Planet Crafter Review - Slow Start, High Reward
4The Planet Crafter is a relaxing and surprisingly compelling base-building game cantered around one big goal: terraforming a barren planet into a thriving, breathable world. Whether played solo or in co-op, the game offers a steady, long-term progression loop that becomes more engaging the longer you stick with it. While it has its issues, especially in the settings and audio departments, the core gameplay is solid and satisfying.
-Steam Curator: store.steampowered.com/curator/36307721-Healthy-Criticism/
You start with nothing on a desolate world. Your job is to explore, build, and slowly transform the environment by generating oxygen, heat, pressure, and biomass. The game feeds you new technologies and unlocks as you reach specific terraforming milestones. Along the way, you'll find crashed ships and abandoned structures scattered around the planet, offering valuable resources and fragments of a larger mystery told entirely through written logs and messages. There is no voice acting, and most of the story is delivered through text, which works fine but may not be for everyone.
At first, the game feels extremely slow. I was sceptical during the early hours, wondering if it was going anywhere. But I realized that the slow pace is intentional. Terraforming an entire planet is not a task meant to be rushed. Once I embraced the game's deliberate speed, I started to enjoy the rhythm of exploration and incremental progress. It is very much a slow burn, but a rewarding one if you are patient.
The game really shines in co-op. While the solo experience is perfectly functional, playing with a friend adds a lot. Splitting up tasks, exploring different areas, and watching your base expand together makes the experience feel more alive. I would highly recommend it in multiplayer if you have the option.
There are, however, a few rough edges. The most frustrating is the lack of graphics settings. The options menu is extremely barebones. You get a single pre-set slider with five fidelity levels and no ability to adjust things like texture quality, chromatic aberration, shadow distance, or draw distance individually. For a game that is visually driven and has a good sense of scale, the minimal configuration is disappointing.
The audio is also fairly weak. The music is ambient and harmless, but quickly becomes repetitive. Without much variation or dynamic sound design, it fades into the background. I found myself playing with a podcast or a video running in the background to stay engaged during long build sessions.
What the game is missing most is a threat. There is no combat, no danger, no reason to defend yourself or your base. It would be fascinating if, as the planet evolved, new organisms emerged from the environment and presented challenges to your progress. Right now, the lack of threat makes the world feel a bit too peaceful. Some kind of creature system or evolving ecosystem would add an entirely new layer to the experience.
Even with its limitations, The Planet Crafter stands out. It tackles a rarely explored concept in games and delivers it in a focused, clean format. If you enjoy slow, methodical progress and the satisfaction of turning a lifeless planet into a living one, this game is absolutely worth your time.
00:00 - Intro
00:34 - Settings
03:24 - Gameplay
09:53 - Ship Exploration
10:41 - Vehicle
12:13 - Information Screens
15:22 - Various thoughts
21:23 - Final Thoughts