In Ruins of Mars players are playing as explorers who are looking to decipher martian languages, learn and replicate their technologies, gain hourglasses necessary to perform certain abilities and ultimately gain prestige to win the game.

Ruins of Mars uses a unique action selection mechanism in which the benefits of the action are derived from the action tiles which are placed below that site's action. The action tiles will shift around the board's actions each turn in a similar fashion to mancala.