The Planet Crafter, a open world survival exploration game, has finally made its way to consoles. Originally released in early access on  Windows in 2022 and officially released in 2024, the game has seen generally favorable reviews. Now that the game is available on console, is this worthy of embarking on a new journey? That ultimately depends on what parts of the survival genre you enjoy.

Terraforming Is The Name Of The Game

The general premise of the game is you’re sent to a planet to help terraform it and make it habitable for living. There are 5 planets to work on between the base game and DLC, with four of them being available right from the get go. The game also has plenty of difficulty options you can scale depending on how hard you want the game to be. You can choose to play on chill, which lets you keep all your items after black out, or make it harder, which will make you lose items as well as other penalties. There are some really nice options here and I’m glad they left it up to the players discretion.

The game gives you initial tasks on what to craft, and what your goal is. The first major goal is to get a blue sky going. The environment will slowly change over time as you increase certain values that contribute to the terraforming process, such as O2 levels, pressure and heat. As you reach certain requirements, new crafting items will be available for you to create, including better versions of previous items that will help the terraforming process faster. For example, a T1 heater might produce heat at a rate of 0.75/s, but the T2 heater when crafted will increase that to 1.80/s, which is over two times the amount of the previous item.

No Monsters To Worry About

The biggest change in The Planet Crafter compared to survival games is the lack of visible threats. Since you arrive on a dead planet where your goal is to make the place livable, you will find no enemies you have to worry about. That isn’t to say there aren’t any threats though. You will need to manage your hunger, hydration, and oxygen levels. Anytime spent outside on the world will make your O2 levels decline, and if it hits zero you will black out and spawn back in your base. Occasionally there will also be storms and eventually meteors, which can hurt you as well.

I love the idea of a survival game where there isn’t combat and you need to just focus on surviving. My issue with it in the Planet Crafter is that there isn’t much you can actually do in the beginning of the game. You’re limited on oxygen, and if you want to explore a bunch, you need to build tiny bases to recover around the planet just to recharge. In terms of food and water, you’re limited to finding chests scattered about, hoping there is space food or water sitting in them until you unlock the blueprints needed to start cultivating your own food or collecting water. There should be a few more options in the opening few hours for players.

Exploration And Changes

The game doesn’t really guide you where you need to go, so the beginning hours it can be confusing on what you need to be doing. The world is pretty open right from the get go fortunately, so if you see an area that looks interesting, you can go there. You will eventually run into blockers, whether that’s giant blocks of ice that need to melt before you can progress that way, or rocks that need to be cleared with an explosive. The amount of times I went to a location and found a pathway blocked, that made me want to write down where it was so I can could back later to explore really gave me a sense of wonder that most game worlds just haven’t done for me.

The world really starts opening up and changing once you’ve cleared a few of the big tasks. Giant glaciers melt, creating waterfalls that adds water to the world. Later on grass will start growing, and you can craft equipment to grow algae, flowers, and more. Eventually bugs and animals will start appearing. Seeing the world slowly change over time by what you’re doing is just another feeling entirely. When I first landed on the planet, never did I imagine that where I first took a step, would eventually be a giant lake. This is where the Planet Crafter excels.

Unfortunately the game significantly slows down your progress every few milestones. Biomass is introduced as the fourth goal eventually, and you are only given access to start working in it once you hit that milestone. Not having good equipment to craft right away means you are either allocating all of your precious resources towards it, or you’re going to be stuck working on this new milestone for quite a few hours. I didn’t want to dedicate everything I had for this so I was stuck here for about 5 hours gathering new resources and getting to the point where I could make better equipment to make good progress.

Base Building

Base building plays a large part in The Planet Crafter. Resupplying your O2 levels means you need to head inside. The base building has a lot of freedom on how you want to build. Generators are needed to make energy to power all the equipment made, but layouts are entirely up to you on how you want to make it. I thought I had a pretty good layout on my first base, and then went online and saw some setups from players that have been playing since early access on PC and realized how small minded I was thinking on mine.

Sadly, one option I haven’t seen in the game that would be really nice is being able to move existing equipment. As of right now, if you want to move something, you have to deconstruct it and redo it. Thankfully, deconstructing an item will give you all the resources back, so you aren’t being penalized for having to redo anything. The moving option would be nice just to save some time, especially when moving a whole base.

Performance And Graphics

I started out playing the Planet Crafter on my Rog Ally X while I was out of state, and overall it ran alright. There’s a little bit of stuttering, especially when moving around quickly, but other than that I ran into no issues. Once I moved over to the Series X, I ran into zero stuttering.

Playing on my TV, I did notice pop in a lot more frequently. The world of The Planet Crafter is huge, so I expected some occasional pop in. However, I was not expecting it at the frequency it happens. Whole areas will just pop in, as well as the more desert areas with large rock columns will just pop in when you get near. There is also some areas where I would just fall through rocks. Thankfully I wouldn’t be stuck, but it’s disappointing planning a route out and then having that uprooted because you fell through something that should be there definitely can be frustrating. During my 18 hours I didn’t run into any crashes or game breaking issues, so overall while there are some issues to be fixed, there’s nothing super pressing to worry about.

Final Verdict

While The Planet Crafter has some technical and progress halting issues, its sense of exploration and scale over time are something I don’t come across in many games. The game is absolutely worth checking out, even if you’re not into the survival genre. With the addition of co-op up to 10 people, this is a game that gives you almost limitless ways to shape the world how you want it.

The Planet Crafter was reviewed on the Xbox Series X and Xbox Rog Ally X. Gamer Social Club would like to thank Miju Studios for the review code.