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.