The Planet Crafter

I've been playing it since early access before launch, lots of content, easy and enjoyable gameplay. Only the environment is hostile until you terraform the planet enough, and after that there's a lot more to explore.

Consumed my life

I'm only a few hours into the game but it seems very much like the beginning stages of Subnautica: explore to get resources to build tools to explore further, with a nice terraforming setting. Seems well crafted and smooth, both program wise and game design wise.

This game was a very pleasant surprise. Unlike most "builders", this has a serious element of survival included. Death is not permanent, but surviving a moment of "about to die" is quite exhilarating. What made it memorable for me, is that hours of gaming flew by in seconds, without being aware of just how much time had passed. While some tasks do get a little repetitive, there is always something new and different just over the horizon. Progression is mostly smooth and well-timed, such that you are rarely "stuck" or bored. Initially you're gasping for air, struggling to find water and especially food. Then you make your first tentative forays away from the safety of your home base, and start making discoveries. More and more gameplay unlocks, and new buildable items (IF you can find the raw materials needed) ease the grind considerably. The variety of environments and locations is excellent. Exploring wrecked ships, going back to them later when you can deconstruct more advanced items, terraforming the planet such that there is a breathable atmosphere and drinkable water aplenty feels like the edge is taken off, allowing you to focus more on producing things, upgrading things, expanding your base, building other bases... Eventually you get fast travel via teleporters, and suddenly the long distance travel is not a problem anymore. There is a bit of a backstory, and secrets to uncover. They just add flavor, and add some spice to the otherwise typical terraforming mission. It is mostly bug free (I've fallen through the landscape a few times, but have always managed to get out. And a couple of inst-crashes, so I've learned to save regularly) and the minor issues do not detract from what feels like a very complete and enjoyable experience. DEFINITELY worth the money, whether you enjoy terraforming or survival.

While brousing on YouTube, I stumbled upon a channel called "Real Civil Engineer", and ended up watching him play HOURS of this game (And that was WITH the videos having a lot of the scavenging edited out !!!) It looked interesting, and it was on sale on GoG at the time, so I bought it for when I got bored. Today I got bored, so fired it up. I think that was about 6 hours ago, and I STILL feel that I've not explored a fraction of the map. It's now 4:30am here and I only stopped playing because I'm falling asleep. :D