The Planet Crafter

Planet Crafter Early Access

The Planet Crafter by Miju Games is an Early Access planetary terraforming sim. I feel slightly misled by reviews claiming this was essentially a complete game, in fact it is not. There are glitches, some more annoying than others (issues with crafting modal screens are particularly annoying). Gamepad controller support has been bugged since lanch, so every time I play I have to manually set the game pad sensitivity twice to properly use my right stick (shout out to whichever Steam user figured out this fix).

Early game is pretty satisfying as a survival/terraforming sim. There are no enemies but the elements, and these have no bite. Meteor storms look and sound terrifying but don’t harm the player or base in any way.

Oxygen, food, and hydration levels should be maintained but if you don’t (and you’re not playing permadeath) there’s no real reprocussions. You simply spawn at the nearest base and have to hike back to get your stuff, which is helpfully stored in a spawned chest. Some have compared it to Subnautica without killing, and I agree with that assessment. It’s a chill game, though a bit lonely.

The early progression is fun, but I’m starting to reach the stage in the game where I have to do a bit more grinding than I’d like. Donut enjoyed the early game, but abandoned it when progression slowed down, especially when they figured out we’d have to move their base, which had been built on low-lying ground in a flood plain.

The simulation is not hard science at all, but the planet was realistic enough it felt like SF rather than SFF… at least at first.

I was exploring a meteor field when out of nowhere, I stumbled upon a mushroom biome. To say this was unexpected would be an understatement. I went inside and found… liquid and broken wooden structures, on an arid planet? WTF.

Where did the wood come from? Why were there so many broken structures? WTF was up with the giant mushrooms? There’s a relic that unlocks some kind of weird temple…

WHY?

After being treated to an apparently “realistic” planetary surface, the descent into pure fantasy felt jarring and strange. I think if I’d been given some hint of it prior, it would be fine, but I didn’t discover this area until IDK 12 hours in? I’d already settled into the idea of this being a pseudo-realistic terraforming simulator.

Anyway, I’m on the cusp of having lakes, but it seems I have a ways to go.

Planet Crafter Version 1-0

When we previously played this game in early access, Donut and I played 20 hours or so before losing interest. I got to lake generation and got frustrated with the worldbuilding or whatever the heck was going on there. I got the itch again earlier this year, but decided to wait until version 1.0 was released.

It didn’t take me long to get back to where I was before (I was pratically flying through those inital terraforming tiers) but things got a little slow during the lake creation period. My numbers just weren’t going up for heat and pressure, no matter how many heaters and drills I set up. Once I discovered rockets provide a 1000%+ boost, and you find fuses to use with optimizer machines, that helped TREMENDOUSLY. After algae collectors are unlocked, you can really start working on biomatter.

When I unlocked moss, the game got more interesting because the planet wasn’t so barren-looking anymore. I really enjoyed flying around looking at the lakes and greenery. Right now, the bottleneck is uranium, since I need uranium rods both for nuclear power and for the optimizers. I found another uranium cave while exploring but like an idiot I didn’t mark it with a beacon, and now I can’t find it again. :(

When I first started playing I had the idea I would set up several bases and build with whatever resources were in the area, so I wasn’t having to haul stuff across the desert. But as the game progresses, it makes sense to have a centralized base because due to resource scarcity it’s generally necessary and prudent to dismantle machines and use the parts to make better ones. It’s kind of a hassle to have to trek back out to a base I no longer use because I built a T1 nuclear plant out there and I need the rod now.

The jet pack helps speed up travel a lot, and I’ve been upgrading it whenever possible while setting up food/water outposts at strategic intervals, but there’s still a lot more trekking across the planet than I’d like. I like the outposts to be self-sufficient, so it’s usually something like a water collector, 2 food growers, whatever crafting devices are needed, and then enough T2 solar panels to power it all. It takes time to grow food and collect water, so if I’m not “on” this fast enough, I have to trek back anyway, but unlocking T2 food growers may help (those should be up next).

I recently went to trade in a microchip and was informed there are no more blueprints to unlock. So I think I’m settling into what is probably a grindier portion of later game. This doesn’t appeal to me as much as the intial landing and discovery, but I’m still enjoying it.

This Green World

Guess who finally checked to see how to hide the HUD for screenshots?

Tossing out a couple of rockets and multipliers has my terraform numbers skyrocketing, and I’ve been genuinely surprised by how quickly the planet is growing. Large vines now make extra areas accessible via climbing and there is greenery springing up, as well as coral formations underwater. After so much time in arid dessert or mossy ground, the plants are a welcome change. I’m in the tree phase now, and fully engaged now that the terraform rating is swiftly climbing. I cannot wait to start planting trees.

Water is continuing to collect in surprising places, but so far all my bases are high enough to avoid submersion. There’s an early game gotcha where, if you build your initial base where the pod lands, you’ll soon be flooded out, but the nearby plateau is safe, and as long as you don’t build at low elevations you should be fine. The game offers hints of future water by generating small puddles surrounded by rocks, so if those are popping up by your base you might need to move it.

I unlocked the T2 Deconstructor a while back, but kept forgetting to build it, so now I’ve got a T3 and I can revisit derelicts to deconstruct more advanced wreckage. This has resulted in some very cool and much needed loot, so returning to old derelicts has been fun, and I like putting those old salvage bases to use. There’s a cluster of interconnected quartz caves out in the mountains, as well as a uranium cave I’ve already mined. I realized the next tier of ore driller should be able to mine uranium, but until then I’m setting up another base out there.

Power is becoming an issue (again) now that I have many uses for uranium rods beyond nuclear plants and my uranium supply is spread thin, but I have aluminum coming out my ears so I’m in the process of hauling around aluminum and retrofitting my outpost roofs with solar panels so they’re at least self-sufficient. I was already mostly doing this, but I got lazy about it.

Finally, some of the “rare” resources are starting to spawn on the plateau, including Zeolite. I mined a bunch of this way back in the lakes phase (maybe earlier) from the dark asteriod field, and didn’t even have a use for it until recently, when I built a DNA Manipulator, and I can’t even use that yet. You never really know what resources will be useful. Super ally is dead useful, but I mined a bunch of Pulsar Quartz at the same time and still don’t have a use for it, so it’s sitting at my base taking up space. I should need it soon (for Nuclear Fusion Generators).

I own this game on GOG but I sometimes visit the Steam discussion forums. A non-trivial number of Steam users are extremely annoying (remember when there was a subset of Steam users whose entire personality was “No Man’s Sky Sucks?”) dedicated

Fusion Get

I unlocked Nuclear Fusion Generators, T2 Ore Dillers, and Auto Crafters in quick succession and I am high on Planet Crafter life. Insect larvae are starting to pop up and I was able to set up several tree spreaders. Turns out I had the DNA manipulator tucked in a corner and couldn’t see the recipe screen wheeee well it’s better positioned now.

I was born for automation, as long-time readers know. An obvious early application for the autocrafter is super alloy. This handy device can draw ingredients from any containers within range, so placing one near an ore driller and stuffing a nearby cabinet full of aluminium is a strategy for generating super alloys to fuse into a rod. Super alloy is a good way to use up all the spare common resources one accumulates and needs to dump somwhere.

Finally, I can start mining the uranium cave I discovered the other day. Happily, the T2 driller has cabinet storage, rather than chest storage. One I add a second T2 drill to the plasma cave nearby energy is assured. That means I can dismantle all the reactors that use uranium rods and repurpose those into multipliers and other goodies.

So Long and Thanks for All the Larve

Welllllllll my obsession is finally starting to wind down. Exploration is much more enjoyable when you’re finding hidden grottos and tropical forests, setting up tree spreaders and butterflies and bees is cool, and thanks to my nuclear fusion generators power is not an issue, but the inventory limit and crafting is starting to be a bit of a hassle. I feel like every time I want to upgrade, I have to scamper all over the place crafting various bits, and I keep having to juggle my inventory for this or that or the other.

Blueprint pinning helps, but one issue I have with that is you can’t unpin the blueprint unless you’re on the crafting screen, so if I forget that I’ve got something pinned in my corner until whenever I get back.

I should probably rebuild some of my main base for aesthetics, right now I have a ton of Oxygen generators clumped together next to optimizers and it’s a big weedy, overgrown mess. BUT thanks the inventory issues this feels like a hassle.

I haven’t unlocked animals yet, but per GOG I have 96% of achievements (all but 1).

I may wander back over here at some point, but as it is I put 20 more hours into this one and enjoyed my time with it. If I get the itch for planet-exploration-crafting-smorgasborg again I’ll probably poke at No Man’s Sky.