Tharsis

Tharsis is a video game with eurogame dice mechanics that relates the story of a doomed mission to Mars. After the pantry explodes in the tutorial section, you, the player, must economize resources and get your people to Mars relatively safely as a series of disasters strikes your ship.

The main game mechanic involves assigning crew members that roll 1-5 dice. You have to exceed a certain total value working on a problem to fix it, but if you roll the wrong number you could lose your die or even take a injury.

It's wrapped in a short story, told by a male or female narrator, depending on your crew. The ship was sent to investigate an anomaly that they call Tharsis on the surface of Mars. Halfway through the trip, they start getting transmissions from the anomaly — and they look to be members of your own crew!


 * Euro Game: In video game form. It's assigning dice to do different actions and resource management (food, assist, health, hull).  Could easily be published as a co-op board game.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: After a few rounds of running short of food, the game offers to let you eat portions of your dead colleagues for more dice. And then there's a "Kill" button.  Not to mention an unlockable Cannibal character if you eat enough human meals.
 * Mars-shattering Kaboom: This is the True End. If all four of your astronauts manage to get down to the surface, one of them will throw a rock at the anomaly and shatter Tharsis in a giant explosion.  You get a nice giant planetwide glow after that.  Presumably this breaks the Stable Time Loop, as you broadcast, "Expect no survivors."
 * Native American Mythology: Your ship is named the Iktomi after the Lakota spider-spirit. Maybe this wasn't well named for making it safely.
 * Stable Time Loop: Well, sort of. If you can imagine your previous games forming the loop.  Contact with Tharsis fills your astronauts with a sense of all of the missions that they've ever been on before.  It even warps time so that you see your own broadcasts from the future. But this signal was what drew your mission to Mars in the first place, making your astronauts the cause of their own tragedy.
 * Suicide Mission: I'm not sure what the initial mission plan was, but after descending down to Tharsis, there's no return to Earth.
 * Survival Horror: Mostly implied, except the cannibalism.
 * What Could Have Been: Some of the extra missions allow you to play with J. Cross, the botanist, who makes extra food really easily. Obviously a game breaker for a survival story.