Mars Attracts Guide — Park Loops, Enclosures, Staff and Research

What Mars Attracts Is, and What You Actually Do

Mars Attracts is a park management sim from developer and publisher Outlier, built inside the licensed Mars Attacks™ universe, and the shortest honest description of the loop is this: you run a profitable Martian tourist attraction whose star exhibits are human beings abducted out of history. The Steam store page frames your role as a Martian CEO facing "the challenge of theme park management", complete with human enclosures, death-defying rides and amenities, and warns that you will not last long if you cannot turn a profit.

This guide covers the systems that actually repeat: how the build loop is structured, what an enclosure needs, which staff do which job, how research currencies are produced and spent, and how money and park rating are handled. It is built from the official store page, the official Outlier product page, a subtitled beginner walkthrough and a third-party review of the Early Access build, and it marks anything recorded before the 1.0 launch as unconfirmed for the current build.

Field	Official detail
Developer / Publisher	Outlier (Outlier Games Limited)
Release	September 24, 2026 (1.0, out of Early Access)
Early Access start	September 15, 2025, per the Steam store page
Platform	Windows 10 (Steam); no macOS, Linux or console version
Genre labels	Action, Adventure, Simulation, Strategy
Price at time of writing	$18.74, a 25% introductory discount from $24.99
Steam achievements	36
License	MARS ATTACKS is a registered trademark of The Topps Company, officially licensed

The Core Loop, Start to Finish

The official store description lays the loop out in three named blocks: build your park, bring in guests, and improvise, abduct, overcome. In practice those three collapse into a repeating cycle that runs the same way in the campaign and in Sandbox.

• Build the habitat first. Enclosures are the product. Without humans inside them there is nothing for Martian guests to pay for, and an empty park earns nothing.
• Stock the enclosure. Humans need beds, food, water and basic amenities to stay calm. A pre-1.0 walkthrough adds a feeding trough and a nearby human storehouse, because troughs only refill when porters can reach them.
• Abduct the exhibit. Expedition missions to Earth bring back humans from a chosen time period, plus decor and upgrades from that period. The store page names Ancient Rome and the Wild West as settings, and the 1.0 announcement added an American Prohibition enclosure type.
• Study and experiment. Observation posts staffed by scientists, plus active experiments, generate the knowledge and research currencies that unlock everything else.
• Convert humans into profit. Rides, stalls and amenities pull guests in; donation boxes cover a park with free entry; workshops turn unwanted humans into the parts that build new attractions.
• Keep order. Unhappy humans break out. The store page is blunt about it: hire security teams and build defences before a rampaging human trashes the park and kills your guests.

Enclosures: What Goes Inside and What Goes Wrong

An enclosure is a walled habitat for one human period, and the official site treats each one as a puzzle: humans have their own personalities and preferences, and to keep them docile you tailor the habitat rather than the human. Decor collected on expeditions from the matching period is how that theming is done, and a themed object raises a human's happiness far more than a generic one.

The failure state is escape. An unhappy human breaks the walls and starts killing guests, and a walkthrough recorded before launch describes the sequence in detail: the human leaves through a breach, security is supposed to intercept and return them to the pen, and a repair job is needed on the wall afterwards. The same walkthrough recommends keeping at least five security guards on staff, and notes a $20,000 SWAT call-in that is only available while humans are actively escaping and that kills the escapees instead of recapturing them (player-observed on the pre-1.0 build, to confirm).

Enclosure period	Where it is documented	Notes
Ancient Rome	Official store page and the tutorial of the pre-1.0 walkthrough	The standard first habitat; the walkthrough uses it to teach expeditions and amenities
Frontier / Wild West	Official store page	Documented as a second human source with its own decor set
Egypt	Pre-1.0 walkthrough	Presented as a third themed enclosure that widens the park's attraction list (to confirm)
American Prohibition	Official 1.0 announcement	Added with the 1.0 launch as a new human enclosure type

Staff Roles and What Each One Does

Staff are the machine that keeps a park running, and every role covers a different failure. The official store page calls out porters for supply chains and security for containment; the pre-1.0 walkthrough adds janitors, scientists and attendants with specific jobs.

Role	Job	What breaks without them
Porter	Moves stock between storehouses and the amenities or enclosures they supply	Stalls stop selling and troughs stop refilling, which cuts income and raises human anger
Security	Fights escaping humans and returns them to their enclosure	A single breakout can cascade into guest deaths and a wrecked park
Janitor	Repairs damaged buildings and clears maintenance jobs	Buildings run less efficiently, and damaged enclosures keep humans unhappy
Scientist	Staffs observation posts and generates research	Research stalls, so no new rides, amenities or upgrades unlock
Attendant	Runs stalls and rides	Paid attractions and shops do not generate revenue

Two further details are worth carrying into your first park. Storehouses need to sit close to what they supply, because porters in the pre-1.0 walkthrough could not reach distant buildings fast enough to keep stock up. And staff traits are not decoration: an early-access review notes that every employee has positive and negative traits, so the hiring screen is a real decision rather than a formality.

Research Points, Experiments and Specimens

Research is the progression spine. The store page describes a research tree unlocked by performing experiments on captive humans, and a second layer that turns human remains into park decoration and attractions. A review of the Early Access build splits the currencies clearly: experiments generate biology, chemistry and physics points, which convert into rides and amenities through the research menu, while lethal procedures produce specimens, which are consumed by the workshop to fabricate attractions.

Currency	Where it comes from	What it buys
Biology, chemistry and physics points	Active experiments on captives, plus scientists staffing observation posts	Rides, amenities and upgrades on the research menu
Specimens	Dissecting humans you do not need	Workshop fabrication of rides and stalls without paying cash
Human knowledge	Studying specific human periods inside their enclosures	Unlocks better expedition types for that period

One practical warning comes straight out of an early-access review: the reviewer spent roughly thirty minutes stuck in the tutorial because they could not work out why human knowledge was not generating, and the cause was a member of their own scientific staff blocking it. If a knowledge counter sits still while a scientist is assigned, check the staff member before you blame the game.

Money, Loans and Park Rating

Financing works like a tycoon game with teeth. The official store page lists loans, customisable prices and an in-depth financial management system, and the 1.0 update extended the economy with park marketing and staff training as late-game tools. The pre-1.0 walkthrough describes the starting state of every map: a $200,000 loan at 3% interest that drains cash from day one, with repayments made in $5,000 installments from the finance menu.

Getting out of that hole reliably is a matter of income mix rather than one big score:

• Put rides down as early as research allows, because they carry the largest profit per tile in the walkthrough's park and also raise how many guests can be in the park at once.
• Treat shops as recurring income that only pays while stocked, and keep their storehouses adjacent.
• Use the beauty overlay before you place utilities, generators or storehouses: those buildings lower the beauty of everything near them, and beauty feeds guest satisfaction and park rating.
• Check the daily research figure, not just the unlock list. The pre-1.0 walkthrough found that experiments count toward the daily research that feeds park rating, so repeating experiments is a legitimate way to push a rating task over the line.
• Board members and park inspections gate progress through optional missions, and the 1.0 announcement states the rating calculation itself was reworked to make five stars more achievable.

A Starter Sequence for Your First Park

Nothing below is an optimised build order; it is the order the documented systems suggest, and it assumes the campaign's tutorial map.

1. Pause the game and read the finance panel before you build, so you know what the starting loan is charging you.
2. Lay terrain and paths, then place an enclosure large enough for amenities and decor rather than the minimum footprint you can get away with.
3. Run an expedition for the period the tutorial asks for, and place the humans as soon as the mission returns.
4. Add the human essentials, then build a human storehouse close enough that porters can keep it topped up.
5. Hire the specialists the park actually needs: a porter for supply, a security guard for containment, and a scientist for research.
6. Place an observation post and start experiments so knowledge and research points begin accruing before you need them.
7. Only then spend on guest-facing income: stalls, donation boxes and the first ride.
8. Check the beauty overlay and the daily research figure at the start of each in-game day, and fix whichever one is falling.

What the 1.0 Launch Added

The 1.0 announcement is unusually specific, which makes it the most reliable update summary available. Its headline additions are a full Sandbox mode with unlimited resources, a new map built around a Martian take on a casino, a final special character named General Jatak, and the American Prohibition enclosure type.

Behind those features, the same announcement lists a rolling notification system for park feedback, park marketing and staff training as late-game systems, a reworked park rating calculation, security guards gaining the job of collecting cash from donation boxes, more music tracks and sound effects, extra animations and character behaviours, and balance changes to objectives, inspections, human traits and happiness. On the technical side it reports performance work on decor loading, character AI and guest level of detail for large parks, an improved camera with more zoom and no building collision, an updated tutorial with more tooltips, and fixes for Steam achievements that were not completing.