Planet Crafter: Bring a planet to life

Games
1

EDIT: This is released and no longer EA

This has been mentioned sporadically in a few places, and it’s EA has proceeded at a fast pace, with major updates consistently coming out every 3-4 months by this remarkable 2-person team out of France, that it deserves its own thread.

First off, while it’s in EA, it has a great demo that will allow you to play for 4-6 hours to get a real feel for the game. Just head to the stores page and download the demo which gets you to blue sky - and if you decide to purchase, you can resume right where you left off.

TIP: Read my non-spoilery guide to get grounded on how the early game will go

So what is this game?

It’s a survival game where you are a convict and your sentence is to terraform a barren and inhospitable planet into a thriving living planet and maybe discover some secrets long the way.

You start out very much like Subnautica - with a pod that has basic life support & a crafting station and with a limited air supply. Over time you will upgrade your air supply, get new blueprints for buildings and machines that will improve the planets Oxygen, Temperature and Pressure. As you progress in each of these three areas, the penal authority will grant you new blueprints for bigger and better machines to continue your terraforming pursuit.

As you increase these 3 values, the planet begins to change right before your eyes. Weeds and grasses at first, lakes as the ice melts, trees and flowers, insects and onward.

The planet is very large. It is a lot of exploration to discover new biomes, new minerals and wrecks and maybe some other things that will surprise you.

What it doesn’t have is anything that will attack you. This is an explicit and non-negotiable part of the games design. Only your hubris and carelessness (and maybe a sporadic meteorite that you neglect to dogde) can weaken or kill you. Most of the time it’s because you run our of air but you can die of hunger and thirst.

It’s a great game that is not as polished as subnautica - but the charm and the game loop is very solid. As you progress, new techs in travel, inventory, resource gathering all improve just as you might be beginning to feel its getting a bit grindy.

This is probably a year away from release. I’ve been playing this for the past year, picking it back up with each new update to discover the new things I can create and grow and the devs are doing a great job with this.

And as I stated in the beginning, there is a demo - easy to download & try and see what you think.

2

Overwhelming positive on Steam…will try this out…thnx.

3

I played this through a while back. Given how small the team is, it is impressive. It’s a “survival-lite” game that has some base-building elements. It is similar to Subnautica in that the primary challenge is figuring out how to scavenge resources to unlock the thing you need to get to the next tier of resources to unlock the thing you need.

The goal here is to terraform the planet, and watching it go from lifeless, barren rock to habitable is quite satisfying.

I found it relaxing and solid. On the minus side, it is also not terribly challenging and is probably boring for either hardcore sandboxers or people wanting a real survival challenge.

4

Once you get the teleporters the game is really easy. I did enjoy my time with it but not sure I will play again.

5

It has been a while since I have played this, but I did have fun with it, however, I never finished it (maybe there were more updates to come?). I got to the part where trees grew everywhere. I just kind of lost interest in it though and have no desire to go back and play it again after it is released.

6

This game evolves more from survival to logistical in the latest few updates. A good way to compare / contrast this with subnautica is that in Subnautica, you really don’t need that much minerals to accomplish the goal and escape the planet. The only time minerals come into play in Subnautica is if you want to go crazy in base building.

In Planet Crafter, the amount of minerals you need is crazy. For example, in the beginning you can manually combine minerals to get a super alloy and for a while, with your inventory and jetpack, it seems all you’re doing is shuttling inventory around, to get these made. Then you get better mining equipment and you can now mine them directly (provided you find the secret area where super alloy can be mined), which helps a great deal. The thing with miners is they just get you more of a certain mineral, not only that mineral, so if you’re like me, you end up building 20-30 cabinets at each mining area to hold all the extra stuff that you don’t have a need for right now.

Then you get the teleporter, which is a godsend, because now you’re not jetpacking all around, but you’re still needing to manually move so many things and while the teleporter helps a great deal, and you’re thinking “wow this is so easy now compared to previously” - kind of like when you get the jetpack it speeds up so much over walking / running. But then the teleporter is still not enough because now you need “super alloy rods” which take 10 super alloys to make a single rod and you need so many of these your head will swim. So it begins to get grindy and you progress and get an autocrafter which will craft something and is able to use storage cabinets in a small circular area. OK now we’re cooking!

But then teleporting to the autocrafters to empty them & grab what you need (you’ll have spent hours setting up autocrafters at multiple locations for everything you’re combinging) and it begings to get grindy and now we have drones! Drones can go and pick things up for you.

So, yes I agree that the early game is chill but then it turns into a logistical game because of the amount of things you are building is insane and the challenges of keeping up with electrical production to generate enough electricity to keep all these terraforming machines and mining machines and autocrafters running is crazy, so you’re constantly building out electrical generation (which has it’s own tech tree).

The game moves from more of a chill subnautica to a light Satisfactory / Factorio game.

And I keep getting surprised with each update. Drones came with the lastest update, but I haven’t played that yet, so I’m sure there will be more!

7

I enjoyed this game very much!
In the last update you can buy extra craft recipes from space and frogs will appear in the new amphibian stage. Extra elements are constantly added in the updates.
Later in the game it does get a little grindy (keep building the same buildings to improve the biomass index).

8

Planet Crafter has hit 1.0 so it’s left Early Access. Hoorah!

I played around 35 hours when it was in EA around 18 months ago but haven’t touched it since. I was worried about burning out prior to the release. But with the release, I dove back in with a brand new game.

So far I’m really enjoying it. The early gameplay hasn’t changed much, if at all, but I find the game loop so soothing and satisfying that I don’t mind. This is a great cozy game where the survival pressures ease off pretty quickly and you spend your time expanding your base and exploring the world. The game gives out upgrades at a steady pace and it seems that you’re constantly getting new things to build.

If you have any interest in builders or lite survival games, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Highly recommended!

9

Why did you start over - is the experience that improved at 1.0?

10

I played 2-3 hours way back when and got kinda tired of it…might try it again.

11

I enjoyed my time with it but at the end (once I got the teleporters) it wasn’t as fun as I remember. Maybe the newer things added makes it worthwhile?

12

I wanted to re-live the early game progression and see if it changed. Maybe I just have too much time on my hands!

13

I picked this up. It’s very chill and I like it for that.

14

I love this game with it’s easy pacing. Still need to replay it, but no time due to No Man’s Sky.
The thing i do find annoying is that the requirements to progress is exponential where upgraded buildings are more in a lineair sense. I know i just need to build more, there is enough space…

15

Are you using rockets? Because rockets really accelerate requirements. They give huge boosts. I launch 10-20 of each type.

16

Apparently i don’t use rockets enough. I will try it next playthrough!

17

While the main game loop is terraforming the planet, there is some interesting side content. Sort of lore-based. It’s not terribly important, and like all activities in the game, it ends with you getting some phat loot, but it was still a fun and different activity.

There’s also an item that unlocks called something like a ‘Portal Generator’ - you feed it high end items (pulsar quartz, the pink crystals that you find when exploring some far off areas. Also some more advanced varieties of quartz) which unlock a ‘Portal’ which is basically a little instance with one or more ships in that you can loot. The instances are rated in terms of rarity and difficulty, with the ones requiring more unlock currency having better rewards. It’s another interesting side activity that provides some variety to the game loop (which does start to get a bit grindy towards the end).

I am at around 1.4 Terraforming index, and it appears a rescue ship appears at 5.0 TI, so I guess I’m closing in on the end of the game. Between my beta save game and this one, I’ve got around 60 hours in the game. Sounds like a lot of time but I’ve enjoyed it all.

18

It really is a fantastic game and the basic gameplay loop is very addicting and is something like:

  1. Build as many electrical generation as you need to build 5-10 of the current terraforming machines (Pressure / Heat / Oxygen / Biomass)
  2. Build 5 * Tn EACH of the most advanced terraforming machines you can at each level n (you will be limited on materials)
  3. Explore to find new areas, new minerals, new technology (in wrecks) and new lore
  4. Bring these minerals back to (one of your) bases
  5. Explore the new technology that is given to you (as you progress on terraforming, the authority grants new blueprints) and build the new crafting buildings associated with those new techs.
  6. Look at these new technology buildings / machines and see what they offer in terms of new items and new recipes.

Goto 1

But I’m at 2.2 Terraforming and I’m going to take a break for a bit. The animal part is frustrating me as I’m not completely grokking it right now, but I also have this problem of getting frustrated after playing 8-10 hours a day non-stop and realize I do need a break.

The fact the game compels me to play so much I realize is a good attribute of a game. It’s kind of like Satisfactory. In Planet crafter late game you can really start to set up automation with drones and gettting that T2 storage just urges me to fill them up.

But the problem is the #5 above is really nothing left to explore, except for the portals that @Charlatan told you about and they are not as much exploration as very maze-ish. I did quite a few but I’m returning with fewer & fewer cool things because I’ve got so much automated.

19

I’ve got an auto crafter and drones set up, but it’s 1/2 satisfying and 1/2 frustrating because they don’t seem to bring what I want. (I’m trying to craft super alloy so maybe some of this is on me).

20

I just started this game for the first time in the last week and I am really enjoying it. I was worried it was too shallow and once I hit blue sky it would be almost done! I was quite wrong with that and there is quite a bit of game left for me to discover.

I am not up to the super alloy rods yet for a while, but I can get all the super alloy I want with the early miner I put in the aluminum fields (for a while I was always running out of aluminum). That at least gets me going for a while. I need to send up more rockets now!