The Planet Crafter

by Aethyna May 8, 2024 | 1 Votes | 69 Played | 0 Reviews

10 rate

Genres:

Adventure

Graphics:

Labels:

Sandbox Game , Building , Nature , Sci-Fi , Crafting , Survival , Exploration , Aliens

Platforms:

Publishers:

Miju Games Set on the inhospitable, desert-covered alien planet, Planet Crafter is a first-person, sandbox-based survival game where you’ll get to play as a brave pioneer. Your mission? To terraform the planet bit by bit so that it’ll eventually be more habitable for humans. Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Gameplay Community Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Set on the inhospitable, desert-covered alien planet, Planet Crafter is a first-person, sandbox-based survival game where you’ll get to play as a brave pioneer. Your mission? To terraform the planet bit by bit so that it’ll eventually be more habitable for humans. Not only will you need to gather materials and craft upgrades, but you’ll also need to set up bases and outposts across the planet as you investigate the many mysterious curios on the planet, ranging from a ravine to old shipwrecks.

Gameplay

If you’re familiar with sandbox-style survival games and that you greatly enjoy playing them, Planet Crafter might just be right up your alley. To begin, the game will have you set up your game. You’ll get to choose a name for the world you’re about to explore and a game mode, which essentially is the game’s difficult setting. There are several to choose from, ranging from Relaxed, if you fancy a cozier experience, to Hardcore… well, for the hardcore, where it'll take your every wit to survive!

There’s also a Creative mode if you just want to build without having to go through the hassle of gathering resources in the first place or advancing to unlock new tech. Want something more customized? Well, you can tweak the game parameters to your liking as well.

Once done, the game will immediately launch you into the game proper. There’s no introduction clip to view nor a background story to go through. You’ll just find yourself inside what seems to be an escape pod with your handy multitool, and a helpful list of things to do on the top left, guiding you through the game’s basics.

As mentioned before, the goal of the game is to terraform the planet you land on and to do that; you’ll want to increase your Terraformation Index, or “Ti” for short. There are three main indicators that contribute to your Ti, namely Oxygen, Heat, and Pressure. There are specific ways to increase these indicators respectively. For instance, for oxygen, you’ll need to grow seedlings that you can then place inside a Vegetube to consistently generate oxygen over time. The more of these tubes (and plants) you have, the more oxygen you can produce.

Similarly, you’ll need to build heaters to generate heat and drills to release the pressure trapped within the planet’s crust/surface. Every drill, vegetube, and heater you add will speed up the terraforming process by a little bit. They also require energy to operate, so you’ll need to install enough energy-producing tools like increasingly larger solar panels.

Once you reach certain milestones for either Pressure, Heat, Oxygen or even the Ti, you’ll unlock new technologies. These new technology blueprints typically include better versions of previous machines, though these better versions often require more resources to build and more energy to maintain. You can even get more inventory slots, faster moving speed, and generally better character stats by increasing your Ti and unlocking new features and better features.

Base building is also another crucial feature of Planet Crafters. After all, the alien planet, being barren and all, has harsh weather patterns that may make venturing out during these bouts of bad weather, a bad idea. Building living compartment modules is as easy as pulling up the build menu - once you have the construction chip printed and equipped, of course – and selecting the place you want to place it. Although there’s a foundation frame that you can build first, it is fairly optional since it doesn’t help snap your modules to the grid. Modules can be combined to form a bigger living complex, though you don’t have the option to create separate rooms within the same complex – it’s just one big space.

Deconstructing stuff is easy as well. Just scroll to the Deconstruction option on your multitool, and you can get rid of that pesky debris blocking your path within a shipwreck.

There’s no limit as to how many bases and outposts you want to set up, so feel free to set up one near every point of interest just so it’s easier for you to find shelter when needed and to freely replenish your oxygen supply… that is until the planet is terraformed to the point where the air is breathable. You can also set up screens in each base you build to monitor your energy inputs and outputs, your technological progress, as well as your terraforming progress (in detail).

Naturally, to do all these, you’ll first need to explore your surroundings and gather all the resources you’ll need to “fund” your terraforming efforts. Thankfully, resources are generally easy to gather in this game. All of the minerals and other resources you need, including ice, aluminum, and iron, are found on the planet’s surface, so there’s no need to dig into the ground to find any. The “mining” part is simple too – just point your multitool at the mineral node and let is do its work. Of course, if you found the right blueprints, you can speed this up considerably – not that it isn’t convenient enough already. There is, however, no automation here.

Exploration is also very rewarding in this game. You’ll stumble upon interesting shipwrecks from time to time, though more frequently, you may come across various containers containing precious resources that you cannot produce nor gather. There are even many different “biomes” in this game, clearly separating out different parts of the planet that may contain new resources to discover and exploit.

Planet Crafter is a survival game as well. The survival metrics you need to pay attention to are simple – health, which also doubles as your hunger; thirst, and oxygen level. If any of these metrics become too low, you’ll find yourself at risk of dying. Depending on the game difficulty chosen, dying can be a rather “meh” incident or it could be quite devastating, especially after a successful resource run. From time to time, some natural disasters will roll in as well, usually in the form of sandstorms. Again, depending on the difficulty chosen, it might be something you can weather through even though you're outside, or not.

Eventually, you may even get to create life by decrypting and mixing DNA extracts. Your imagination’s the limit here as you can blend DNA to create your own animals with traits you desire to populate the planet.

Community

The best part about any survival game like Planet Crafter is the fact that you can survive together with friends. Supporting up to 10 players (or more) in a single world, you can easily organize gaming parties with all of your gamer friends… at least those who can make it! Survive together, build together, and explore the planet together in Planet Crafter!

Graphics/ Sound

Visually, the game started off pretty bland, since the planet is barren. However, over time, as you terraform the planet, you’ll start to see signs of life and greenery slowly creeping in. Eventually, vast swathes of desert will be covered by a lush blanket of plants and trees.

In terms of sound, the game comes with a selection of soundtrack that fits well with the game’s sci-fi theme. The music is also accompanied by various sound effects, such as the sound of your multitool harvesting resources or the sound of your boots crunching sand as you walk across the desert.

Conclusion

Planet Crafter is a fantastic addition to the sci-fi-themed survival genre with a focus on terraforming the planet you find yourself on. The satisfaction of seeing the barren world before you get transformed, slowly albeit surely, thanks to your efforts, is incredibly rewarding… more so if you get to play with friends and have a few laughs along the way.