There aren’t any graphical updates or anything like that, and honestly, the game doesn’t need them because it is pretty solid as it is. The new additional sponsors and other additions to the game are far more than enough to get you even more excited about playing the game.

In the end, though, Space Race is a varied if not substantial update to Surviving Mars. None of the additions are truly essential and certainly not groundbreaking. If you like Surviving Mars, this DLC should be right within your courtyard.

I love Surviving Mars, one of my favourite management games this year, but while this expansion adds lots of little things, it doesn’t add anything significantly new, or even successfully realize the ‘race’ it titles itself for — I’m sad to say, it feels like a pricey update.

Space Race as an expansion is worth checking out at some point, but I wouldn’t be in any hurry. It ultimately does little to solve many of the deep-rooted problems the game still has at the mid-to-late stages. It does make the early-game a little easier, or at the very least more varied (depends on your settings), and there’s definitely some interesting stuff there. Surviving Mars still has a fair ways to go though, and it’s going to take more than small injections of personality to carry it over that hump.