal tentacles and generally making their lunch deeply unpleasant. These objects exist purely to entertain guests and torment humans.

Maybe I'm just a terrible person.

But I'm a terrible person who has played a lot of theme park sims, and even in early access it's clear that Mars Attracts is one of the good ones.