39 Days to Mars

39 Days to Mars is a cooperative puzzle-adventure game set in a charming steampunk version of the 19th century. Players take on the roles of two Victorian-era gentlemen, Sir Albert Wickes and The Right Honourable Clarence Baxter, as they pilot their rickety spaceship, The HMS Fearful, on the first voyage to Mars. The journey is fraught with comical mishaps and technical problems, requiring players to work together to solve a variety of physics-based puzzles and minigames to keep their ship operational and complete their 39-day trip.

39 Days to Mars: A Cozy Catastrophe in the Cosmos

In the vast constellation of indie games, few shine with the peculiar, charming light of 39 Days to Mars. Developed by the one-man studio It’s Anecdotal (Philip Buchanan) and released in 2018, this co-operative steampunk puzzle-adventure is a testament to the power of a singular vision, British whimsy, and the timeless appeal of a good cup of tea in the face of certain doom. It is a game that is both incredibly brief and surprisingly memorable, a bite-sized journey that asks a simple question: What if two proper Victorian gentlemen decided to fly to Mars in a spaceship held together by hope, spit, and a truly alarming number of cogs?

Development History & Context

A Solo Voyage in a Collaborative Universe
39 Days to Mars is a product of the modern indie revolution, born from a successful Kickstarter campaign and built primarily by a single developer, Philip Buchanan, in Christchurch, New Zealand. The game was crafted using the Unity engine, a tool that empowered a small team (officially credited to 286 people, though this includes a vast number of backers and contributors) to achieve a polished, multi-platform release.

Buchanan’s vision was clear from the outset: to create a “co-operative puzzle-adventure” steeped in a very specific, understated aesthetic. The game emerged into a gaming landscape in 2018 that was increasingly hospitable to unique, experimental titles. While AAA studios were pushing graphical boundaries and open-world scale, the indie scene celebrated personality and clever mechanics. 39 Days to Mars fit perfectly into this niche, offering an experience diametrically opposed to the high-stakes, action-packed norm. It wasn’t competing with God of War; it was a cozy alternative to it.

The technological constraints were less about hardware limitations and more about the scope of a solo project. The decision to use a minimalist, 2D side-scrolling, hand-drawn art style was as much an aesthetic choice as a practical one, allowing for a cohesive and complete visual identity without requiring a massive art team. The core innovation was its unwavering focus on local co-op (or solo play with an AI-controlled cat), a design decision that bucked the trend of online multiplayer and harkened back to the era of couch co-op.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

A Tale of Two Gentlemen and One Catastrophe
The narrative of 39 Days to Mars is delightfully simple. Sir Albert Wickes and The Right Honourable Clarence Baxter, two quintessentially British 19th-century explorers, embark on the maiden voyage of the HMS Fearful, a steampunk marvel of “unreliable engineering,” destined for Mars. The plot is not a complex web of twists but a sequential chronicle of everything that can—and does—go wrong.

The story is told almost entirely through gameplay and minimal dialogue. The ship’s cat shreds the navigation chart. The steam engine runs out of coal. The tea gets cold. Alien kraken attack. A pipe springs a leak. Each disaster is a self-contained chapter in their misadventure. The characters are brought to life through excellent voice acting by Mark Copeland (Albert) and Jonathan Michael Cooke (Baxter), whose dry, understated deliveries perfectly capture a stoic “stiff upper lip” mentality in the face of absurd cosmic peril.

Thematic Underpinnings: Stoicism, Tea, and Teamwork
Beneath its charming surface, the game explores themes of British stoicism and the necessity of collaboration. The constant, almost ritualistic need to stop and make a cup of tea—a puzzle that repeats throughout the journey—is a brilliant narrative device. It symbolizes the characters’ refusal to succumb to panic. No matter the crisis, order and civility must be maintained. It’s a hilarious and oddly profound commentary on using routine and comfort to confront the unknown.

The core theme, however, is unequivocally cooperation. The game is a metaphor for any collaborative effort, where communication, coordination, and sometimes tolerating your partner’s mistakes are the only ways to succeed. The narrative tension doesn’t come from a villain, but from the friction and eventual synergy between the two players (or one player and the AI cat). The journey to Mars is merely the backdrop for a story about working together.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The Cooperative Crucible
The gameplay of 39 Days to Mars is a series of discrete puzzle minigames, connected by a simple point-and-click interface for navigating the ship. The puzzles are the heart of the experience and are almost universally designed around the concept of simultaneous, complementary action.

Co-op Play: This is the game’s intended format. One player might need to hold a lock steady with one tool while the other picks it with another. Another puzzle requires jointly maneuvering a single object, like carefully rotating a piece of a torn map, each player controlling one axis of movement. One of the most celebrated puzzles involves piloting a penny-farthing bicycle through space with one joystick while operating a mechanical arm to scoop coal with the other. These puzzles are less about intellectual difficulty—they are generally of “middling” complexity—and more about communication and coordination. They force players to talk, plan, and sometimes laugh at their spectacular failures.

Solo Play: In solo mode, the player controls both characters (or Albert and the ship’s cat) simultaneously. This is achieved by mapping one character’s actions to the left stick and buttons, and the other’s to the right. Critics almost universally noted that this mode is “cumbersome” and “inadapté à l’expérience.” It transforms the game from a social exercise into a dexterity challenge, a test of one’s ability to mentally multitask and physically manage two control schemes at once. While functional, it loses the core social magic and can lead to frustration.

Puzzle Variety and Flaws: The game boasts a “large variety of challenge tasks,” from reassembling maps and fighting krakens to preparing the perfect scone. However, the repetition of the tea-making puzzle was a point of criticism. While thematically consistent, some reviewers felt it was “overused” and “weaken[ed] the game’s flow with repetition.” Another common critique was the “clunky controls,” particularly in the precise object manipulation puzzles, where the physics could feel a bit unwieldy and lead to unnecessary mistakes.

World-Building, Art & Sound

A Sketchbook Come to Life
The world of 39 Days to Mars is one of its greatest achievements. The art direction is a unique, minimalist masterpiece. The entire game looks as if it were drawn on aged parchment with a fine-nib pen. The aesthetic is Stylized, employing a 2D scrolling perspective with a muted, sepia-toned color palette, punctuated by occasional splashes of color (like the red of a warning light or the green of an alien).

The characters are simple white silhouettes with thick black outlines, resembling something from a century-old cartoon or a sketched storyboard. This simplicity is deceptive; it is incredibly polished and evocative. The ship itself, the HMS Fearful, is a character—a claustrophobic, rickety, and wonderfully detailed steampunk contraption filled with brass pipes, wooden panels, and anachronistic technology.

An Atmosphere of Whimsical Calamity
The sound design completes the immersion. The soundtrack, composed by Chris Zabriskie, is a beautiful, soft piano score that is “punctuated only by the occasional disaster.” It is calm, melodic, and perfectly contrasts the chaotic events unfolding on screen, reinforcing the game’s themes of unflappable composure. The sound effects—the clink of teacups, the hiss of steam, the shredding of paper—are crisp and satisfying. The superb voice acting adds immense personality, selling the illusion of two seasoned explorers who are mildly inconvenienced by the vacuum of space.

Reception & Legacy

Critical Consensus: Charming, But Too Short
Upon its release, 39 Days to Mars garnered a mixed to positive critical reception, earning a MobyScore of 7.2 and a Metascore of 71 based on 14 ratings. The praise was unanimous for its charm, aesthetic, voice work, and clever co-op concepts. Reviewers called it “endearing,” “quirky,” “humorous,” and a “fantastic puzzle adventure.”

The criticism was equally consistent: the game was too short. A typical playthrough lasts between 60 to 90 minutes. Many reviewers questioned its value proposition at the full price point, with Hooked Gamers noting it was a “lovely little co-op adventure” but a “‘brief’ adventure… [that] doesn’t seem great value for the price of the game.” The awkward solo controls and some repetitive elements were also frequently cited drawbacks.

Lasting Influence and Niche Legacy
While not a genre-redefining blockbuster, 39 Days to Mars has secured a niche legacy as a exemplar of the modern couch co-op puzzle game. It is often mentioned alongside titles like Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime or Pikuniku as a go-to recommendation for couples or friends seeking a short, humorous, and low-stakes cooperative experience.

Its influence is subtle but present. It demonstrated that a game could be built entirely around a specific, novel social interaction (precision cooperation) and succeed on that premise alone. It proved that a minimalist art style, executed with confidence, could be more memorable than high-polygon counts. The game’s DNA—its focus on cozy catastrophe and communication-based puzzles—can be seen echoed in later indie hits. It stands as a testament to the idea that in game design, a strong, singular vision focused on a specific type of fun is often more valuable than a bloated feature list.

Conclusion

39 Days to Mars is an anomaly. It is a game that is objectively slight in content yet rich in personality. It is a journey that is over almost as soon as it begins, yet its unique atmosphere and compelling cooperative mechanics leave a lasting impression.

It is not a perfect game. Its short length and occasional control frustrations are legitimate criticisms. However, to judge it solely on hours-per-dollar is to miss its point entirely. 39 Days to Mars is not a epic; it is a vignette. It is a beautifully illustrated short story about teamwork and tea, a delightful evening’s diversion rather than a month-long commitment.

Final Verdict: 39 Days to Mars earns its place in video game history as a charming, innovative, and wonderfully executed boutique experience. It is a masterclass in aesthetic cohesion and cooperative game design. While best enjoyed with a friend and a sense of humor, it remains a unique and memorable voyage—a brief but brilliant flash of steampunk ingenuity in the indie game firmament. It is, in the end, a very proper success.