The Planet Crafter

Surprising at every turn. That's the best way to describe it, really. I got into this game without knowing much about it, it was just there - languishing in the early access section of my wishlist, and when it hit 1.0, a friend of mine suggested playing it together. So play it we did.
To keep it spoiler-free: it starts out feeling like Subnautica, except on dry land. But then - it unfolds. Yes, it's that kind of game, and I'm pleased to tell you it unfolds really nicely - and keeps things balanced and fun until the end. I've played on the Intense difficulty with a friend, for reference - it makes survival needs drop faster and the terraforming grind somewhat longer, but I still felt it was pleasant.
Step 1: Survive
When it comes to survival, this is a pretty standard fare. Oxygen, thirst, and health/hunger; there is no combat in the game, so it's fitting - but you can take damage from other sources such as falling. Carry emergency rations in case of a fall! How else are you going to mend that broken leg?
What is interesting is that the way you take care of these needs keep changing. Once your initial rations are out, what are you going to do, hunt for rocks? Fish? In what water? Grow stuff? In sand? With what technology? Oh, your benevolent corporate overlords will probably provide for you... if you live long enough to make yourself useful, at the very least.
As for water... you melt the naturally ocurring ice, of course. But what if the ice runs out, for one reason of another? Other sources of the precious liquid will have to be found. What will they be? I don't know about you, but I found such questions very exciting. And whenever you discover a new way to deal with the limitations of your flesh, it's always such a joyful moment.
Step 2: Build
Since this planet is just a barren rock, you'll need shelter to even breathe. I had lots of fun building a cool and useful base, but let's be honest, the main things you'll be building are the devices to terraform the planet. Heaters. Drills to generate pressure. Some special tubes, where hardy plants can grow to provide some oxygen. And more, later on; just keep in mind - the process of getting what you want is slow and gradual.
It's actually a little bit like an idle game. Build stuff to generate stuff, and then more stuff happens. Build more stuff. But make no mistake - if you won't take an active role in constantly expanding your facilities, you won't get anywhere. You're to terraform an entire planet; so better get to work.
That said, there will be moments where your production is satisfactory and you need some rare materials anyway. And that's where the other fun part of the game comes in.
Step 3: Explore
I can't write too much here because this part is the easiest one to spoil... so let's just say that the map is large. There's a lot to see. And you will need to explore to find the resources to expand your facilities, considering that better buildings require more rare materials.
There are different "biomes" (no biosphere here, so calling them that feels weird), and they all have their unique feel, and some contain resources not found elsewhere. And, perhaps, ways to build more advanced gear and/or buildings can be found, too.
Step 4: ...Story?
Yes, the game has a plot, of sorts. You're here for a reason. And this barren rock has been chosen for terraforming for a reason as well. And you didn't choose to be here; you're a convict, and this is a way for you to carry out your sentence. Put the two and two together.
While the writing is pretty shoddy, it still managed to make me care - although I felt like some parts didn't make sense, or didn't have a good story progression. Still, you don't exactly play this kind of game for the story, so I'm not going to complain too much.
Conclusion
Roughly 57 hours to complete on Intense with a friend. The final few hours were a bit of a drag, but that's because we were a little tired and didn't want to expand our production one final time. Once we did, things got moving and we got to the ending. We'll likely play the DLC as well - we did like the game, after all.
If you do decide to play this, for the love of f*ck, don't look up anything on the wiki. The game tells you everything you need to know. The wiki is full of stuff I personally would consider spoilers, so for the best experience just stay away. With that out of the way, I just have one last thing to say:
IKHLAS LIVES
Curator page

It's a 6.5/10, full of exciting surprises but also many letdowns.
PROS:
+World is *very* fun to explore
+World changes in delightful ways as game progresses
+Time spent base-building feels rewarding
+Excellent soundtrack
+High volume of unlocks, lots of content
+Relaxing crafting game with decent resource management loop
CONS:
-Placing structures is buggy and adherence to grid is inconsistent
-Environment collision is a horrific mess, clipping inside geometry is commonplace
-Certain unlocks are virtually useless and feel like padding
-Draw distance on medium graphics settings causes extreme pop-in and important structures do not have any LoDs, rendering them invisible at a fairly close range
-Late-game crafting loop lacks useful automation and recipes for insects/frogs are extremely tedious
-Aesthetics, gameplay, and many icons are *highly* derivative of Subnautica
-Disappointing ending(s)
-Many structures/recipes/terraforming phases unlock in bizarre order depending on how you choose to increase Terraformation index
-Living creatures lack variety, animal system should be huge reward but feels underdeveloped.
-Certain mechanics do not function as expected (specifically resource miners needing very specific placement and production fuses not working on many machines that produce items i.e. food growers)
-High volume storage unlocks too late in the game
-Pinning a recipe should be a default mechanic, not an unlock.
All in all, a fun game with a very exciting first 15 hours that eventually becomes highly tedious. A vast amount of content and systems, but many elements lack a robust implementation. Well worth the money, but decidedly uneven.

Thank you devs, for making the rare gem of game that my whole family can play together and all have a great time. My husband loves sci-fi space games, I love peaceful building games and my preschool aged daughter loves patting animals and running around collecting cobalt. Only cobalt. I don't know why.


Fellow gamers, if you liked Subnautica but didn't like the jump scares, if you liked Raft but got sick of being conked on the head by very rude birds....then this game is 100% for you.

An excellent, slow-paced survival-crafter game.
Pros:
* Lots and lots of secrets to discover.
* Great tech tree to unlock.
* A surprising number of biomes.
* Freaking beautiful, and great (low-annoyance) soundtracks.
Cons:
* Some of the late-game mechanics aren't explained very well. (genetics, mostly, tho that may've been because I unlocked mammals way later than I should've)
* One biome (rainbow caves) is key to mid-to-late game progress - if you haven't found it yet, you're almost crippled by a lack of quartz varieties. A hint towards it would have been nice.
Meh:
* Most of the late-game "special" foods' perks were... useless, to me? I certainly never bothered, anyhow.
TL;DR: If you like exploring/crafting games, 9/10; else, avoid.

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.

Outstandingly polished, adaptively paced and engaging throughout. 
Even if you don't like the genre, this one is special and worth a look.

Due to its clever pacing, there's always something to do, no matter if you go fast or if you take your time. The game never overwhelms with too many new mechanics at once, while allowing experienced players to quickly make progress.

Multiplayer pacing and coop is done very well, with an easy drop-in-drop-out system, people can visit your world and join you in building — keeping their inventory between sessions. The pacing beautifully adapts to multiplayer as well, and given the variety of tasks, folks will be able to work together in a very organic way. Be it going out on a big exploration adventure together, or someone designing and beautifying the base while others gather resources.

The first impression the game gives might be is its weakest point. The world might look a tad random and cheap at first, with resource blobs scattered around. It thankfully rather quickly shows how well it was crafted by guiding the player, purely through its design, to the next objectives and opportunities in a very unintrusive manner. As the world is undergoing many terraforming iterations, in the mid-game it further shows how well put together it was.

The unlocking mechanics are a combination of incremental games and exploration that allow each player to go at their pace without getting bored or overwhelmed. The system used here, and the math put it to make it work, is truly commendable and something I hope other devs learn from.

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.