The Planet Crafter

Very nice experience with lots of creativity and surprises, even if not the first game of its kind. Seeing an arid Mars-like planet turning into a respirable and beautiful Earth-like is a very satisfying feeling! The content is satisfying yet I hope it would get updates in the near future. Overall very neat quality of development and nice look and feel. PS: and it's French \o/ ;)

This is just an another building/crafting game. Not a simulation of terraforming. Positives: * Crafting system is fun * Survival mechanisms * Exploring and hunting for resources Negatives: * There is no Science in the game, just pseudo-scientific numbers * The exploration area is limited * It gets old fast: after you get to the mammals stage, you've probably explored everything and there is not much to do after that.

It's early access, but it doesn't feel like EA. The UI, features, and gameplay are all solid. Upcoming updates seem to be more about providing for progressing terraforming further, not about reworking existing features. The building and crafting style are reminiscent of Subnautica. Exploration feels different and there's no horror or hostile creatures elements. Early on the map feels huge. But, as you get better oxygen tanks it feels like terraforming has increased your view distance and it's easier to travel longer distances. You'll want to create a few very tiny outposts where you can leave mining equipment running. So, you've read a few reviews and this game seems like it might be interesting. The best way to find out more is to play the demo! The demo is available on the steam store page. The demo is a full copy of the game but with a cutoff after a reaching a certain level of progress. The demo has a few hours of gameplay before you hit the cutoff! I thought that was maybe a bit too generous ... but it did lead me to buy the game. Your demo save game can be continued in the full version of the game. It turns out there are many many more hours of gameplay and things to do past the demo cutoff point.

I should like Planet Crafters. It is entirely inside my wheelhouse and seemingly universally beloved, but every step of this game is like pulling teeth for me, and it's mostly down to clunky underdeveloped UI/UX that remains untouched from the original Next Fest demo from years ago. The onboarding is terrible. You start the game with a vague rolling list of objectives that may or may not be self-evident from their title, but offer no hints as to how or where they may be accomplished. Certain constructions can only be constructed indoors, some only outdoors, and some higher tiers of construction invert where they can be placed. Some of these are logical, others completely nonsensical. Even once you figure out those elements for yourself, you always have to deal with the awkward system of installing upgrade modules and the perpetual "programmer interface" that's just unpleasant to look at and deal with. The upgrades screen in particular is a nightmare, with each specific tree of upgrades just being an unbroken horizontal list that you have to click on furiously to scroll through. 90% of the game is running around, managing your oxygen levels, pointing your Future Gun at stuff and clicking at resources to pick them up, which just reminds me of No Man's Sky but somehow worse. The remaining 10% is building stuff which will fight you tooth and nail anytime you try to dig in and make it look decent. Support structures are all but mandatory to keep shelters from hovering, but then when you attempt to build the shelter it has zero snap-to with the support structure and either sinks into it or ends up hovering anyway. The terraforming mechanic is a novel idea to give a sense of progress, but that progress is frustrating and unsatisfying for me when all it boils down to is slapping down a bunch of machines wherever you feel like. Ultimately it ends up feeling like a janky, directionless sandbox that hands you a gold star every time you build enough of one kind of thing.

The game is really great for players who like to craft and build. I really like how you can watch the changes on the planet. I played about 13h and there are just four things i miss or would change or add. 1. There should be such thing like an elevator.( if you build a big base then it takes "hours" to go up the floors with only ladders) 2. You can get trapped in a room if you accidently dissmantel the ladder or door, especially when your rucksack is full and the dismanteled material fall on the floor, but outside the room! So you have no material to build the door or ladder again, to go outside. 3. Please make that the strucktures have also the autoconnect on the baseplates, not only on the side. ( it is more or less impossible to put a room exactly on a steel construction). A free camera during building mode would also help. 4. If you dismantle structures which are in the air, please let fall down the material to the ground.(Now they are mostly "flying" in the air.