The Planet Crafter

I was dragged into playing The Planet Crafter, which is a very highly rated (optionally) multiplayer open world survival crafting game. It's in the top 10 in that genre on Steam, and in the top 200 overall, so I expected something good.

The game drops you on an inhospitable planet with just sand and rocks and tells you to make it into a lush place filled with life. You do this by collecting rocks, making small buildings and tools out of them, and then building machines that passively add various types of terraformation income. At certain breakpoints, the terraformation levels unlock new things you can build and craft, and also alter the world around you visually. There are also the usual hunger, thirst, and oxygen bars you have to keep an eye on.

Aside from the unique and rather interesting thematic, this seems like a pretty standard survival game. The game focuses on busywork, spending all your time delivering resources from place to place and crafting the next thing you need. As the game progresses, you slowly get methods of automation, starting from resource drills, and eventually reaching automatic crafters, and drones that move resources around. Still, for most of the game, automation is scant, and the focus always stays on manual labor.

While the dynamic environment is interesting, the building aspect seems pretty poorly implemented, with badly aligning buildings, and little variety in the amount of customization, which I believe is often something people look for in these types of game. The other elements are more-or-less standard, and I don't recall any significant innovation nor a high level of quality.

Sadly, I've never enjoyed any games in this genre, as I'm neither a fan of customizing a base nor running back and forth doing mindless collecting and ferrying of resources just to build yet another building so I could repeat the process a hundred times more. If you liked Subnautica, you'll probably like this a little bit less, but if you're looking for another game in the genre, you'll probably enjoy it anyway. Me, not so much, so I won't be giving it a recommendation myself.