Last updated on January 4th, 2026 at 02:20 am
Terraforming Mars – Board Game Review
Terraforming Mars is a Board/Strategy game from Twin Sails Interactive, first launched in 3rd December 2019.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 7,172+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Terraforming Mars Stand Out
CREATE LIFE ON MARS
Lead a corporation and launch ambitious Mars terraforming projects. Direct massive construction works, manage and use your resources, create cities, forests and oceans, and set rewards and objectives to win the game!
In Terraforming Mars, place your cards on the board and use them wisely:
- Achieve a high Terraform Rating, by increasing the temperature and oxygen level or creating oceans… Make the planet habitable for future generations!
- Get Victory Points by building cities, infrastructure and other ambitious projects.
- But watch out! Rival corporations will try to slow you down… That's a nice forest you planted there… It'd be a shame if an asteroid crashed right on it.
Will you be able to lead humanity into a new era? The terraforming race begins now!
Features:
• The official adaptation of Jacob Fryxelius' famous board game.
• Mars for all: Play against the computer or challenge up to 5 players in multiplayer mode, online or offline.
• Game variant: Try the rules of the Corporate Era for a more complex game. With the addition of new cards, including 2 new corporations, focused on economy and technology, you will discover one of the most strategic variants of the game!
• Solo Challenge: Finish terraforming Mars before the end of generation 14. Try new rules and features in the most challenging Solo mode on the (red) planet.
DLCs:
• Speed up your game with the Prelude expansion, adding a new phase at the start of the game to specialize your corporation and boost your early game. It also introduces new cards, corporation and a new solo challenge.
• Explore a new side of Mars with the new Hellas & Elysium expansion maps, each bringing a new set of twists, awards and milestones. From the Southern Wilds to the Other Face of Mars, the taming of the Red Planet continues.
• Add the Venus board to your game, with a new Solar phase to hasten your games. With new cards, corporations and resources, shake up Terraforming Mars with the Morning Star!
Languages available: French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Swedish
Having an issue? Looking for support? Please contact us: https://asmodee.helpshift.com/
Find all the latest news for Terraforming Mars on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TwinSailsInt
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TwinSailsInt
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/twinsailsinteractive
© Twin Sails Interactive 2019. © FryxGames 2016. Terraforming Mars™ is a trademark of FryxGames. Developed by Artefact Studio.
This Board game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Terraforming Mars is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 12th November 2025
Recent improvements include:
BUG FIXES
- Fixed generation counter getting stuck at “2” after the 2nd generation
- Fixed load game failure (stuck at 99%)
- Fixed Mars surface blurry/shiny in medium visual setting
- Fixed Thorgate display issue
- Fixed Recyclon/Pharmacy Union display issue
- Fixed Helion display issue
- Fixed achievement "Birth of Venus" resets at game launch
- Fixed achievements pop up appearing when unlocking an achievement you already have
- Fixed Done button can't be clicked on if you scroll down in Filters (online)
- Fixed Artificial Photosynthesis #115 using "/" instead of "OR"
- Fixed ressource production cards iconography consistency
- Fixed Decomposers #131/Ecological Zone #128 iconography consistency
- Fixed "+" signs missing on some cards
- Fixed Crash Site Cleanup #X17 playable if someone's Plant production is lowered without any Plants subtracted
- Fixed "Minus X" Ressource wrongfully displayed as costs in Action cards
- Fixed various UI issues
Download & Availability
Terraforming Mars is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Terraforming Mars on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We truly love this game here and on Steam. They fixed the bugs.
This is a fantastic video game adaptation of a truly amazing board game. We strongly recommend both.
An outstanding digital version of the board game. Only minor complaint is we wish the AI was a bit more challenging, as we mostly play local games so we have more flexibility time wise when playing a game.
When the game works its great but it often crashes or freezes.
Please fix this wonderful game. It doesnt give credit for all science tags. This has been a problem for months.
So. We know that the game is a highly rated game. However we do not have the physical board game and dont already know how to play. What luck for us there is a tutorial. However the tutorial is broken. Many times we have encountered next step buttons that are trapped below dialogs and as such are inaccessible. Therefore we can only get so far and then not finish. Of course we can and will learn the game from the docs just as we would from the physical game. But for a paid product that has been shipped as complete this is a very bad look for the publisher. Please make an effort to do some quality control on a product before charging money for it. We do not intend to pay you to do your work for you.
A minor version bump makes in progress games incompatible? Come ondo better. UI is too focused on being video game-y rather than being clear. Needs more state of the union views. Needs an undo button.
Overall the app is better than the board game but from time to time on updates the app doesnt work properly.
No longer able to add/change number of heat to credits more than one. No +- option. Sad to work up that heat to only be able to change ONE heat to ONE credit! Please fix.
The lastest version added multiple bugs. Ive had a few crashed games. Also many cards that let you do things like turn heat production into money production and turn electricity into money dont work. They only let you change one instead of as many as you want. We also ended up with a blank card list stuck over the screen and had to force quit. Overall the game is only ok otherwise. The UI is super clunky.
Its only allowing us to use only 1 Sulphur Eating Bacteria to get just 3 MC. Before, we were allowed to use more than one in one turn. What happened? Please fix it.
The most recent update fixed a bunch of stuff, but broke sulphur eating bacteria so you can only remove one microbe per activation. It also kicks you out of the screen if you tap too much on the resource arrow when trying to pay for a card after trying to play it.
Get this game at your own risk. Youre going to be buying a game with bugs and soft locks issues, like the tutorial. Dont believe the patch lists. Its lies. Music is good. The only thing good about it.
The one we noticed is Mars University. It worked just fine for exchanging a card when we played it, but it didnt work on any later science cards.
We really enjoy the game and would give it a full 5 stars, but the latest version (2.8.2) is a bit buggy at the moment. Still worth the price of admission.
An otherwise amazing way to play the game is somewhat ruined by bugs that miss cards and tally tags incorrectly.
Newest update out for only 4 hours and the game is now unplayable online. You can play the local/solo but you cant login to your account and you cant play online games. No posts or support available. Seems to happen with every update.
We own the boardgame and have owned the digital game for years. Solo play is pretty good with few issues. Multiplayer is a mess. Multiplayer bugs include: 1. Games in progress are lost when there is an update 2. The game is horribly slow to connect to servers and update in async games. You will get a turn notice, pull up the app, and literally wait 5 minutes for the game to connect to the servers. Closing and ending process, then reloading, is faster. You are stuck like this any time you switch out of the app and come back. 3. Turns may or may not register and save. Its common to have to retake your turn, especially in the card choosing phase. 4. Chat is bugged and shows chats out of sequence or endlessly repeating. 5. Loading your in-progress game from the main menu gets increasingly slow the further you are in the game. Its ridiculously slow in late game. This is pure developer inefficiency. 6. For end game scoring, As soon as anyone looks at their score and quits, its gone for everyone and the rest dont get to see the end scores. 7. Some complete or forfeited games stay on your list and cant be removed. Ive had several finished games on our list for a week now. It ignores the forfeit button so they cant be cleared. Many of the listed issues have been known and posted on forums for years. As much as we want to give TM digital 5 stars, we cant due to the MP bugs.
This is a fun and ambitious implementation of an amazing game. We only play the local version versus hard AIs; we have fun but we are finding the AIs weak and predictable. They dont really deviate from their usual strategy, and worse, they dont know how to time their moves optimally. For instance, they will spend their first turns gaining card resources that they can get later, while we get the chance to put our tiles down in prime spots. But the most disappointing part of the app is that twice in the last few month, we have reported errors in card implementation. For example, we played Protected Habitats and immediately got our animals stolen in the next turn. We get a response that these bugs were known issues, but no updates have been to correct them! The bugs make us leery to spend more money on the DLC, just in case there are errors there too. Hope these can be corrected soon.
The game itself is fun. But the app is a bit of a mess. Constant crashes on resume in multiplayer, logging us out of our account, atrocious resume multiplayer game resume times, and, perhaps most egregiously, no undo button. Many of these issues have persisted for years with no interest from devs. Don't support this.
For some reason, the corporation, Powers are no longer showing up when you are selecting a corporation.So the effects of the corporation. We have no idea why they would get rid of that. We try to reinstall and it still has the same problem. And a continuing problem is that the AI is terrible. Even on hard its trivial to beat.
We dont know if they did an update but the game stopped working for us today and we are unable to sign in to our account to get technical support.
The new update causes corporation cards to only show flavor text, production bonuses, and starting megacredit values. Special effects are not shown, so unless you have it all memorized, you are stuck. This is a single player with AI partners issue, so we dont know how this is affecting online play. It seems like every time the game gets updated, we get bugs that actually break the game. Devs, please take the time to FULLY test your releases. This is getting old.
We like this game, and the app is ok. The most recent update removed the special bonuses from the corporation cards. It lists the flavor text, the starting income and resources. But You have to know already that, for example, Tharsis gives you income bonuses when most cities are placed, because it isn't written.
Trying to learn the game through the app and it gets stuck the first time it asks you to select a card. Seems like the text window has something to do with it. We just cant select the card it wants. Seems like a good app otherwise but the tutorial needs to function on a board game app like this.
Terrific adaptation of the board game! Any plans to develop a Colonies expansion.
LOVE this game and a great app but we want to throw money away on more expansions.
How about the game doesnt Time out.
Great adaptation of the board game – now with many, long awaited improvements! (And yes still has some bugs, but seems like its better overall in our experience – Now, how about an undo option?) Thanks for the recents updates and fixes, much appreciated, keep at it.
This is a terrific boardgame, and a very good implementation of the game for single player. But the online multiplayer system is terrible. Buggy, takes forever to connect, crashes constantly, you have to take the same turn over and over because the system doesnt register it the first time. Its so frustrating that Ive largely stopped playing it.
Good adaptation but the AI opposition is too easy to beat.
A gorgeous, fun and interesting game. We don't have any of the problems other reviewers are writing about. The expansions we bought are great; they add a lot more replay options. Absolutely worth it.
The game itself is great, and this app was helpful for learning the rules. But its frustrating playing with AI, as they arent held to any of the card requirements. They can play cards regardless of the board state (eg, playing a requires 3 ocean tiles card with one ocean tile out), which diminishes the balance and the fun.
There should be at least a limited undo option. It keeps happening that tiles end up in the wrong place and then we cant fix it :( Overall we are enjoying the game so having this issue interfering is really frustrating. Please fix.
This game on solo mode is impossible to beat. Now in saying that it doesnt mean you cant win on multiplayer. However, the solo play is good for those trying to get there feet wet with this game. It did help expedite our understanding of the rules for TM. Also helped us to understand use of cards. We think thats the purpose for this app. Help someone interested in the game get there feet wet for the table top game. Which is a lot of fun.
Save files are lost with newest update. If we stop a game mid way through it loses all data and starts you back at beginning when you resume.
We saw the negative reviews but we wanted to play single player only so bought it anyway. In our second game, one of the corporations bugged out and stopped getting their credits deducted for projects. They terraformed entire planet in that generation! Update: its fun but still buggy. We end up running into strange issues like tile placement not working etc.
Had to abandon playing with friends on this app. The card draft takes forever becuase of bugs and glitches. All 4 players have to restart the game between every card. So 4 game restarts for EVERY ROUND. Pls fix this.
Our brother and we consider ourselves to be very adept board gaming people. Of all the hundreds of boardgames we have played. We still agree that Mars is the best organ this app does the game Justice. No matter how many times you play it every single game is different. So many variables. Different corporations all have the different benefits. Once you download the ingame content different preludes to give you different bonuses. And as you expand your abilities in the game, Venus expands options and creates even more diversity. Im looking forward to future expansions. Colonies would be wonderful.
Our friends and we love this game but it keeps deleting our games! We had a few good weeks of playing; but when we got the upgrade packages of Hellas & Elysium and Venus, it keeps deleting all of our games! We are so bummed and heartbroken because we absolutely love this game! Can this be fixed.
The best things about this app is the visuals, second best the ease of reviewing tags and VPs to understand game state. Id still much rather play on BGA though, because: – the app load times in mid to late game are terrible – being asked to log in to asmoconnect every time we are absent for a while is obnoxious – BGA lets you undo moves not related to drawing cards the app doesnt – BGA lets us pass without waiting on our next turn to come around. If BGA had Venus, Hellas and Elysium expansions we would likely never use this app. The interface isnt as nice, nor the visuals, but its much more gamer-friendly with its features and speedier play. Not expecting this app to get significant upgrades at this point given the age of the game.
Been using the app for a while. Its always been a little clunky but if a game crashes or kicks us out or anything we could always just restart. It can be annoying but at least we could go back to playing. Today though online games just became completely unavailable. A game we had going with friends just seemingly disappeared and we cant get into it and if we try to start a new private game with friends it doesnt show up. This is very frustrating and would like to be able to play online again. Edit: Its now been weeks and can still not create an online game. Any time we try just nothing shows up this really feels like it shouldve been addressed by now if the developers cared.
Game is fine for single player; AI isnt smart but we have low expectations. However the multiplayer online games have issues 1. Multiplier chat cant be seen by other players 2. Multiplier games vanish; open in progress games disappear which is frustrating and disappointing.
Love the game, but hate all the glitches. When playing on line the glitches where game is stuck means running out of lots of time. Needs to have a time limit for deciding on cards to draft – say 1 or 2 minutes tops so the game doesnt sit in limbo. Soooo very frustrating. Have to go out and then resume over and over again, while time runs out. After spending an hour of our life playing and then getting stuck in a glitch and then time runs out so unable to see the ending score – much less unable to finish playing – SOOOO FRUSTRATING! Why this hasnt been fixed already is beyond understanding. Only real way to finish a game is to play the computer. Please, PLEASE fix these issues.
It's a a slow click and count to 3 before anything happens on our last M1 iPad Pro, and also on our M3 Mac. The Mac is newer with lots of RAM and processors, so we thought it would be faster. We know it's not made for it so that's fine, but the iPad is also so slow for e v e r y t h we n g. Lots of other little issues such as: The view game state button often doesn't work You can't tell if there's one space or two in the various tracks to get to the bonuses. There are many card where you have to go back out of the card and select each opponent for. For example "one for every space tag your opponent's have" doesn't tally it up for you, so you have to manually tap out of the card, then wait, then tap into an opponent, then wait. Then tap into tags and wait. And then to the whole thing again with opponent only to go back to yourself (wait) and your cards again (wait). If it was snappy it would be much more acceptable. There's no undo for warning when you play a card that "reduces someones … Production" when you're the only one who has that production, so you're halfway through playing the card and realize it's a waste.
More expansions. Otherwise, great game! Seconded! More expansion.
Will amend when bug is fixed. Game frequently doesnt count science tags or earth tags properly. Please email us if you have any questions about the issues, Im happy to walk through with you.
The game is good, with the interface it is hard to track what people are doing or how much of a resource they may have stocked that is easier in the board game. Perhaps a screen that shows all stocked materials so that cash, heat, metal etc can be better seen at a high level instead of clicking through all players.
Our husband and we use to be able to play against one another but now we dont get the final results at the end of the game. When we want to view the game state as well, there is always issues. Overall fun, we enjoy and look forward to playing the game.
They have steadily added new supposed bug fixes, but it seems like one in 3 games if any hiccup happens (for example accidentally clicking on a pop up notification) , the game will boot you out of the lobby and any attempts to rejoin dont work, just stuck on loading screen forever. This has happened to us MULTIPLE times and Im sad bc it really is one of the most seamless board game apps that exist. Fix the desync bugs and 5 stars all day.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.10.3.130507
- Size: 326.00 MB
- iOS: 13.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, IT, ES, SV
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Twin Sails Interactive
Last updated: 12th November 2025 | Genre: Board, Strategy | Developer: Twin Sails Interactive