Let’s see if my No Man’s Sky expertise matches yours. Yearly or so I boot it up, hoping the most recent base-building enlargement or rideable space-dino will maintain me taking part in for longer than the couple hours it normally takes for me to float away. Yearly it fails to take action, my grand area journey rapidly deteriorating into convoluted stock administration throughout infinite worlds overflowing with the identical repetitive actions. The most recent replace was no completely different, with fairly new floating islands and revamped water tech nonetheless leaving me wanting… extra.
Enter: The Planet Crafter. One planet. One multitool. One wonderful sense of company.
The Planet Crafter wears its Subnautica influences on its sleeves, out of your preliminary drop pod touchdown to the person chunks of mineable minerals you possibly can rapidly whack collectively to magic up familiar-looking bases. The important thing distinction is that you just begin on a barren rock reasonably than a vibrant alien ecosystem, tasked (or reasonably sentenced) with terraforming it in order that the terrible area capitalists can come and colonise. To be clear, this and No Man’s Sky are completely different video games in numerous genres that largely search to do various things—however they each orbit the same loop of gathering and exploring, so it’s fascinating to consider why one rapidly consumed me whereas the opposite all the time leaves me chilly.
Survival video games—or at the least all video games with starvation and thirst metres—depend on upfronting friction then slowly relieving it as you earn instruments that rework desperately scrabbling round for H2O into an informal stroll to your water bottle dispenser. In The Planet Crafter these unlocks are tied to each exploration and your terraforming progress, as you plop down drills, heaters and vegetubes that begin separate stress, warmth and oxygen trackers ticking up in direction of complete habitability.
Freedom will get quite a lot of hype, however I like having a job to do. I wrestle with No Man’s Sky partially due to its open-endedness, the place you’re largely anticipated to make your individual enjoyable by roaming round visiting planets, mining, buying and selling and… increasing your stock slots. It’s a suggestions loop that leans an excessive amount of into doing issues to be able to incrementally enhance your functionality to do those self same issues, be that with quicker mining instruments or greater ships.
Distinction that with The Planet Crafter, the place your function expands past mere survivor or explorer. You’re each, however you’re additionally a goddamn shaper of worlds. The extra you construct, the quicker the world adjustments—which then feeds again into exploration, as sure ice sheets begin to soften and open up new areas. It’s a deeper, extra multidimensional bundle, taking part in off the satisfaction you get from each unlocking new gear and the basal enchantment of creating numbers go up. Additionally vital are these Subnautica-style particular person useful resource chunks, giving every constructing and craftable merchandise a small, discrete, and extra immediately-placeable blueprint. No Man’s Sky can really feel like sorting by way of a stack of periodic tables whereas drowning in useful resource soup.
What correctly elevates The Planet Crafter, although, is how implausible it feels to be chargeable for such radical adjustments on this planet round you. These screens in your base with ever-escalating numbers are snazzy, however the actuality they replicate exterior is what’s really delicious.
If I’ve snagged your curiosity then now’s the time to cease studying and begin Planet Crafting, as a result of quite a lot of the magic is sure up in not realizing precisely what these adjustments will likely be. I’ll say this, although, earlier than we get to extra particular spoilers: turning the sky blue and the bottom inexperienced is scintillating in a manner that makes No Man’s Sky’s model of area tourism really feel all of the extra hole and unfulfilling. Numerous folks have already identified the restrictions of a universe full of infinite AI slop, however right here the choice isn’t simply “hand-crafted worlds”—it’s a world actually crafted by your hand. Or your drills. You get the purpose.
Centering you in a terraforming course of is a elegant manner of creating the world round you an fascinating place to inhabit, subverting an issue you historically get with survival video games the place foraging across the similar areas turns into rote. That desert? Look carefully, and also you’ll see shrubbery starting to poke by way of the sand. These glaciers? They’re rivers now, child. The adjustments aren’t simply aesthetic both, although the sheer visible influence of greenery on a as soon as dusty rock can’t be understated. As talked about earlier than, melting ice leads you into caves that crisscross the map, supplying you with entry to new shortcuts and uncommon useful resource deposits. As soon as the planet actually begins heating up, climbable vines start to wind their manner across the rock-faces, inviting you into beforehand inaccessible spots that always comprise juicy loot.
I ought to stress that it’s not simply in regards to the outcomes, both. There’s pleasure throughout the technique of optimising your terraforming doodads, determining probably the most environment friendly motion you possibly can take based mostly on what you’ve unlocked thus far. It’s not sophisticated, as such—you’re both plopping down your present highest tier of terraforming machine, gizmos that enhance close by machines by a whopping 500% for every super-rare optimisation rod you possibly can snag, or launching rockets that add an excellent whoppinger 1000% enhance to all present and future manufacturing on a sure terraforming monitor. They’re a intelligent contact, these rockets, guaranteeing that whereas the following tier of gadget all the time delivers a satisfyingly huge bump in manufacturing, your current efforts aren’t rendered irrelevant both.
There’s even a contact of automation to the late-game, when you’ve acquired auto-crafters hooked as much as a drone community that pops supplies instantly into the cabinet subsequent to your superior workbench—supplies you’ve spent the previous 20 hours having to painstakingly assemble by hand. To an extent all video games are about upfronting then assuaging friction, and The Planet Crafter is aware of precisely tips on how to go about that. I’m not satisfied that No Man’s Sky does.
I ought to point out that the total bundle is way from good. The discoverable story fragments are clumsily written, the late-game procedurally-generated wrecks are an excessive amount of of a headache to trouble with, and on an plain, elementary stage it’s fairly darn ugly (until you’re curating vistas for article screenshots). Nevertheless it’s wonderful how little that issues. Magnificence is within the eye of somebody beholding their oxygen consumption charge tick all the way down to a breathable environment.
Dry engineering enjoyable may be a tougher pitch than “witness the dazzling sights of an infinite universe”, however for my cash it’s a a lot better one. I haven’t even talked about the weirdo alien creatures you ultimately splice collectively your self by inserting DNA fragments that tweak completely different elements of their look, offering an nearly too on-the-nose conclusion to this comparability.
Whether or not it’s over a whole planet or a scuttling platypus-thing, The Planet Crafter revels and excels in imbuing you with a way of company. It might be rendered crudely, however the lake submerging my first base is extra lovely than any roiling ocean in No Man’s Sky’s—fancy new water tech be damned.
