2025-04-30 16:52:28

The Planet Crafter's a really chill and rewarding survival crafter/incremental game hybrid. You've got the usual Survival Game Loop of gathering resources and making things with them to get better tools and facilities to get more and better resources. You've got your supply chains and resource needs to identify, work through, and later automate. You've got wrecks and structures to scavenge for technology and blueprints and rarer materials. There's no monsters and death is (unless toggled onto a hardcore mode) effectively a minor inconvenience. A lot of the Tedious Survival Game systems are abstracted or smoothed over, like there being an invisible global power network that everything taps into, so you're not spending half an hour running cables or trying to find some weird line break, or habitation structures just automatically generating oxygen for you.

The real strength of TPC is the sense of progression. The game's broken into a number of overall terraformation phases, starting with "make enough of an atmosphere to have a blue sky", going through into proper water and greenery development into full out native insects and animals. The game continually gives you feedback beyond "numbers go up", with the world gradually evolving to reflect your progress. The first phase has the skybox turn from a blasted red into various shades of purple all the way to a blue sky. When you start melting the planetary ice to create lakes and rivers, you'll see that water level rise (potentially flooding out anything you've built on low ground). Greenery gradually spreads around, you'll start finding fish and bees and butterflies well away from any of your production facilities, and developing a breathable atmosphere prevents you from running out of air unless you're underwater. It never stops being novel to just go "wait a minute" when out and about and realize that there's something new or different about the environment as a result of your work.

All in all, a good time for survival crafter fans and a great coop experience particularly for folks who don't want to deal with combat or danger while they build and explore.

2025-04-23 08:51:14

The Planet Crafter is more than just a survival crafting game — it’s a meditative, almost poetic experience. There’s something deeply satisfying about watching a desolate, lifeless world slowly come to life through your small but persistent efforts. It rewards patience, curiosity, and creativity, all without overwhelming you. It's a game that knows how to breathe.

But for me, this game holds a meaning that reaches far beyond its mechanics or visuals.

My late wife never wanted to play it herself — not because she didn’t enjoy games, but because she loved watching me play. She’d curl up nearby, sometimes sipping tea, and watch with a quiet joy as I built little biodomes, terraformed valleys, and collected oxygen canisters like I was some kind of interstellar gardener. She used to say she liked seeing me "piddle around," because it made the world feel calm — like nothing bad could happen as long as I was planting trees on a distant planet.

She’s gone now, and yet, when I play The Planet Crafter, I feel her there — in the silence, in the wind that flows through the canyons, in the gentle hum of my exosuit as I build new life where once there was none. This game gives me that rare gift of presence — a way to remember joy, peace, and time spent simply being together.

Whether you’re looking for a relaxing game to get lost in or something deeper to reflect within, The Planet Crafter is a quiet masterpiece. It isn’t just about survival — it’s about creating something beautiful from nothing, and sometimes… that’s all we really need.

2025-04-21 03:15:17

This game is about terraforming a planet from cold and remote to habitable and full of life.

The gameplay loop remains very satisfying while not becoming too easy or too hard. At first, you have to quickly locate reliable sources for your vitals, those being food, water, and oxygen. Although, oxygen was not a problem once I quickly realized you could construct a living compartment and its door anywhere, effectively giving unlimited oxygen. I'm sure most of us exploited this, too, and perhaps even the developers expected this from everyone, considering that you essentially have a pocket dimension containing infinite oxygen that teleports the oxygen into new bases you construct.

This game does not have any real fighting, which makes the game more challenging to make fun. It succeeded in that, and kept expanding on the mechanics as I progressed through each stage. At first, you're crafting recipes, but you end up also discovering new genetic recipes, giving the game a bit more variation. You start to unlock automation with the drone system, as you need more resources. A great example of the resources growing in each "stage" are super alloys; at first, you only need some resources that make them up. Then, you need super alloys themselves, and sometimes multiple of them. Finally, you need to craft entire super alloy rods, costing you 8 super alloy and 1 aluminum, and you might sometimes need many of them in one recipe. It's a curve of progression that is satisfying while you're building a more advanced base to compensate for the requirements of more resources, going from unable to acquire super alloys to generating hundreds and even needing to put some in a shredder because you made a mistake in judging a recipe and your drones quickly fill up your super alloy storage again.

The story was okay. It never set any high expectations for the player in the first place. The game never unloaded any exposition dumps to the player or made the ending seem as if it would change the player's perspective on the world entirely. This game uses simplicity to not make itself seem too rushed.

I will have to mention that this game can get very janky. It is never to the point of me losing my save or breaking the game permanently, but it can disrupt gameplay. For example, bad hitboxes in the map, rockets making it to space despite crashing into the ground multiple times, and more. There were some annoying bugs that were persistent, such as not being able to pick up items from storage after picking up many items in a short period of time, making me refresh my save. In addition, my save file taking longer to load when having to launch more rockets (at 1,000 oxygen rockets and about 5.5 PTi, and it takes about 15 seconds to load, but I fear it'll go into the minutes and possibly hours). One last annoyance was the occasional unclear explanation. For example, I did not understand what the drone system did at first despite rereading it, but after realizing that I needed it for automatic transportation of resources when building T3 drills, it clicked, and I used it to my advantage.

In addition, the game is not always realistic. The speed at which you can get living beings is uncanny, and it takes more than just a few resources to build something; a structure or blueprint, too. This does mean that some buildings can have identical recipes, and they do in this game. However, this game does not need to be one-to-one with reality to be fun, and I consider that a fair tradeoff if, in the process, the player still remains fully engaged with the gameplay.

I do wish that there was a bit more automation. I'm not a fan of the T2 drone just being a faster version of the T1 drone. Instead, I wish there was something like a Drone Speed Multiplier Fuse that allows drones to grab items from longer distances faster. Or perhaps there could be drones also being allowed to construct buildings or launch rockets on their own. Instead of sorting drones by tiers, perhaps the current drones could be Item Collector Drones, and Builder Drones and Rocket Launcher Drones could be a thing to make the terraformation process a bit less tedious. I am also not a fan of having to build many drills and still take a while to sell Pulsar Quartz to reach the 250,000 Terra Token requirement (I've heard that it was 500,000 before, which is even worse). What about Storage Multiplier Fuses, adding even more space, Farming Speed/Output Multiplier Fuses, also boosting the speed or output of farms (since Production Multiplier Fuses did not help, and it is difficult to mass-produce crops), and Multiplier Fuse Multiplier Fuses that multiply fuses instead of only other buildings, allowing the player to get a huge percent bonus while not having hundreds (or even thousands) of fuses...

Apparently, not only are the developers announcing a Moons Update, adding lots of new content, but they will continue to work on this game for a long time due to the Humble DLC support. This gives them a chance to make this game even better than it is now by fixing bugs (possibly the ones described above) and adding new content (also could be what I described above), which I would consider a win for the developers, being able to enjoy development while sitting back with an Overwhelmingly Positive game with tens of thousands of reviews.

Overall, the game still manages to deliver a very satisfying gameplay experience while not considering its flaws, which are not rare, but not too common.

2025-04-20 21:55:11

Great game for chill out time - I love the gradual changes you see happen as you go.

2025-04-20 03:37:09

8/10 Would recommend

Pros:
-Very relaxed game, reminiscent of Subnatica.
-Works great on Steamdeck. No issues whatsoever.
-Okay replay value; the story endings are different but the game itself doesn't change at all.
-No real enemies. The only enemy is your lack of foresight or decision to play roulette with your oxygen levels.
-The gameplay is remarkably simple, and keeps building on itself in an easy to understand system.
- I made a bed in giant room and stood at the window overlooking my newly forming lake and realized this is the closest I'll ever be to owning lakefront property.
-There's an entire subplot you can easily miss if you aren't paying attention, and I enjoy the environmental storytelling it showcases.

Cons:
-Really, the biggest issue I have is that if you join a co-op game with someone who's farther in than you are, it will trigger all achievements to unlock for what the other person has accomplished in their run. Not an issue in the grand scheme of things, but it was mildly annoying when it happened.
-You have to do a ton of micromanaging to get everything accomplished.
-It gets rather repetitive at times while you're trying to figure out what to do next.
-Graphics are a little wonky at times, especially towards the end, but it's not a huge detraction.

In Summary:
Every dollar you spend on a game should be at least 1 hour of entertainment. This game is definitely worth the purchase to play through, especially if you can grab it on sale. Don't expect anything life-changing, but it's overall a decent game to play if you need something to dull your brain for a while.

2025-04-19 07:27:48

[b]Overwhelmingly positive? Undeserved.[/b] I'm not recommending it because there needs to be some balance to the reviews here. There's far better options, like Satisfactory.

Overall? It's okay at best. We got our hours out of it I guess, and some of it was fun enough to keep going, but we never bothered to finish it. It feels rough, glitchy, and incomplete, like an early access release, yet apparently it's full release with paid DLC!? It's frustrating to be told this is the final product. This can't be a 1.0 product, come on.

The main terraforming aspect of the game is quite neat, but again, feels pretty incomplete. The late stage content is buggy and often inaccessible. The vehicle gameplay is rough, buggy, and awkwardly implemented. Power, heat, oxygen, etc, all feel incredibly barebones - they're just props you place anywhere. There's barely a strategy or any consideration needed.

This is not an overwhelmingly positive experience, but there is something here that might be enjoyed, even if it feels wrong to consider this the final product.

2025-04-18 06:45:53

Just wanted to come and say this game is one of the most fun building games I have played in the past 10 years. I'm thankful the devs continue to support the game and we have come so far. You can easily get 50-200 hrs from the game. I would have around 100-120 hrs, but we decided to wait a bit to terraform Humble. With that and the moons coming out we will back once they hit. Great game. Highly recommend. Such a relaxing vibe playing this and every tier up feels extremely rewarding.

2025-04-10 05:24:43

Huge time sink! Although i enjoy the entire game, the first part , from landing to blue sky is my favorite.

2025-04-09 00:27:33

A decent game that scratches some of the itch if coming from Subnautica. However giving it a down vote due to numerous bugs, countless clip through, severe graphic pop ins that come out of no where, and plenty of invisible walls and floors.

Planet Crafter does have potential to become better, but it would be best to get it on sale or maybe wait for another QOL update.

2025-04-07 09:16:30

I really didn’t know what I was getting into when I bought this. I just wanted a casual game for the steamdeck, saw this title, bought it and figured it would be one of those games I would probably only play once. I could never get into Minecraft or Valheim; not for a lack of trying. Thought this might be similar.

Hours and days later, I realize this is nothing like those games. There is something strangely tranquil about this game. I get lost in time and have a hard time putting it down.

It seems boring at first; maybe a bit pointless. You pick up rocks and run for oxygen every few minutes. It’s tedious. You wonder why you’re doing this. What’s the point?

Then you suddenly notice the sky is blue. Lakes are forming. Grass is growing. You didn’t notice this until you turned around. You go into a wreckage and come out. Where did those trees come from? How long have they been there?

Everything about this game is subtle. It’s so subtle that it sneaks up on you. You think you’re alone. Then you discover there is someone out there trying to help you. It’s lovely, and it’s a little sad. You realize that maybe you didn’t want to be here, but you’ll do your best to make it liveable.

The game gently nudges you in ways that feel natural. Maybe it’s the music. It’s also subtle. It’s nice, and it’s relaxing.

This game doesn’t seem like much on the surface. The graphics don’t seem all that great at first, but then it turns into something beautiful, and you appreciate it for all its hard work.

Do yourself a favour. Don’t look anything up. Don’t watch videos of this game, and don’t google anything. I didn’t, and I’m glad I didn’t.

Be patient and explore it the way it was meant to be explored.

There are so many small touches in this game. It will guide you where you need to go if you’re paying attention.

I love this game. I have no idea what I’m doing. Am I doing too much? Am I doing too little? All I know is the world around me is changing, and I was able to survive another day to witness this beautiful evolution that I have awakened.

I can only hope that I don’t mess this up. I’ve come too far to turn away now. If I fail, I will fall.

Great game. Love it. There are so many things I didn’t expect.

I would recommend this to anyone.