I thought a bit more after my last post on the game, and came to the conclusion that further exploration was needed.

The largest driving factor here is that the dev team is 2 people, and what is here is frankly absurd given the resources at hand. I generally love small dev teams as the games are a direct representation of their passion, and Planet Crafter certainly hits that mark.

While I certainly highlighted it, I want to strongly state that the ‘issues’ with the game in it’s current state relate to balanced progress. The easy comparisons are games that have been polished to a high degree, putting the bar somewhat out of reach. And that risks are taken here means that some things will work, and others not.

Planet Crafter has effectively 3 phases, and the game dramatically shifts between them.

Survival

This phase is the smack dab start of the game, where you have no sources of food, water, or air, except for what you find. Every system is new, inventory is a massive pain in the butt, and you frankly are lacking all the tools necessary to move forward. This mode is the one that’s most familiar to players given the genre explosion. You have a very small base (for air), explore for seeds (for food), and need to collect the most basic of material to progress towards new tools.

This phase ends when you have the ability to generate water, which is near the 3 hour mark.

Exploration

This phase is the rough one. You now have the ability to stay alive, but progression is now limited through scale of operations. You absolutely need to explore the map to find iridium and uranium in order to build rockets (massive production increases) and to build power generation for machines. The balance in this part is really challenging, primarily because the things you need are so spread out. An ore extractor will get you some materials – but not uranium (or osmium).

The balance issue here is that you know what you need to do, but lack the material to do so. It’s also the phase where you learn that building a simple & door is the only way to effectively explore the map. I had a dozen+ little camp spots throughout the map. Progress slows down dramatically, and the RNG of blueprint/microchips shows its head.

The phase isn’t broken, it’s just jagged and has what feels like too many steps. This phase takes about 8 hours to get through.

Optimization

This phase is more weird than anything else. You’ve found a way to generate every resource reliably, you’ve been to every area in the map, and you’ve crafted at least one of everything. Given that progress is a math formula based on multiple aspects, you’ll focus on one and then another and then another. Progress is very slow, where you are the hiccup in the supply chain.

Now, in most logistic games, you end up with a hub of sorts that does all the things. That is true here, but getting there is another story. There’s an auto-crafter that automatically collects things from range to build another thing. What you end up with is a very large room with storage that stays within range of the crafter. You then hit a wall where you can’t craft something because the box is empty, then go out to collect said thing to fill said box.

Automation of that collection comes much later in this phase with Drones. The setup is very manual, and slower than you might think, but it does work.

From this point forward, the issue is a combination of time and scale. Time in that you are waiting to unlock more things, and scale in that you want at least 5 of every machine possible, including rockets. But I don’t need 5 beehives you may ask. You may not need the honey, but you need the insect generation.

Future

Functionally, the game stops providing “new things to do” at the breathable atmosphere stage – which takes ~20 hours or so to reach. You’ve explored every bit, crafted every item, and the world is green. The systems that remain past that point deal with complex organics, fish now, frogs soon.

Back to the original post on this, the game has a ton of rough edges, but the concepts here are pure passion. The majority of the quibbles deal with balancing in the exploration phase, and just plainly a lack of data to help make decisions. Once you get to the optimization phase and understand all the systems and have access to all the tools, the game turns into something much different. On the whole, it’s frankly amazing what’s here.

Came up on my list and I’m giving is a shot, Planet Crafter is a hybrid game in the survival/exploration/crafting genre. The “definitive game” of this genre is Subnautica, a rather impressive mish-mash of ambience and story, with crafting elements. Planet Crafter emulates this to a degree, but with the polish expected of an Early Access game.

Now, I generally avoid Early Access games unless it fits a certain set of criteria, typically focused on a small development team trying to iron out an idea. I really like Subnautica, and I like crafting games, so this hits the right marks. That said, if I am paying for Early Access, I will review it to a degree.

The concept here is that you are stranded on a deserted planet to serve out a prison sentence. You have some very basic tasks to complete in order to get a “foothold”, and the larger goal then turns to terraforming the planet. Now, planet in the general sense, as you’re really only given a single map to explore, which undergoes various points of transform over time. That map is quite large, even when you’ve got a ton of movement abilities available. It takes a long time to reach a point where you won’t starve/asphyxiate/dehydrate to death while crossing it.

There’s a very basic shelter that allows you to restore oxygen (which insanely always requires a door to be constructed), so that’s one part easy enough. Creating extra water requires a decent amount of progress, and frankly knowledge that it’s possible. Starvation requires growing food, which is simple enough. So with those pieces in hand, you can explore the world, collect minerals, build stuff to unlock more stuff to build and so on.

Progress is gated through a terraforming index, which is calculated through other milestones (heat, pressure, biomass, etc..), as well as random blueprints. The net effect is that it’s entirely possible to unlock the ability to craft items long before you have the material to do so. Further, these milestones are weighted so that progress is not linear, but more logarithmic. The game progresses quickly to begin, then there are wide swaths of frankly waiting for a number to go up. The balance of this progress is not necessarily broken, as much as it needs optimization.

The act of crafting requires things. Material does NOT stack, and there’s so much out there that you will end up with 2 dozen chests of things just to stay sane. This creates a back & forth process of collecting things, bringing them back to storage, and collecting more things. Movement and inventory improvements quickly become essential to your sanity. The lack of “world diversity” here also means that it feels, and is, time padding.

And creating things is what you will spend 90% of your time doing, in particular one mid-tier element that is used everywhere (super alloy). You’ll end up creating 5 or so of every item at any given tier (e.g. there are 5 tiers of heaters) in order to make those numbers move. There lacks some balance with regards to materials needed to construct, and energy requirements for said things to run. This becomes glaringly obvious as you enter the nuclear age and there simply isn’t any obvious renewable source of uranium. Again, balancing.

The thing I have not talked about is story, which frankly there simply isn’t much to discuss. There’s no discovery carrot, and exploration is driven by the need to find a specific material rather than the desire to see more. The risk of exploration remains relatively the same from start to finish, which diminishes any real reward as you’re always walking around with what feels like a sword over your head.

One piece I think that is important to mention is friction. These are design choices that impact systems and interfaces that are counter-intuitive. The flow between interfaces and menus is an example. The ability to easily understand information. The expectation here is that you start with a lot of friction and that you gradually reduce that over time. In that being proficient with the systems is based on player skill as much as the actual systems. The largest point of friction here is the system complexity/dependency and lack of tools to address. You need a scale of material to move forward, but inventory sizes are so small, and the near complete lack of logistics (drones come at end game, essentially after game completion) mean that you are stuck in minutiae rather than progress. Super Alloy Rods are important, and you need 9 ingredients to make it, and needs 49 base materials. Collecting that material takes about 20 minutes, no matter what point of the game you are in. Now, I realize that Planet Crafter is not a logistics simulator, but friction points such as these are not fun.

In the current state of the game, there are some rather interesting ideas, ideas that are not found in their totality in other games. However, split across multiple games, those ideas are significantly more refined elsewhere. It’s a bit like how a buffet is cool to try things, but if you want good Italian food, you go to an Italian restaurant. Increased content is certainly a big piece of this puzzle, but at the same time, there’s a balance/refinement pass required as well, in particular for the mid-game. It’s an interesting sandbox to play.

I’ve been a proponent of a gaming laptop for some time now. Sure it helped that the pandemic “broke” the video card market, and the niche custom PC build market has pivoted back to the mid-90s chaos of compatibility. Plus, I don’t have the time/patience to build a liquid cooled rig. You can get an amazing laptop rig, delivered to your door within a week, for nearly the same price as a custom rig – heck, during the pandemic it was the same cost as a video card. The screen of a gaming laptop can be a bit harder to figure out… but it’s not really different than a custom rig.

What does this have to do with anything? The Steam Deck uses it’s native streaming mode to play games that are installed on your PC over the Switch on any home network. I’ve used this on various streaming devices, and it works “ok”. The best experience so far was from a “normal” laptop to my gaming laptop, with expected video degradation. The Steam Deck’s streaming option makes all of that go away.

I can certainly install a game like Fallen Order or Control on the Deck, and they play quite well. A drain on the battery of course, so the sessions are a bit harder to manage if I’m not docked on 45w. But streaming… that is another thing. The gaming laptop has no performance or power issues, and it plays almost identical to the native Deck mode. I’ve yet to give it a shot at Deck + Stream + Dock mind you, which would certainly put it through some crazy paces. It would effectively fully replace a console at that point (which is a separate topic about the future of XBOX).

The natural downside to all this is that “gaming on the go” isn’t really an option if you’re streaming. However, you can run it in dual mode, with a local install and the option to stream is always present. I tried this with No Man’s Sky and it worked flawlessly.

I realize this is part of a series of glowing recommendations for the Deck, and yeah, that’s right on target. The lack of integrated mouse + keyboard controls makes some games more complicated than others (e.g. you can’t really play any RTS or ARPG without a dock), but the rest of the features make it feel like a massive step forward in gaming.

There have been hundreds of action role playing games, probably thousands, since the first Diablo launched in 1997. I remember heading to a PC cafe to indulge and marveling at, well, everything!

Since then, the genre has taken some interesting twists and turns – and to a degree some forks in the road. Some have bridged back, some pruned, and some flourished. What we’re left with is effectively 3 main streams.

• Diablo 3 – RoS. The “fast food” of ARPGs. The original launch is best forgotten, and what we have now is a rather well-integrated, drop-in/out, meta-of-the-season approach.
• Path of Exile. The “hardcore” of ARPGs. This game requires a community approach due to the trading / RNG mechanism and is F2P done right. Only WarFrame has more systems maintained over time.
• Grim Dawn (Titan Quest). This is the middle ground where you have complexity, integration, modding, and the general foundational systems of ARPGs present. Frankly, I’d consider this the “trunk” of the ARPG tree.

I have not talked about Lost Ark here because it’s a much different game that has more in line with a branch that is frankly being pruned – the mobile ARPG. These are games with extremely simple interfaces, minimal choice, and an RNG upgrade path that is supplemented by a cash stop. There are certainly whales willing to play these games, and feel free to navigate them ethical waters. I’ll get back to this…

The key bits that set ARPGs apart:

• There is moment-to-moment activity
• There are levels, and character customization over time
• There are multiple item slots, variety in said slots, quality that impacts power, and synergy between said items
• Most of the game focuses on RNG, both in zone layout, monster spawning, and most certainly in item drops
• There is the option for increased difficulty, which also increases RNG factors
• There is a “long tail” progress system with logarithmic gains (e.g. you quickly gain power, and later on power comes more gradually). This makes the game relevant for years.

Diablo 4 is out, and it does cover the first 5 bullets in this list. There are going to be multiple balance patches for the next 6 months as people find new and interesting ways to exploit the foundations of the game – that’s expected.

The larger questions remain around the “long tail” portion of the game, which were frankly non-existent in Diablo 3 for nearly 2 years. Well, I’ll caveat that in that the end game was farming the auction house. RoS brought it to rift farming. PoE has map farms. Grim Dawn also has a sort of map farm. It will take some time before Diablo 4 figures out that dance.

The very interesting (to me) part of Diablo 4 is less about the gameplay and more about the mobile ARPG aspect – namely the cash stop and monthly passes.

• The game has a box price of $70
• There’s a seasonal pass, with paid and free tiers. Paid unlocks more cosmetics, provides gold/xp boosts, but no “concrete” power.
• There’s a cosmetics shop with the natural shennanigans of using another currency for items so that you always never have enough to have a zero balance.
  • The items in the shop are hovering near $20-$25. I can quite literally buy game of the year candidates for that price. These are macrotransactions.

This is an interesting experiment for Blizzard. Clearly Diablo costs money to run and maintain, and there’s always an opportunity to milk out some folks of extra cash. Ubisoft has been doing this for years, and EA has no real shame in this space.

However, the Diablo crowd is different – or perhaps more accurately the ARPG crowd is different. The game has the value, less the window dressing. If the moment to moment stuff doesn’t work, or there is no long tail, ARPG players just won’t stick around… there are simply better options out there today. It will be quite interesting to watch how this develops over time.