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.