The Planet Crafter
Embark on a chill experience alone or with up to 10+ friends in online co-op. Your mission is to survive on a hostile planet and turn a barren land into a lush paradize. Terraforming is the only way!You are sent on a hostile planet with one mission: Make it habitable for Humans. You’ll have to survive, collect resources, build your base, produce machines to heat the planet, create an oxygen-rich atmosphere and eventually geo-engineer an entire planet!Gather minerals and resources to survive. Craft all the tools you need to fulfill your mission. Explore old shipwrecks and ruins and discover a planet full of mysteries!You’ll need a base and all sorts of machines to make yourself at home, and be able to bring life to this planet! Progress through building tiers to upgrade and expand your base and explore the planet further.See life forms appear on the planet as you terraform it by increasing heat, oxygen and pressure. Witness the first signs of life with moss and insects and unleash the planet’s full potential with thick forests and animals.From chill to hardcore, choose the difficulty level that suits you. Play with starting presets to create new games and experience endless possibilities.
- Multiplayer: survive by yourself or with friends (1-10+ online co-op)
- Survival: Thirst, Oxygen, Temperature and Health mechanics
- Base Building: shelter from a hostile environment and expand your exploration
- Crafting: equipment, tools and food to help you survive
- Terraformation: turn an entire hostile planet to a habitable paradise!
- Build machines to create atmospheric pressure and heat the planet
- Create a biosphere with breathable oxygen
- See your environment change as your terraformation progresses
- Creatures: create life by decrypting and mixing DNA extracts and make your own animals
- Procedurally generated shipwrecks: explore and find infinite rare loot
- Chill experience with no violence: the only enemy you’ll have to fight is the hostile environment
- Adjustable difficulty to fit your level
- Adjustable presets for renewed experiences through time
- Creative mode
Steam User 294
Gave me the 'Minecraft for the first time' feeling, something I never thought I'd feel again. It's a world to get lost in. Stuff to explore, cool bases to build, danger to avoid (asphyxiation, dehydration, starvation), and a lot of gear and blueprints to unlock that helps with all three.
It's not a perfect game. The terrain get a little weird (sudden rock formation pop-in, collision mesh not quite matching the model), but this is mostly a problem in the late game outer areas.
Make sure to have an alarm ready, You WILL lose track of time playing this.
Steam User 175
What I love most about this game is probably the one thing that puts off a huge chunk of other people:
The absence of something out there trying to kill you, except for the lack of oxygen/water/food. There is no predator hunting you, no aliens shooting at your back. It's just you versus the atmosphere. And it's on you to change that as well.
So you can REALLY focus on creating a lush, beautiful planet out of a dead wasteland, all while exploring cool landscapes, shipwrecks and hidden lore.
You build base(s) and get your automation started for more resources to build more and better things, that will transform this dull marsian planet into a living, breathing home.
For me this game is the perfect balance of exploration and "strategy" on how you spend your resources. I adore that this game has other priorities that so many others from this "branch" have. Nothing jumpscares you or makes you stressed out and fear for your life - but places can still be scary and uncomfortable to navigate through, keeping you on your toes for a hot minute (also thanks to the eerie soundtrack), as fall damage or drowning/suffocating/burning/starving still can kill you.
Overall a great game to relax and tinker when you're not the kind of person who destresses with "stressful" games. It's just so.. satisfying visiting a faraway place after a long time and the once sad, sandy dunes are now green and lush. It's a good kind of dopamine.
I revisit the game every few months when there are bigger gameplay updates and new things to discover and create, as it CAN get repetitive after a while, especially when you're in the later stages. It can feel like a waiting game at some points when you're just at the beginning of a new stage, but, if you have a few building projects going, you really don't mind. Just put on a podcast and build away.
I highly recommend this game if you're in search for a very TAME survival game, that isn't hard or punishing to get through and has its focus on actually reshaping the planet. I just hope that the developers never give in to the constant lamenting of some people who DO want an active threat being added. Or at least make it optional. I like ONE exploration/survival game without the killing.
Steam User 149
PRO TIPS at END of review (spoilers)
Given the fact that this is an early access game and was made on a small budget by a small team of indie devs, this game is remarkably good and very satisfying. However, the game does have a few drawbacks which should be addressed in future updates.
I have played 58 hours of the game and have just popped my last achievement for 100% and used a controller for the entire time. Well, a mix of m&c and controller.
To actually get your controller to work in the very first instance, you will need to pause the game at any point, go to the control options and then make sure both your mouse AND controller camera sensitivity is at 100%. Basically just to be sure, move the cursor down and then back and then hit Apply settings and it will work perfectly.
The game itself will be enjoyable for many people, but particularly for people that like crafting, exploration, base building and enjoy creativity. I do want to underline the fact that in order to progress and in order to knock off each achievement or ultimately, finish the game - you will be manually crafting A LOT. And I mean A LOT. So if that isn't your thing, I wouldn't play this game. I have played No Man's Sky, both Subnautica games and Minecraft to death and this game has much more crafting than any of them IMO.
You find yourself on a barren planet with no life and just a few basic materials to hand. You are limited with what you can build or upgrade at the start and will progress towards terraforming the planet into a breathable, lush green paradise with water, trees and life. For the first 10 hours, you will be focusing on base building, crafting and upgrading your gear and machines in order to slowly progress through the terraforming stages of the planet.
This can be enjoyable, it really depends on you and your imagination. As you advance your machines and progress with upgrades and unlocks of certain rarer elements, the terraforming process speeds up and you will start unlocking stages quicker than at the start of the game.
One of the main drawbacks in my opinion is that there is some really good, fun and enjoyable machines which you unlock very deep into the game which I think should be available much earlier on. As an example, you will eventually unlock what could be full automation using things such as drones and auto-crafters. If you build the base efficiently and in a good location, you could essentially automate your entire operation properly. That would be really cool to watch and will allow you to explore more and focus on other things such as making a brilliant base. But by the time you get to the stage which allows this level of automation, it's end game. There is nothing else left for you to do.
As a suggestion to the developers, I think that the teleporter and the drones should be unlockable considerably earlier on in the game and require less rare materials. It would make building more enjoyable and will move things along nicely at a better pace.
With that main drawback aside, I think the gameplay progresses at a reasonably fair pace. It would be great to see some more areas to explore in the future and i would happily play the game again. In fact, I am likely going to start over again and play on the hardest mode now I have all the achievements done and I know how the game works.
The other minor issues are snapping could be better when building, there could be a little more variety in parts and the rotation of objects could be more free-flowing as opposed to rotating to specific angles.
For the achievement hunters it is a dead simple one. You just need patience.
PRO TIPS (SPOILERS)
Build your starting base in the middle of the map. There is a pod which you start at on normal mode. If you look out of the pod and look for a rock formation towards the centre, there is an open area there which is slightly raised above your current level. Build here as you will need to be above water as you progress and your starting pod will be about 20 feet underwater in a lake.
Build your base 2 or 3 ladders high off of the ground. The reason to do this, is as you progress and you get access to autocrafters, you can build many things under your base which produce food (farms) or honey (beehives) as well as gas, algae (if your base is built slightly over hanging water) and many elements. With a room in your base with lockers stored full of goodies as well as drones on the roof of your base constantly supplying materials, 2 or 3 autocrafters set up in certain segments and radius's in your base can make your life a lot easier.
You don't need to build rooms or living spaces to place lockers or autocrafters inside. You can just place the foundations down which cost 1 iron and place anything you want on top of them. This will be useful for when you are forced to build miners in specific places away from your base which have materials that are needed and only found in certain areas.
Make and use plenty of rockets to really speed things up. Each rocket type gives a boost of 1000% (10 times) to whatever your current pressure, heat etc is and the effect is planet-wide. This starts getting diminishing returns after about 10 rockets of each type is launched, but very worth it even after that amount. They are key to progression speed, particularly mid-game.
Always have plenty of water, food and oxygen to hand.
When out exploring wrecks, containers and other things, always take the stuff you can't make such as flower or food seeds. And anything else which would be costly or limited for you to build at that point in time. Do not be tempted to take minerals and other materials unless you really do need them as you will have plenty of all materials as you progress.
Be patient and enjoy the game. It is worth the money and puts a lot of bigger budget and AAA games to shame.
Steam User 193
Really Great Game... Just gets lonely... We need a friend....
Steam User 141
great game, very addictive... I've played for 29 hours up to now, I'm 65 and retired, love the take your own time approach cos no-one is out to get you, apart from the requirement for Air, Water and food, but even those needs are not ridiculous enough to spoil the game... love it will be playing again today (the wife's out all day he! he!)
Steam User 109
I've been looking for game like this for years! No monsters or battles, just pure survival, crafting, and super satisfying progress. The graphics are fun & gorgeous, the tech tree is attainable and well thought out, and the game controls are not hard to figure out. If you like the idea of fixing things, watching things grow and terra-forming in general, I highly recommend!
Steam User 94
If you enjoy SOC games, I recommend Planet Crafter - but there are a few points to be aware of.
First, the game is still early access developed by two people (afaik). I can't say I encountered any game breaking bugs, but don't expect a fully finished, AAA quality. My ony personal pain point is optimization - game seems to lag at some points. Which is normal for an EA game and restarting it fixes it, so not a big deal.
Important to note that I've been following the game for a while and they've been consistently releasing patches and adhering to their roadmap (which, you know, exists) which for me is the most important things for ea games.
The second important point to know is that, quite unique in the genre, there is no violence. You aren't fighting aliens, you aren't even evading alien water monsters (talking about you Subnautica). I believe meteors can hurt you (although I never had one fall on me, it's pretty easy to avoid them) and other than that, the only way you can die is fall damage, thirst, hunger or O2. For me, this is a unique and great experience. But not everyone might appreciate it.
Now - if you are fine with the above points, I heartily recommend the game. For me it's closest to Subnautica: You are all by yourself (Even more so, as there are no cutie fishies) and you have to figure things out. You start by trying to survive, than expand your capacity and in the meanwhile, discover the fates of others before you and discover more about the planet.
The way it works is that you have to work on improving the Heat, O2 level etc to transform the planet to be habitable. They are represented by numbers and at certain points, you unlock new recipes. You harvest resources, many of which requires exploration. You may use them by themselves, craft them into alloys etc.
Initially, I thought the game was occasionally too grindy but I started a Hardcore game in the current version and so far I haven't really felt that. Might be because I know the game better now, but I feel I had to build more stuff in previous builds.
Overall, it's pretty chill and you always have a "next target" and even if you have to wait a bit, there are ways to shorten that wait. Sometimes you'll want to do those things, other times you'll want to spend some time gathering resources, modifying your base and upgrading your equipment and time will pass quicker than you expect :)
Anyway - like I said, if the concept sounds good to you, I definitely recommend it.