Admit it: In your heart, you’re a space robot, laughing at death on Mars, while you pop a wheelie over an underground water cavern. Now there’s a game that lets you take your true form.
The game is called Mars Rover and it was just released by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a kind of anniversary present for the Curiosity rover’s fourth year on Mars. In the game, you play an electronic version of the rover, driving over Mars’ surface while hunting for underground water deposits. The catch is that, just like the real Curiosity, those wheels you’re travelling on are breakable — and break they do:
It’s likely a nod to the real Curiosity, whose wheels are cracking and breaking under the stress of four years of Martian driving, like so:
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
That, however, is where the similarities end. While engineers have figured out how to keep the real Curiosity moving, despite a few broken wheels, the in-game version of the rover promptly dies.
You can try the game out yourself either on a desktop or download it to your phone right here.