#planet crafter

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Someone wanted to see my base in Planet Crafter, so here she is.

She's not efficient. I am not a good designer.

View from the outside. I live on the water (superior location) and fucking love windows.

I have no concept of privacy. Windows everywhere.

Right in the front door is my automated production area. It's not efficiently designed.

Every time I come home I just dump all my shit in this locker by the door and let the robots put it away for me. Got I wish real life worked like that.

Turning right from the door, my view of the water would be so fucking amazing if I hadn't covered all the walls in giant lockers and industrial machinery

Turning left from the door is my admin area. And some nice views. Ignore the huge drill boring into the planet's crust immediately outside my window.

Next to the admin area is my bedroom. I don't use it for anything, I just think it looks nice. My bedroom is blessed with the only non-glass walls in the base because I think sleeping alone on a somewhat hostile planet while completely visually exposed to said planet would make sleep difficult.

Why do all these wrecks have fancy golden trophies in them. A mystery for the ages.

The remaining three areas are the biolab, the T2 biodome, and another production area for biologicals.

My biological production area has my DNA manipulators and soforth. It's only half built because I'm not making frogs or mammals yet. Initially I jammed these rooms in the biolab but it was too crowded. I like big open spaces in my habitats.

Such a beautiful planet out there.

Farming area is on the roof. The machines handle all this so I never have to climb up here. It's nice and out of the way.

This isn't part of my base, but check out my butterfly garden.

[jacobharvestart]

The games ive finished lately

[bullrunpicnicker]

one thing ill give planet crafter is that its not afraid to let perfect get in the way of good. for example they said "fuck it why not" to coloring a species of frog like this

they really said "you spent 25 hours striving for this, be happy for your eye searing frog" and i was like yeah sure fine ill take a dozen

[calico-heart]

Planet Crafter is the best game I've ever played actually because part of the terraforming process involves building a PLANT rocket and shooting a PLANT ROCKET into space to make it RAIN MOSS

[lindas-chaos]

some more #planetcrafter on stream!

[trekwiz]

Do I have any mutuals or followers who would want to play Planet Crafter?

[windfighter]

uuuuh... ops?

[remyisartistic]

[zephiraz]

I am convinced that Riley Planet Crafter (mysterious guy who sends you emails and advice and unlocks things for you and wishes he could see you again) is the same guy as Ryley Subnautica. He changed his name to dodge his life-debt to Alterra and is now trying to help his long-distance boyfriend out of a similar situation.

[soupwife]

me and @nianeyna 's planet crafter world is finally at the stage where we can make everything pink and purple. and also sit down!

[hardcoregamer]

Review: Planet Crafter

The simple "pick up rocks, make stuff" beginning slowly turns into an automation adventure through a lush green world that hardly feels like the planet you started on, despite being present for every moment of its awakening.

Read more!

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

This is a... normal place. I'm definitely happy I came here.

[pudding-parade]

Heh. I fell down a hole.

Namely, this one:

I downloaded this game a while back when it was on sale and finally decided to check it out a couple days ago when I had an hour to kill, which isn't enough time to fire up Sims and do anything in it. And....man, this thing is addictive. I've seen it called a steady drip of dopamine, and it really, truly is.

I'mma babble a non-spoilery mini-review, so I'll cut for your pleasure... There's also some gameplay pics back there, if y'all wanna see.

The game has a simple premise. You play as a person dropped on a barren, dead planet for Reasons™, and your mission is simply to turn the place into a complete environment livable for humans. Basically, you gather stuff, craft, survive, and build a base in a very Subnautica-y sort of way. As you increase certain (eventually) four different metrics, you unlock tech of all kinds, from backpacks with a bigger inventory to biodomes to rockets that you can launch into space that do various things. There are four different (but integrated) "tech trees," corresponding to the four metrics you work to increase -- atmospheric oxygen, temperature, atmospheric pressure, and later in the game biomass -- and each tree has different items to unlock. The thing is, the "oxygen tree" might unlock things that increase heat, and the "heat tree" unlocks items that increase atmospheric pressure, so it's all integrated such that you are encouraged to work on all the metrics at once. It's all very intricate and well-balanced, so the game is paced and flows really well and you always have a goal (or four) to strive for. And when you accomplish a goal? Dopamine hit!

But what's very cool about the game, IMO, is that as you go about your work, the planet slowly transforms visually, reflecting the work that you're doing, which gives you that steady drip of dopamine as you play. It is all very addictive. Entire days might pass while you're sucked in. LOL Because it's also very chill and relaxing because there's no combat/violence (and never will be, which I love). You just do your thing, accumulating dopamine. The only bit of stress you might feel is if you get lost while exploring and you're starting to run out of oxygen. And there's meteor showers which bring resources (sometimes rare ones) and that, for now, don't do any damage unless you're out in the open and get hit by one, but the roadmap from the devs says that structural damage from meteors will happen eventually.

That "eventually" is because the game is still in alpha, probably three updates away from V.1, and yet there's already tons of gameplay, all the way up to introducing insects and fish into the environment, plus automation. Because it's still alpha, the graphics are a little rough, but I don't care about that at all. Even if they don't change/improve, I'll be perfectly content. There are also large parts of the (open) world that aren't developed yet. But that's exciting because there's lots of space for the devs to add lots of new, cool stuff to do and explore! And speaking of the devs: It's an indie game. Developed by -- count 'em! -- TWO PEOPLE. Two. One married couple. It's a marvelous achievement.

And also? It's not an expensive game. 20USD. There's also a free demo you can try before buying. And it doesn't require a supercomputer to run. I'm pretty sure it'll run on a potato. Apparently, there are already mods for it but, frankly, I'm not feeling a need for any right now because I'm enjoying the game just as it is. Which says a lot about how the game is put together, IMO.

In short: I love this game. If you decide to try it out, I recommend that you go into it cold. Don't watch any YouTube gameplays or whatever. Half the fun, IMO, is not knowing what you're doing and having to explore and figure things out. The game sort of coaches you when you start, giving you a "to do" list. But it doesn't tell you how to do the things on the list. It's not a tutorial. And once you reach the first big goal -- turning the sky blue -- you're entirely on your own.

Anyway, I played this thing almost all day yesterday *cough* instead of catching up here *cough* just accumulating dopamine, so have some non-spoilery pics.

This is what you're looking at when you start. Orange sky, barren rocks, dust everywhere. You can't see very far into the distance because of the dust, which makes it harder to navigate, which makes it easier to lose your way when you venture farther out to explore, which you definitely need to do.

This time (this is my third save and my first "real" one; the other two were used to just figure out WTF I was doing), I spawned near one of the crashed ships. Which is good because before I saw that I had no idea where the hell I was. LOL There are a number of wrecked ships and underground bunkers (from previous failed terraforming efforts) to explore and gather resources from.

Meteor shower! These happen fairly regularly. Seems to be pretty random, though. Sometimes they'll happen one after another in short succession, but sometimes it'll be a while before you have one.

Is that a tinge of blue I'm seeing? I think it is...

Definitely getting bluer! And eventually:

Blue sky, clouds, and...RAIN! And with the rain, as the planet gets warmer...

Surface water! The water slowly rises on the planet as it warms and the surface ice melts...which can be problematic, depending on where you've built your settlement/base.

And now I've got nuclear power. What could possibly go wrong? LOL

Anyway, yeah, I love this game. Highly recommended. It deserves its "Overwhelmingly Positive" review status on Steam, even though it's still in alpha. It doesn't seem like it's going to be abandoned any time soon, and apparently it's already sold half a million copies. The roadmap for the game looks amazing, too, so I'll be looking forward to watching it develop.

[program-251]

finally got to the mammal stage in planet crafter and I am unreasonably proud of myself

and when I realized I could pet the creatures I was so happy outegdsfitgrfojgrsfed I am smiling so much right now

[vyragosa]

out of the indie and early-access games i played recently i really have to insist that planet crafter is an incredibly lovely experience, not only slowing changing an entire planet's atmosphere and seing the tangible changes to the environment but the base-building is also very interesting, the mood lighting is incredible, i will just be looking forward each update very eagerly!

[lizzies-gameblr]

Planet Crafter Review

Feels like an Alpha or Early Beta Game

tl;dr - This game has a really cool concept, but falls pretty far short of what it could be. It looks and feels like an game in alpha - the broad gameplay concepts are implemented and working, but everything is very rough around the edges, and in need of a lot of work. I'm a little dissapointed it still looks / plays like this, despite no longer being an early-access game.

What are the good parts?

Despite the awkwardness of the base-building mechanics, there is a satisfying progression of your base. It slowly transforms from a basic survival shelter, to ad-hoc terraforming station, to lab dedicated to agriculture and research. Despite disliking quite a lot about this game, it was quite charming to see this growth in my base. Unfortunately, it's the only saving grace in my eyes.

What are the not-so-great parts?

Look & Feel - The presentation of this game is pretty rough. Terrain is bumpy and uneven, with repeating textures. Larger pieces of terrain like cliffs are visibly duplicated and rotated shapes, and from what I can tell, water level rise is constant across the map - very much like a garry's mod map.

In addition to this, buildings, machines and resources all look very basic - for lack of a better word. They feel like they've come off an asset store, which is fine, but don't give a lot of charm and don't feel well implemented if they are. Machines placed outside have varying accuracies of bounding boxes - with some happily being placed inside one another, whilst others have huge blank areas they cannot intersect within. Furthermore, the basic habitation building and foundation don't share the same footprint, so tile differently & items placed inside habitats have some grid-snapping, but it doesn't visibly line up with centreline - giving everything about your base a slightly skewed appearance. Lastly, resources are all just scattered across the map rather haphazardly. There is some sense to it - with rarer or later game materials farther out from your start point, or in caves - where they receive slightly more care in placement.

Character handling - Much like the machines, buildings and resources the character handler feels very basic and a bit like it's come from some asset store. No legs, and pretty vague hand waving to give you a sense of movement. Walking and jumping feel basic - it's easy to slide around on rocks. Yet despite this roughness in movement and sparsity, there's a fully implemented emote system - which feels like priorities have been a bit mixed up...

Survival - The survival element of this game is pretty lack lustre. Dying carries little penalty beyond inconvenience of having to go back for the things that you don't respawn with. Some survival meters you expect - namely O2, water and food / health (a bit ambiguous in distinction) are there. Heat is absent, despite that being a key part of your work in the early terraforming stages.

What are the bad parts?

The Terraforming - It really pains me to say this, since it is such a cool concept that I've not seen done elsewhere, but nowhere in my (admittedly limited) 9.5hrs of gameplay did I ever feel like I was really having an impact on the planet. Sure number went up, and changes started to happen but it just felt meh...

Early stages like heaters and machines meant to release 'gas' to build up temperature and pressure, fail to sell that drama. They just sit there limply spinning or glowing orange. There aren't billowing clouds of gas - and the scale of your work feels at odds with your goal. This is partially mitigated by giving the player "advanced" technology, and I understand the wish to avoid turning the game into something the likes of Satisfactory or Factorio.

Further on, water rise seems to just be a fixed feature of the map - a global level, rather than dynamically filling pools. Textures slowly fade from one to another, gradually changing the look.

Lastly, the weather sucks. There is occasionally storms or rain - but these are little more than some noise and a filter applied over your view. This game is very gentle on the survival element, you don't take damage from rocks that might be blown about in a violent storm in early game, nor are you frozen or boiled alive from your changes - since your character is unaffected by temperature (despite it being something you actively change, like atmospheric O2 content, which affects your consumption of O2)

The rover - The rover is very very shoddy in its implementation. When steering, wheels snap to one direction or another. There is no suspension, so your rigid box of a rover, rattles over the low-poly, uneven terrain. Its one saving grace is having near infinite traction as long as 3 wheels have some kind of ground contact. Combined with no real engine/torque system, you can drive up near vertical cliffs which is both handy, and immersion ruining.

All in all, this game has a promising set of mechanics, that feel rough around the edges and could be amazing given some time and work. Given this game is seemingly no longer in early access, and the devs have moved on to making DLC - the kinds of improvements I would hope to see are not likely imo. I can see why people would like this game, given it's unique selling point and gentle survival, but why it's "overwhelmingly positive" in reviews on steam is beyond me.