The Planet Crafter

This game is one of the most fun games I've ever played. I have a rare neurodegenerative disease and so I don't get to do much besides play video games because I'm wheelchair bound. I have found the repetitiveness of collecting resources and building and expanding my base so relaxing and exciting. There's always something to do, and places to explore. The graphics are really good too! I just wanted to tell the devs thank you for making my time here on earth a bit easier with your awesome space game!

If you're looking for a tech-savvy, realistic terraforming Mars type of experience, look elsewhere.
On the other hand, if you're looking for a game that is absorbing, but that you can just pause for a while to just look around in, then this is it.
In short, it's just beautiful. In fact it's the most beautiful game I've ever played. The designs for the plants, the animals, and the forests and plains that grow from them are wonderful.
Relaxing? Yes. Busy? Yes. Do you feel like you've really achieved something as you progress? Oh, hell, yes. You've grown a world that is so lovely you'll wish that you could leave this one behind and live there.
And I've only spent 132 hours playing it ...

I really didn’t know what I was getting into when I bought this. I just wanted a casual game for the steamdeck, saw this title, bought it and figured it would be one of those games I would probably only play once. I could never get into Minecraft or Valheim; not for a lack of trying. Thought this might be similar.
Hours and days later, I realize this is nothing like those games. There is something strangely tranquil about this game. I get lost in time and have a hard time putting it down.
It seems boring at first; maybe a bit pointless. You pick up rocks and run for oxygen every few minutes. It’s tedious. You wonder why you’re doing this. What’s the point?
Then you suddenly notice the sky is blue. Lakes are forming. Grass is growing. You didn’t notice this until you turned around. You go into a wreckage and come out. Where did those trees come from? How long have they been there?
Everything about this game is subtle. It’s so subtle that it sneaks up on you. You think you’re alone. Then you discover there is someone out there trying to help you. It’s lovely, and it’s a little sad. You realize that maybe you didn’t want to be here, but you’ll do your best to make it liveable.
The game gently nudges you in ways that feel natural. Maybe it’s the music. It’s also subtle. It’s nice, and it’s relaxing.
This game doesn’t seem like much on the surface. The graphics don’t seem all that great at first, but then it turns into something beautiful, and you appreciate it for all its hard work.
Do yourself a favour. Don’t look anything up. Don’t watch videos of this game, and don’t google anything. I didn’t, and I’m glad I didn’t.
Be patient and explore it the way it was meant to be explored.
There are so many small touches in this game. It will guide you where you need to go if you’re paying attention.
I love this game. I have no idea what I’m doing. Am I doing too much? Am I doing too little? All I know is the world around me is changing, and I was able to survive another day to witness this beautiful evolution that I have awakened.
I can only hope that I don’t mess this up. I’ve come too far to turn away now. If I fail, I will fall.
Great game. Love it. There are so many things I didn’t expect.
I would recommend this to anyone.

I have been a gamer since the first days of video gaming (Pong) and only got back into it recently.
Planet Crafter has brought me back to the fold and have clocked about 1800 hours of amazing fun.
Thank you to the creators of this captivating fun game.

8/10 Would recommend
Pros:
-Very relaxed game, reminiscent of Subnatica.
-Works great on Steamdeck. No issues whatsoever.
-Okay replay value; the story endings are different but the game itself doesn't change at all.
-No real enemies. The only enemy is your lack of foresight or decision to play roulette with your oxygen levels.
-The gameplay is remarkably simple, and keeps building on itself in an easy to understand system.
- I made a bed in giant room and stood at the window overlooking my newly forming lake and realized this is the closest I'll ever be to owning lakefront property.
-There's an entire subplot you can easily miss if you aren't paying attention, and I enjoy the environmental storytelling it showcases.
Cons:
-Really, the biggest issue I have is that if you join a co-op game with someone who's farther in than you are, it will trigger all achievements to unlock for what the other person has accomplished in their run. Not an issue in the grand scheme of things, but it was mildly annoying when it happened.
-You have to do a ton of micromanaging to get everything accomplished.
-It gets rather repetitive at times while you're trying to figure out what to do next.
-Graphics are a little wonky at times, especially towards the end, but it's not a huge detraction.
In Summary:
Every dollar you spend on a game should be at least 1 hour of entertainment. This game is definitely worth the purchase to play through, especially if you can grab it on sale. Don't expect anything life-changing, but it's overall a decent game to play if you need something to dull your brain for a while.

Yo get this game, man. If you're missing the thrill you had when you first played Subnautica, this will scratch that itch. It might not seem super promising at first, but it will pull you in. You will feel the joy. I am still in what I think is the mid game. Do yourself a favor and don't watch any videos or pictures of the game, if you can help it. Let it be a surprise.

Definitely a good game, and does a good job of feeling like you're terraforming a planet.
There's only a little bit of storyline, and the worldbuilding elements are a little bit iffy if you start thinking about them too hard, but let's be honest, you're not playing this for the story. What there is for story is done fairly competently, nothing too amazing, but nothing really bad either, with a few amusing parts to find.
The important part is you're a convict, you chose to do the high-risk job of terraforming a planet instead of life in prison/execution. You get unceremoniously dumped onto a place that looks basically like Mars when you first get there, with red dirt, dust storms, and no real atmosphere to speak of.
In time, you bring blue skies, water, plant life, and a thriving ecosystem, while discovering the planet's secrets about why there's such an oddly high number of starship crash sites on this outer space bermuda triangle of a planet.
It's not the prettiest game, even on its highest settings, but even with a junker computer you can still run the game well, and it does what it needs to well enough visually. You definitely do see the world change gradually over time based on what you've done, with some more generic, global changes, and some more specific, localised changes based on what you do.
It has a lot of exploration elements of different biomes, various wrecked ships, and even now has a random dungeon generation setup for late game where it can procedurally generate starship wrecks to explore to your heart's desire.
It's still getting continual updates and quality of life patches, and a new planet was added recently as DLC which I have yet to try, but I'll post about that when I play through it on the DLC page.
Overall, it's a game I've played quite a few times, though I'd previously been streaming for various different groups so stopped short of finishing each time. I finally finished it this time through and it's pretty satisfying, with about 30-40 hours worth of content, though it has plenty of replay value as well.
There's also multiplayer added recently, though I have yet to try that, so I can't comment on how effective it is, but it should make an already enjoyable game that much better.
There are a few minor issues, but not many. Occasionally, especially near the end of the game, there are a few "guide-dang-it" moments where it's not really clear what you're supposed to be doing, such as trying to make your first mammals, which don't show up naturally on their own like everything else up to that point and the interface for them is less than clear on how it works.
Setting up automation is a powerful tool, but shows up too late in the game to really matter much and is a massive resource drain for even minimal automation until you're pretty much to the point that resources just don't matter any longer.
The trade rocket is also kind of a problem where almost all of the money you'll get to spend will come from chests via exploration, rather than from anything you trade on your end, because anything you can create is worth about 1/10th or less what it really should be for the effort you put into building it. You can still get plenty of money from exploration, it just feels bad that there's really not much point in building a properly automated factory to produce and trade goods because by the time you get it set up, you'd be at the end of the game anyway and it would have minimal impact.
There are also some issues with clipping through walls sometimes, especially in areas where there's meant to be scripted events later in the game, and a variety of other minor bugs, but nothing gamebreaking.
There's also other minor balance issues like the truck when you first get it just isn't really useful because of the severely reduced mobility compared to the jetpack, though it does become useful for a while after some expensive upgrades to it, but then you have a teleporter network set up and it goes back to being not really useful any longer again because the world just flat out isn't ideal for using a vehicle that can't fly. You can build roads to fix this, but the time and resources spent doing so would again be wasted because it'd just be faster not to do that in the first place.
These are, however, minor gripes. They're nitpicking at best. The game is extremely good and a solid AA-tier game, just don't expect AAA-tier visuals or attention to detail. For what it is, it's amazing and well worth the full asking price, even without a sale. With a sale, there's really no reason not to buy it if you like exploration/crafting-survival games.
Note there are no monsters in the game at all. No enemies. No guns. Your only threats are things like falling from high heights until you get a jetpack, a lack of food, or a lack of water or oxygen, and these become mostly trivial to deal with after about a third of the way through the game or so. As such, it's really not a "hard" game by any means, so don't come looking for a challenge because you won't really find one here. It's just a very pleasant, relaxing game to explore and terraform a planet to nice music. If that's what you want, you will find exactly that.
Edit: Forgot to mention, there are currently 3 endings to be discovered, depending on what you value. They're not hugely different from each other, and are like 1990s-era level of being basically a basic animation and a few lines of text. If you hated the ending to Starcraft 2, then basically this is more of that, but on an even smaller scale. Again, minor gripe, you didn't come here for the story, you came here to craft a planet, and the endings do show off your planet from a nice vantage point.