Planet Crafter really surprised me by keeping my attention all the way to… just before the very end.
The premise of the game is that you are dumped onto a barren, hostile world and tasked to terraform it into something more hospitable to life. The “twist” is that there is no combat. At all. The planet is barren, after all, so what would even attack you? But what intrigued me was precisely how intrigued I stayed for the 35 hours I played. And that’s quite the trick considering I am not much of an Explorer type nor someone typically into Factorio-style automation games.
The secret sauce is probably the sense of progression.
When you first start out, you have an extremely tiny oxygen meter and will be doing some desperate loops around your starting capsule to gather raw materials. Eventually, you will start building a rudimentary base and start stockpiling supplies. However, almost all crafting recipes and upgrades are gated around one’s Terraforming Index (Ti) score. Improving this score is only possible by creating machines to generate Heat, Pressure, Oxygen, etc, to first form an atmosphere, and so on. Certain resources to build these machines are not located on the ground like most everything else, so you will need to go explore deeper afield – including inside the wrecks of spaceships – to gather what you need.
And so a cadence is formed: build up machines to improve Ti, go exploring for new material, come back and build new machines that got unlocked while you were exploring. Each loop will increase your ability to travel further as you expand oxygen capabilities, movement speed, and inventory space, and start fostering a sense of curiosity about what’s over the next ridge or inside that cave.
It’s also worth mentioning the more visual sense of progression as you improve Ti: watching the planet bloom. Glaciers recede, opening new travel and resource opportunities. Liquid water starts to form. Weather occurs. You start building Flower Spreaders, grass starts generating, then you upgrade to Tree Spreaders. By the time endgame rolls around, you are flying around searching for the last remnants of secrets left behind, occasionally stopping to gaze at the previously lifeless stone arch now covered in an explosion of color and growth. It’s a real treat.
The only shame then is the final stumble. I have unlocked every technology except the final one to end the game. I have explored procedurally-generated wrecks, I have optimized my automation, I have uncovered every mystery on the planet, consumed every bit of novelty. My score is sitting at 1.43 TTi and 5 TTi is the end. After timing it, I would need to leave the game running for 5.5 real-world hours to get to that number.
Could I speed it up? I mean, hopefully. I’ve already built 6+ T5 generators of various types (Pressure, etc), overlapping Optimizers fitted with boosters, dozens of satellites that further juice the numbers by 1000% a pop. Each added machine makes the overall number increase by what feels like an insignificant amount. I spent the entire game waiting for the “Spam End Turn in Civilization” inevitability to kick in, and was surprised every time Planet Crafter bobbed and weaved out of the way. But, alas, it did come after all.
Nevertheless, Planet Crafter did deliver an extremely solid 20-30 hours of entertainment without once leaning into combat or contrivances. If you’re looking for Subnautica minus the thalassophobia, or the first half of Breathedge minus the chatty sidekick, then Planet Crafter is your game.