Posted on: September 18, 2022
Early Access review
jackswift85
Verified ownerGames: 464 Reviews: 18
Fun Survival and Base Building
Like many of the other reviews here, the closest analog to this game is playing Subnautica without any enemies to attack you. You'll gather minerals, build up your base, unlock newer crafting recipies which allow you to explore further afield and find rarer materials that feed into building better bases, etc. Where this game is different is the terraforming aspect. Where Subnautica's base building was a means to an end to explore more of the environment, Planet Crafter's main goal it gives you is to terraform the planet. To accomplish this, you need to build terraforming machines that focus on creating oxygen, heat, water content, plants, etc. These machines function all the time (barring power failure), so you'll set them up between your exploration sessions. As you play, you'll slowly turn the dusty orange world you landed on into a lush, green planet with cascading waterfalls and sparkling lakes. The core gameplay loop of explore, collect, build, terraform is very satisfying, but the terraforming adds an additional layer of ownership to the planet while you're playing. The only problem with the game right now is that it's not finished. There's some small narrative elements and messages you can find in abandoned ships and other bases, but it's just flavor text and doesn't have an influence on the game. Expanding on these will make the game world feel more alive. There's also a point where you can reasonably explore all of the biomes and wrecks, but the final goals of the terraforming and end-game research are quite a ways away. When this happens, you can either stop playing, have it idle, or do nothing but build more machines and launch more rockets. Once the mid- and end-game parts of the game are fleshed out and balanced, this will be a full fun survival and base building experience. As it is right now, there's still a good 20-30 hours of solid gameplay, and I can't wait to come back and play it when the game is finished.
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