Game Review: Planet Crafter

Planet Crafter

About the game

Planet Crafter is an open-world survival game centered around collecting resources and building, in order to terraform an alien planet. This means producing oxygen, generating atmospheric pressure and heat in order to make the planet suitable for life to thrive.

It can be played as a single player experience, or multiplayer with up to ten players. There’s no combat in the game, the main dangers are running out of oxygen, water or food. And the occasional stray meteor. The game is made and published by Miju Games. It was released on the 10^th of April, 2024.

The good

• Satisfying game loop of exploring, collecting, crafting and upgrading. You can lose hours without realising it in this game.
• Art style is beautiful and the varied biomes on the planet are well designed.
• Progression in the early and mid game feels organic and works really well
• There are some interesting story points and secrets to discover, which I love.
• It’s so satisfying to see the planet change around you as you progress, seeing the effect of your actions.
• The base building and crafting system is pretty good, items clip together well and the freedom you have to build the way you want is fantastic.
• Regular updates with free additional content, expanding and improving gameplay, which is awesome.
• Custom game modes where you can increase or reduce the difficulty, or change the starting location for added variety and replayability.
• The new DLC, Planet Humble, adds another planet with different raw materials and new stories to uncover, which I’m enjoying. The different availability of resources provides a new challenge.
• The developers provide updates on upcoming changes and additional content, and they take on board player feedback, which is awesome to see.
• The fast travel system unlocks quite late, but it is extremely useful and fully customisable so you can set any location you like as a teleporter point, making it easier to collect the resources or move items between bases.

The Not So Good

• The late game can get a bit tedious, as once you’ve reached a certain stage of terraformation and explored everything on the map, you’re basically just killing time until the game ends.
• The procedurally generated ships can be extremely weird and difficult to navigate sometimes. Even using flares and signs to mark where you’ve been.
• In the late game, exploring the wrecks and through the portals can be a bit boring, as once you’ve unlocked all the blueprints and stocked up on all the rare resources, there’s not much point in going.
• Setting up the drones can be awkward and difficult to understand at first.

My thoughts:

I loved Planet Crafter, seeing my planet change and flourish with life was insanely satisfying. Progressing through the game is a real dopamine mine, and it literally consumed my life for a couple of weeks. I like survival games in theory, but this one lacks combat which is a nice change of pace and makes it more relaxing.

I like the exploration as well, as the game doesn’t guide you too much and leaves you to discover the secrets for yourself. The base building is fun and I love that you have so much freedom to build what you want, where you want.

If you’re looking for a crafty survival game that you can just chill out with, Planet Crafter is absolutely worth your time. I’m currently playing through the DLC, Planet Humble, which is an interesting new challenge. There’s a couple of things that could be improved, such as the late game tedium, but the developers are regularly adding new content updates which is awesome. Overall, this game gets 5 stars from me!

I’ve nominated this game for the Sit Back And Relax Award in the Steam Awards. If you want to check it out, you can find the game on Steam here.

Thanks for reading! Have you played Planet Crafter? What did you think? Let me know!