Planet Crafter - Casual Gaming Review
Planet Crafters
This game I had put off from doing a review until I beat it.
Planet Crafters was developed and published by Miju Games. Planet Crafters is a survival world-building game.
The game has recently been updated to add a new biome, crash sites, and more!
Basics
You basically start on a desert planet that multiple people were sent to cultivate. It seems like you did some kind of crime and your sentence was to make this planet habitable to where they can steal the resources and use it kind of thing. You in the hopes to seeing your family again have to persevere through the trials of building a whole new world. (I think my dumb self was too busy during stream talking to pay attention in the beginning. I got distracted)
You start off in your pod, where it's the only place to be able to refill your oxygen meter. You do have a few capsules with you to use, but have limited bag space. There is a crafter in the drop pod, and there is also a storage box with a few oxygen capsules, a few food bags, also a few things of water. You are really going to have to watch and conserve these at first. They fill the whole meter.
There are recks and abandoned bases around the map. So those are the best places to find more food and water in the beginning until you can process the water and grow your own food.
As you develop the planet you will unlock more things you can build, do, and access.
Starting
To start with you'll need to work on the pressure, heat, and oxygen,
Pressure needs drills that release gasses trapped in the ground and that is how the pressure is generated.
Heat needs heaters, of course, that help heat the planet.
Then there is of course is vegitube that generates oxygen.
As these levels increase, you will slowly see the environment around you change. Water will start being visible, areas start to open up more, and ice will begin to melt. It's amazing to watch that change happen.
You will be able to build screens that can monitor that progress. As mentioned before things unlock as you go. Each developmental feature has its own unlocks. Pressure, heat, oxygen, then later biomass, plants insects, and animals. You are able to preview what will be unlocked in the future and how much of each you will need to get there. I ended up exceeding some of those by a lot.
A lot of the items also have high tiers of themselves, for instance, the heater has T1-T5 while others might just have a better version of itself like the gas extractor only having a T1-T2.
Tools
Your excosuit has a few slots that it can carry a wide range of tools. You will need to craft these items.
Construction microchip: This lets you build a base and other placeable objects like heaters, drills, vegitubes, and more!
Oxygen tank: This lets you explore outside of your drop pod and base area. You have to use a carry-on canister to refill it if you are getting low while you are out. Or you can simply enter your drop ship and/or base. Random abandoned ships and bases will not refill your air.
Mining speed: lets you mine elements you find faster. elements are all over the place on the ground and some special ones are in groups around the map, like iridium, and uranium.
Agility boot: increases your movement speed.
Map: lets you see the map from anywhere instead of just in one of the displays at home you can make. (a map satellite needs to be launched first)
Air filter: reduces oxygen consumption, which depends on how much you have the planet terraformed.
Torch: This is a basic flashlight.
Deconstructor: Let's you take apart things, the higher tiers are faster. Some debris can only be taken apart with a higher tier as well.
Exoskeleton: This lets you carry more tools depending on the tier.
Backpack: Gives you more bag slots.
Jetpack: Lets you not only zoom around the map faster but also lets you go a little higher in the air depending on the tier.
Outfits: This is a new feature, there are 15 new ones to find and collect! Pretty much the same suit but different colors. I was hoping for ones with cat ears or something but I don't think that is a thing. I've only found 9 including the original suit. So I don't know if there are 15 total or the original plus 15 more.
Construction menu filter: hides lower-tier items
Compass: adds a compass to your screen
Blueprint pinning: Lets you pin a blueprint so you know what you are looking for when you go to make something.
*#$%^&: I'm not telling XD But there is another.
Buildable
There is a wide range of cosmetic placeables, as well as utility. Things like beds, planters, desks, and more just make the area more liveable looking. This also includes other building types for the base. Ones that house living creatures like butterflies and fish or ones that produce bark. There are also larger rooms versus the smaller cubes that you start with.
While the main things to build are more utility-based to improve your development, like I mentioned things like heaters, drills, and vegitubes earlier. But other things will evolve from those basic things either in a higher tier of that version or like the vegitubes case, instead, you can plant flowers or trees outside. This will later change to things that can house animals, or collect plankton to make animals.
There are also a lot of things I'm just not going to mention because there is just so much in this game. It took me 80 hours of gameplay to beat it with all the achievements.
Living things
You of course start off small, insects arrive after the plant life grows on your planet. You'll find larvae around which can be combined with fertilizer and biosamples to make various butterflies. Later you'll be able to combine things to make frogs, and then use various samples of eggs, larvae, and other things to make genetic traits to merge them together to make different kinds of animals.
Similar to the progression from earlier as you increase the population of the plants, insects, and animals more things will unlock.
End step
Of course, to beat the game you pretty much want to grow the planet to its end stages. Depending on how you played and explored you might be given options on how to end the game.
Thoughts
I loved this game, I mentioned I played it for 80 hours, which included doing all three endings. The great thing is you don't have to restart a new save to be able to do all of them you can get the achievements from just the same save as once you do one it just starts you back from that place.
Things that unlocked I felt they should have been locking sooner, since when they were unlocked they felt useless to me. Maybe the total number to terraform the planet needs to be higher than all of the unlocks. I'm not sure but it did not feel balanced.
The game just had an update and my method of not getting lost in recks doesn't work as well. I do what I call, keep making the same turn until you get to the end. But I have had to resort to using the glow sticks to make a trail to the exit with my goods.
I hope that you liked my small rundown of the game. (I could have done more but there is sooo much and I didn't want to completely ruin the game)
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