Kimdir legutóbbi értékelései

Planet Crafter is a fantastic concept for a game, but its execution, its progression, and its layout detracts significantly more from the core of what the game is than the unique premise elevates it. I'm shocked that it has the ratings it does, and am genuinely curious if I just missed something beautiful about this game.

I played this on the standard normal difficulty settings with no modifications to the rules or mods to the game. I believe this is the intended experience for the game based off these settings, and am rendering my review based on such. I made sure to complete the game to have a thorough perspective on this work, and below are my takeaways from this experience.

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The premise of this game is great. Watching the world transform while progressing through the development of the planet was really cool, and brought a satisfying sense of accomplishment (even when I had to move my base out of a lake bed because I ignored warnings).

Tying the progression of the tech tree to the planet development along the different lines was a good concept. It allows for focusing on different terraforming tasks to proceed towards different goals.

Since the main map is statically designed, the reuse of the map as technology progresses was done very well.

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I thought I was playing an early access game through the first 20 hours of gameplay. Didn't realize this was already in full release, which makes a lot of things that I normally would forgive for the sake of ongoing development stand out a lot worse, such as:

This was extremely obvious, and while I normally can overlook this, the major problem I had was with entire rock formations popping into existence when I got close enough.

I got stuck numerous times in odd geometries (specifically in the wrecks with large slopes) to the point where I almost died from how long it took to get out of these potholes. I also ended up under the map several times just exploring, thinking I was walking through cave passages or similar. One glaring instance of this occurred in the Warden Key Locator/Cenote area where I had issues being sunk up to the middle of the camera in the ground terrain.

These were...aggressive. The jarring shifts often took me out of whatever I was working on, and especially in the beginning flagged areas as unsafe when in reality it was just indicating a new zone. I also ran into countless times where I would pass near a shader boundary in my base that would click in and out in <15 frames when I wasn't even in the section of the base that would have normally triggered that shader. These transitions feel like placeholders for more developed systems, and make the game feel less refined.

The progression of this game was uneven and imbalanced. I know I could have finished this game faster than I did, but at around halfway, I accidentally left my game running while I went to run an errand and realized that while I died numerous times during that span, I progressed the game far enough to be able to have multiple working targets again. I repeated this process 5 more times throughout my time playing the game, as I got as much builts as afforded by how much I was willing to scrounge for materials (more on that later). I actually finished the game without completing one of the research paths because I had gained more from the other routes than expected, I suppose.

This...this was agonizing. I think the intent was to make you feel like you're scrounging for whatever resources you can find at the start, which is fine, but running around on a collect-a-thon seems a little strange for trying to change the entire environment of a planet. The implementation of the miners was late in the process, and especially so since you aren't even guaranteed the resources you're looking for until T3. This makes resource collection miserable, and considering that there is no inventory stacking either, collecting and maintaining stocks feels like a time sink while you're waiting for terraforming to progress. Setting up autocrafting in the late game felt like I should have been able to do that closer to the 40% mark, and then challenges would arise from implementing more autocrafting as more tech was unlocked.

I spent a lot of my gameplay just messing around on my phone or watching stuff on Youtube while I waited for the next unlock level. There's better things that could have been implemented in this time gap, such as other gameplay loops like balancing outputs of terraforming to prevent too much of one product in comparison to others (i.e. too much oxygen with too little pressure leads to loss of oxygen over time, things like that). I get that this time was intended for you to explore the map, but I ended up exploring the map several times during my waits and by the mid-late game, I was tired of seeing the same spaces over and over again.

These felt like they were added to just be able to add that there were "procedurally generated" parts to the game. Procedural generation does add replayability and variety, but only to the extent that the player can see the repeated nature of the generation, and there was almost nothing to differentiate between wrecks. Seeing as I needed to visit a number of these for the Smuggler ending, I ended up just sticking to a right-hand rule while exploring them. There was no hazard to this at this point in the game, and I knocked a large amount of my YT backlog out while running through these.

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Planet Crafter has the bones of something truly great, but it feels rushed and shortchanged from what it could have been. I would have put this at 40% through early access, not at a point in post-release for adding features. I get that it's a small team, but that doesn't mean that it needed to be rushed through to 1.0. I'm sad that this experience was reduced by the seemingly cut corners in development in a genre that I truly enjoy and seek out.

Edit: Formatting

A cult-building game where you were expected to weigh the decisions of self-service versus the well-being and maintenance of your burgeoning cult with a side of rogue-like endeavors away from your home to find resources, spread the baaa-spel, and find new followers for your cult.

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A mediocre knockoff of Binding of Isaac with twice as many cosmetic items as mechanical ones. A "cult" that basically sits around and collects resources that, by a few days in, are overabundant. Almost no difficult choices with managing the cult, but rather just collecting fodder that is easily replaced, with a risk-less narrative. Feels like someone wanted to make a BoI style game and the cult mechanics were tacked on at the end.

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Overall, I just finished this game to get the achievements. It was a slog rather than an enjoyment, and I'm disappointed with the end result considering the amount of marketing that went into this work.

While I enjoy the concept of this game, there are some things that really are a drag for me:

1-Gameplay basically exists while time is paused, and the rest of the time is just watching people run around. If you play the game well, there's nothing to do between level ups other than wait. I found myself frequently pulling up my phone and messing with it while I just waited for the next day.

2-UI feels clunky and underthought, as if it was designed for mobile. Which if it was, then fine, but I can only review the game as played on PC. Especially later on, the amount of bubbles that pop up is overwhelming and one of my greatest frustrations is that the UI bubble for the signs actively blocks clicking on arrows that end up behind it, which adds steps when you're trying to set up new intersections.

3-Development in the game is slow as well. Every time you get something new, it's maybe a handful of stations or exits that need to be connected, or a new necessity for the customers, or rarely both. With the ability to pause the game, the development puts no challenge on the player.

I wish I could recommend this, because I love this genre of game, but there are better examples that exist in better forms than this.

While I enjoy puzzles like Fly Corp, I have a glaring issue with the game:

What feels like to me is the intended mode of play ("Unlock all countries") does not guarantee a successful start. In the mode, you have a requirement of unlocking a country every six minutes or the game fails. That is fine, and an interesting take. Additionally, the game has random events that happen that range from bonus passengers to marketing plans to boost travelers to lawsuits against the company. That is fine too, adds variety to the gameplay. I haven't measured or checked frequency beyond the first 6 minutes of the game, but it seems like there's a guaranteed random event at 3 minutes in, or halfway into the first country unlock.

What I don't appreciate is that some instances of this game mode are impossible to get out of the first six minutes. There is a limited number of cities that can be connected with a designated passenger generation rate, which means you have very limited access to funds in the first six minutes. With random events feeling biased towards negatives (shutdown routes, lawsuits that cost money to have a chance to defend against, demand plummeting for tickets), there is a non-zero chance that you cannot gather the required money for the first country unlock before six minutes has passed, forcing you into a game fail state.

I have had to scrap and restart far too many runs before I had the chance to fail on my own. It makes the game feel like it doesn't want to actually be played. Maybe it's supposed to be representative of the extreme barrier to entry for new airline companies, but I don't feel like that contributes to the game.

The issue is simply fixed by delaying the onset of random events until after the first country is unlocked. By that point, you have the passenger flow and opportunities to fail or succeed based on your own play rather than the game forcing you into a loss state regardless of how you play.

It's an unfortunate flaw that has caused me to close the game earlier than I would normally purely out of exhaustion from hoping that I can get a run passed this first crucial stage. Hopefully the devs see this and fix the issue, and if so I'll gladly change my review.

Pros:
- Slipstreaming through a whole ship with less than 10s left to kill the captain
- Accidental window shotgunning
- "Tactical" exits with breach grenades

Cons:
- Slightly repetitive

Overall, a fantastic little rogue-like!

This is a delightful little story game. For being developed over four months only, I am very impressed with how this game portrayed a story through imagery and action alone. The general atmosphere of the game was unique as well, as I couldn't ever decide until the end what exactly I should expect from the next screen.

A beautiful tale, and wonderful implementation. I hope to see a sequel soon!

This game takes a new view on an old concept and does it fantastically. The microtransaction system is totally unwarranted though, but thankfully it isn't needed to fully enjoy the game. Very well made.