(The) Planet Crafter is an open world survival crafting game with base building elements while you work on terraforming a barren lifeless planet in to a lush world that supports complex life. So… elements of Factorio, Satisfactory and other games like them but in a more casual player friendly way. Yes I mean it that way on purpose, I’ve seen what insane things some of you do in Factorio and Satisfactory.
Don’t get me wrong I have been interested in those games but they’re… a lot! Possibly a little too much for me! Meanwhile Planet Crafter breaks down it’s end game point in to a simple thing for you to track, “Terraformation Index” which as it progresses unlocks blueprints to help you further that goal. This index is then broken down in to the global values for atmospheric oxygen, temperature, atmospheric pressure, and a few stages along the planet’s total biomass which all also have unique blueprints to unlock as well.
This builds the game’s loop:
- Collect resources to construct items that raise those metrics
- Those metrics unlock new items to construct
- Find the new resources you may need and construct those new items
- Gradually build machines to take some of that work load
Gradually building up your base while you do it.
Eventually your machines and goals become grander and grander as your require more energy, more space, and more resources. You even launch satellites in to space! Though I have a tip, they are tangible and don’t launch three at once, or do, it was funny and didn’t actually give any kind of penalty for doing so.
It’s an engaging loop honestly. Especially as I was suffering from concrud and just needed a relaxing game to push through it (and couldn’t pick up Paper Mario TTYD for the Switch ‘cus I didn’t want to give it to my relatives ‘cus I had to get it sent to theirs). That said I do have some criticisms.
There’s only one map. While you can choose your starting point it doesn’t really change much once you’ve played once ‘cus you have a rough idea of where things are. Now there are spoiler reasons having a single map works here, but those spoiler pieces are effectively set pieces and can be moved around where needed. It would be neat to have at least a few handful of maps (not even be procedurally generated!) so that there is more incentive beyond challenging yourself to replay the game, especially given you can get all (at time of writing) 55 achievements on a single play-through, I know I did!
If it is an issue with spoiler reasons, then maybe have those new maps unlock on clearing the game. However the game is recently past 1.0 and they’re still working on the game (I got it just after they added explosives in 1.0.3) so maybe this is a consideration Miju Games already have.
We’re also thinking about DLC, like new planets to explore, but that will take a little more time.
From news post: Thank you for an amazing 1.0 launch!
Oh, guess they are!
A few of the machines to automate resource collection actually come along later than you expect because of how slow some of the terraforming factors increase. As a repeat player now I’d know to focus more on that factor to get access to the ore extractor sooner, but on a first time play it’s very easy to fall in to the trap of focusing on oxygen and heat. That’s a rookie mistake, easy enough to not repeat the same mistake later.
However automation of getting those items from A to B comes a lot later in the game with some pretty intense requirements, so because I was used to just lugging myself around I hadn’t even bothered to check out drones worked until I went to get the achievement and realise I was shooting myself in the foot for the latter half of the game because there was no steering, other than an achievement, really to try using them. A lot of other resource gathering and base building games would have some rudimentary automation at this point, usually conveyor belts, so some kind of “dumb” but cheap way to move items before the attentive drones that can easily work out how to move items without a set path, that way you’re primed for the better automation later.
Speaking of automation, there’s no indication that ore extractors at certain points on the map can extract specialist items there until you have at least T3 level of mapping. The base extractor literally just says “Automatically extracts ores from the ground” and an improvement to that literally will make that obvious would be to add on to the end “can extract some rarer ores in specific locations”. It doesn’t tell you where it can do that but it would incentive the player to go “wow there’s a lot of sulfur here, I wonder if the ore extractor would pull more sulfur here?”. Even the final upgrade doesn’t make this clear, “Extracts any ore from the ground depending on the user’s selection.” is incorrect, because there are ores that you need to specifically place the extractor for it to collect those ores, which again could just be fixed by just tweaking the wording to “Extracts a specific ore from the local area depending on the user’s selection.” because it still retains that “okay there’s certain ores that need this item in those locations and not next door to my base” ‘cus trust me unless you’ve built your base somewhere weird, the extractor is not gonna be digging up uranium at your base.
For some reason, of the three biomass categories, insects takes a long time to build up and kind of stifles you TI for a little while, and the satellite to boost it’s rate is locked behind resources you probably don’t want to shoot off in to space. Plants go pretty quick, as do the non-insect animals (fish/amphibians/mammals), but insects are so slow in that regard that it meant it took a while for for me to get some of the animal related structures I needed. One could argue “rookie mistake” again but I don’t think it completely was as I think on a repeat play-through I’d be doing the same desperate search for an “uncommon larvae” to try to get my insect biomass going ‘cus common larvae were pointless at that moment in time as even with my plant output I’d reached insect stage significantly before I unlocked the Butterfly Dome that would’ve made common larvae worthwhile.
That all said, it is still a game I enjoyed a lot and typing all this out I’m still thinking of doing a second playthrough now I’m familiar with the game’s mechanics. But also now I’m well I have to put my time in to other things, like art, catching up on my Obsidian journal, and typing up that Confuzzled recap, y’know. Not base builder things.
It also gave me the itch to play No Man’s Sky again due to it’s similar base building style, except that would be a lot more of a play-through than a maximum of 48.4 hours that a rookie run of The Planet Crafter took :V
I did think my final base was pretty though. A mess, but pretty!
