Red Frontier

Red Frontier drops you onto the Ares Basin in the year 2147 as the commander of humanity's first permanent foothold on Mars. You begin with a single landing pod on a dead red world and grow it — block by block — into a thriving planetary civilization.

Mine the canyons for ore, melt subsurface ice for water, split that water into breathable oxygen, grow food under lamps, and house the colonists who keep it all running. As your population climbs, your settlement is reborn through five tiers: Outpost → Colony → City → Megacity → Planetary Civilization.

Mars fights back. Dust storms blot out the sun and starve your solar arrays. Meteors fall from a thin sky. But you're not alone down here — the Threlin Concord, an ancient subterranean civilization, watches your every move from the glowing ruins beneath the sand. Trade with them and they share wonders; desecrate their sites and they turn hostile.

And as you pump greenhouse gases into the air and seal forests under biodomes, the planet itself begins to change: the rust-red sky fades toward blue, and green creeps across the dunes. Terraforming is not a menu option — it's something you watch happen.

What it is, honestly: this is a playable browser prototype — a vertical slice that proves out the full loop (survival, building, progression, terraforming, diplomacy, events, and cinematic close-ups) in a single self-contained file. It is not the finished AAA title; there's no free-flight spaceflight, walkable first-person mode, or multiplayer yet. What's here is real and fully playable.

The Core Loop

1. Power everything. Solar arrays and fusion plants generate power. Almost every other building consumes it. If demand outruns supply, the whole colony brownouts and production drops.
2. Mine resources. Metal (for construction) and water (for life support) come from the land.
3. Keep colonists alive. Every person breathes oxygen and eats food. Run dry and they leave — or die.
4. Grow. Surplus food, oxygen, and housing attract new colonists. More colonists unlock higher tiers and staff your research labs.
5. Advance. Spend research on new technology, terraform the planet, and befriend the natives.

Resources

Resource	Symbol	What it does
Power	⚡	Instantaneous net supply. Must stay at or above demand or everything throttles.
Water	💧	Mined from ice. Feeds oxygen plants, farms, and biodomes.
Oxygen	🫧	Keeps colonists breathing. Going negative kills people.
Food	🌱	Keeps colonists fed. Going negative starves people.
Metal	⬡	The universal building material.
Credits	◈	Currency for advanced builds and alien trade. Earned by factories.
Research	🔬	Banked points spent in the Tech tree.
Population	👥	Your colonists. Grows toward your housing cap when morale is high.

Stored resources are limited by your storage capacity, which rises as you build pods and habitats.

The Land

Mars isn't uniform — terrain dictates what you can build where.

• Red Desert / Rock — open ground, build anything here.
• Ore ◆ — required for Mines.
• Ice ❄ — required for Ice Extractors (clustered near the frozen poles).
• Canyon — low carved terrain, buildable.
• Lava Tubes ≈ — rugged volcanic mouths.
• Ancient Ruins ⟁ — glowing alien sites. Required for Xeno Scanners — and building anything else on them angers the Threlin.

Buildings

Power

• 🔆 Solar Array — 8⬡ — +7 power. Free and cheap, but produces nothing at night or during a dust storm.
• ⚛️ Fusion Plant — 60⬡ 40◈ — +40 power, −2 water. Steady city-scale power. Requires Fusion Power tech.

Extraction

• ❄️ Ice Extractor — 12⬡ — −3 power, +8 water. Must sit on an ice tile.
• ⛏️ Mine — 10⬡ — −4 power, +6 metal. Must sit on an ore tile.
• 🛸 Xeno Scanner — 25⬡ 20◈ — −3 power, +4 research, slowly improves alien relations. Must sit on a ruin tile.

Life Support

• 🌬️ Oxygen Plant — 14⬡ — −5 power, −2 water, +12 oxygen.
• 🥬 Hydro Farm — 14⬡ — −4 power, −3 water, +10 food.
• 🏠 Habitat Dome — 20⬡ — −3 power, −3 oxygen, +8 population cap.

Civic & Industry

• 🔬 Research Lab — 30⬡ 15◈ — −6 power, +8 research. Needs 3 colonists to staff it.
• 🏭 Factory — 35⬡ — −8 power, −4 metal, +12 credits. Turns raw metal into trade goods.
• 🚀 Spaceport — 50⬡ 30◈ — −7 power. Receives immigrant ships and trade caravans.
• 🕊️ Embassy — 40⬡ 50◈ — −5 power. Steadily raises Threlin relations. Requires Xeno-Linguistics.

Terraforming

• 🌿 Biodome — 45⬡ 25◈ — −6 power, −4 water, +14 food, +6 oxygen, + terraforming.
• 🌫️ Atmosphere Processor — 80⬡ 60◈ — −15 power, major terraforming. Requires Atmospheric Engineering.
• 🗼 Orbital Elevator — 200⬡ 200◈ — −25 power, +60 credits, +30 population cap. The megastructure endgame. Requires Megastructures.

Progression Tiers

Your settlement upgrades automatically as population grows:

Tier	Population
Outpost	start
Colony	8
City	20
Megacity	45
Planetary Civilization	80

Reaching City unlocks the cinematic 🎬 CITY view of your metropolis.

Terraforming

Biodomes and Atmosphere Processors raise the Terraform meter (top-right). As it climbs:

• The sky shifts from rusty pink toward blue.
• The ground blocks blend from red toward green.
• Above 55%, meteors burn up in the thickened atmosphere and stop damaging your colony.

Research (🔬 Tech)

Build Research Labs to bank research, then unlock:

• ⚛️ Fusion Power 60 — unlocks the Fusion Plant.
• 💧 Cryo-Hydrology 50 — Ice Extractors yield +50% water.
• 📡 Xeno-Linguistics 90 — unlocks the Embassy and improves all caravan trade terms.
• 🌫️ Atmospheric Engineering 150 — unlocks the Atmosphere Processor. Requires Fusion.
• 🗼 Megastructures 300 — unlocks the Orbital Elevator. Requires Atmospheric Engineering + Xeno-Linguistics.

Alien Diplomacy (👽 Xeno)

The Threlin Concord lives beneath the surface and tracks a relation score from −100 to +100.

• Trade caravans arrive once you have a Spaceport or Embassy, offering metal-for-credits, credits-for-research, water deliveries, and goodwill gifts. Accepting fair trades raises relations.
• Xeno Scanners on ruins and Embassies steadily build trust.
• Building over ruins with anything other than a Scanner lowers relations.

Higher standing (and Xeno-Linguistics) means better deals.

Planet-Wide Events

• 🌪 Dust Storm — solar output is crippled for several sols. A 🎬 STORM CAM button appears so you can watch the wall of dust roll in.
• ☄ Meteor Shower — may damage a random building (repair for 10⬡). Stops once terraforming passes 55%.
• ✦ Aurora — a charged sky grants a research bonus.
• 🚀 Immigrant Ship — with a Spaceport, settlers periodically arrive to fill empty housing.

🎬 Cinematic Close-Up Camera

Click any building, then hit CLOSE-UP VIEW to drop into a full-screen, animated cinematic of it — letterbox framing, depth-of-field, and ambient audio:

• Solar Array — drones gliding between sunlit panel rows as dust blows past.
• Mine — a spinning drill throwing sparks, ore riding the conveyor.
• Ice Extractor — vapor venting from the drill platform, water pulsing through pipes.
• Habitat Dome — colonists walking the decks past glowing hydroponic gardens.
• Hydro Farm — plants swaying under grow-lamps, a harvester on its rail.
• Research Lab — a rotating holographic artifact and breakthrough flashes.
• Factory — robot arms welding a vehicle into being on the assembly line.
• Spaceport — a rocket cycling through landing and launch.
• Alien Discovery — glowing monoliths, a floating artifact, sweeping scan beams.
• Dust Storm — the colony bracing as the storm wall advances.
• Megacity — hover traffic and monorails beneath a giant shield dome.

Press ESC or EXIT VIEW to return. Use 🔊 AUDIO to mute.

Controls

Action	Input
Pan the map	Drag empty ground (or one-finger drag)
Zoom	Mouse wheel / pinch
Build	Pick a structure from the left dock, then click a tile
Cancel placement	ESC
Inspect / demolish / repair	Click a placed building
Cinematic view	Click a building → CLOSE-UP VIEW
Game speed	Pause · 1× · 2× · 4× (top-left)
Panels	🔬 Tech · 👽 Xeno · 📊 Data · ❓ Help (right rail)

Getting Started — Your First 10 Minutes

1. Power first. Place a couple of Solar Arrays near your pod.
2. Mine metal. Drop a Mine on an ore tile (◆). Pan around to find one.
3. Get water. Place an Ice Extractor on an ice tile (❄) — look toward the top/bottom (polar) edges of the map.
4. Breathe and eat. Add an Oxygen Plant and a Hydro Farm. Watch that your power rate stays positive (📊 Data shows net power).
5. House people. Build a Habitat Dome to raise your population cap — colonists will start arriving.
6. Specialize. Add a Research Lab (staff it with 3 colonists) to start the tech tree, a Factory for credits, and a Spaceport to attract immigrants and trade caravans.
7. Reach out. Put a Xeno Scanner on a ruin (⟁) to study artifacts and warm up relations with the Threlin.
8. Terraform. Build Biodomes, research Atmospheric Engineering, and place Atmosphere Processors — then watch the sky and ground change.
9. Go big. Push toward Megastructures and raise an Orbital Elevator as you climb to a Planetary Civilization.

Tips

• Watch net power. A negative power rate throttles everything. Keep a surplus, and remember solar dies at night — fusion is your reliable backbone.
• Stockpile before storms. Dust storms kill solar output for several sols; fusion plants and a power buffer keep you running.
• Don't pave the ruins. Respect Threlin sites — Scanners only. Hostile aliens are bad news.
• Terraform to tame the sky. Past ~55% terraforming, meteors stop hurting you.
• Refunds. Demolishing returns 50% of a building's cost.