Gaijin Games 'Tharsis' release date, gameplay & update: mission to Mars strategy game to arrive this January

Gaijin Games, which now goes by the name Choice Provisions, has announced that the mission to Mars strategy game "Tharsis" will be available for PC and PlayStation 4 beginning Jan. 12, 2016, IGN reports.

Choice Provisions was formerly known as Gaijin Games before June 2014, when founders Alex Neuse, Mike Roush, and Chris Osborn decided to change the studio's name due to the negative connotation of the word "gaijin," which means "foreigner" in Japanese.

"No matter how you may feel about the word 'gaijin' personally, I think it’s fair to say that some people out there view it as a negative term," studio member Dant Rambo wrote on the company's official website, as per Gamasutra. "Ergo, we’re changing our name to Choice Provisions."

The now eight-year-old independent video game development studio based in Santa Cruz, California is best known for their Bit.Trip series of games, first introduced in 2009.

The upcoming Tharsis, on the other hand, is a "turn-based strategy game about humanity’s first mission to Mars," as explained by the PlayStation Blog. The mission involves locating the source of the cryptic signal from the red planet.

Choice Provisions cofounder Mike Roush wrote on the PlayStation Blog that the concept for the game came to the group two years ago, "when it was nothing more than a physical prototype made with dice, paper, and lots of love." The team's goal was to create a strategy game that was "A) engaging on a mechanical level and B) unlike anything else on the market."

"Tharsis is a pretty significant departure from our previous work," Rambo wrote on Choice Provisions' website. "These differences will be noticeable in nearly every facet of the game, including the visuals, the sound, the tone of the narrative, and the gameplay."

Check out the official description of Tharsis from the official press release and click play on the video below to view the origins of Tharsis and a teaser for the game. Tharsis launches on PC and PlayStation 4 on Jan. 12, 2016.

Earth's first Mars mission should have been 300 days to glory. But Yuri only made it to 170, and we lost Allison after 105. Turns out, life in space is just that: life, with moods and jealousies and infuriating little failures. Only you're a few million miles from civilization, so humanity's frailties also happen to be deadly.

Tharsis is a turn-based, perma-death, realistic space strategy game. With dice. And cannibalism. It puts you in control of the first-ever mission to Mars, just as it’s struck by a meteor storm.

But some part of you knows this landing is possible. In fact, the more you think about those signals from the Tharsis region, the less you believe you'd be first to set foot there...

Defy the odds, make the difficult decisions, and embark on the most important rescue mission in all of mankind.