I will say this; Planet Crafter moves along at a brisk pace. It is also good about laying out the next objective for you and giving you a way to see how fast you are progressing. Certainly A Planet Crafter Unlike Valheim, which I will use for comparison as it represents such a staple of the survival crafter genre, with rather broad objective of slaying the current biome boss, Planet Crafter objectives are much more incremental. Also, you’re not actually fighting mobs or bosses. Not yet at least, but who knows what awaits us? Instead you are really focused on simple survival and overcoming the constraints laid upon you by things like your oxygen supply and your need for food and water and the limits of your inventory space. As noted though, the game very quickly points you in the direction of improving your situation. There are the first few resources to find then craft in order to replenish your water supply and give you a little more space in your inventory. They you need to start building a base, because some of the new things you get need to be built in a shelter… and also because being inside a building supplies you with oxygen. Your initial forays are short, because you cannot get to far from shelter, even with a couple spare oxygen bottles. Then you get some upgrades and you can go a little further and you start seeing more of the planet. You end up getting a message terminal setup and you learn that you are there to terraform the planet as an alternative to a prison sentence. You’re there for the duration. It is also suggested that maybe you don’t want to build your base in a deep valley. We started venturing further afield to explore wreckage, because rare materials are initially found there. Also food. For a while you’re living off of packaged food you find here and there. That starts to feel like a problem, but you can see on the unlock chart that a food producer is on the horizon. To get there you have to engage in the upgrade cycle. You need power to get the terraforming machinery running. Your terraforming progress unlocks upgrades, some of which will speed up the process. But the new machines need more power, and while your power options are some of the new unlocks, those need new resources as well. Meanwhile we have left a series of little baselets around, pit stops for oxygen, and have learned to carry the 3-2-1 combo of materials; 3 iron, 2 titanium, 1 silicon. That will make a pod and a door and give you a place to replenish your oxygen. In exploring we decided on a place at the top of some bluffs overlooking an expanse of rolling dunes on one side and some canyons on the other. We didn’t undo our starter base or the couple that sprang up along the way, but here is where we decided to settle. One of the big discoveries was the vehicle bay that let us build a rover. The initial rover I was disappointed to find that it isn’t a shelter with oxygen. A pressurized rover is an upgrade. We had some more work to do to get to that. And the rover isn’t that great of a transport option when you have jet packs. We unlocked those before the rover, and I even made a jet pack pretty early. I just couldn’t figure out how to use it. Double tap and hold the space bar. That lights the pack and then you are hovering. Potshot throwing up dust in a hover After that, you just keep the spacebar down and move around like normal… which sounds a bit awkward, but you get used to it pretty quickly. That felt as fast, if not faster than the rover… we still need to do a speed test… and the jet pack gets upgrades and its speed is affected by other item upgrades, so pretty soon we were just flying around. Much faster than walking, so our area of exploration expanded. We also were making consistent progress on terraforming. We had enough heat and atmosphere to get water, which quickly pooled up in the low portions of the map, including where our original spawn point and base were. Our base, now under a lake You can go under water in your suit… you can drive the rover under water it seems… but equipment doesn’t run under water for the most part. So it was good that we moved to high ground. The big melt also opened up new areas on the map that had been blocked by ice. That brought us ready access to what were rare resources. Potshot setup mines at new locations to get us a ready supply of things like uranium. We also found some new resources. Zeolite – Rare and gating… and then it wasn’t For hauling the rover turned out to have its uses. We got upgrades to expand its inventory and Potshot found that you can put an empty rover in your pocket essentially. The rover, just another item in my inventory You fly it on out to the mine using your jetpack, deploy it there, fill it up, then fly back to base and use the vehicle bay to summon it home. More supplies enabled more structures which increased terraforming which unlocked more things. It felt like we were putting up satellites pretty quickly once we had supplies going… and satellites include things that boost terraforming. Rocket on the gantry ready to launch It is a little strange that you have to stand at the top of the gantry to press the launch button… where is OSHA when you need them… but it is a game. Big red launch button next to the rocket body Overall, progress is so regular that it is a bit difficult to pick a spot at which to stop and write a post about the game. I have hit that point half a dozen times, and then something else interesting unlocks. Do I write about moss or plants or trees or the beehives or the butterflies in the biodome or when our base gets redone? Our base has seen a few generations of upgrades. The base as I write this… could be different tomorrow That picture was taken from the top of the rocket gantry. You can, if you look at the picture before it, see the base has changed. I think transport might be my milestone. We were walking in my first post, using the jetpack in the next, and just before I started writing this we unlocked the teleporter. Teleportation will soon be a thing We’re going to need some more fusion generators I bet. Back to hauling resources… until we can teleport them. While the pace of advancement has made chronicling our adventure a bit of a challenge, overall it has been pretty good. If you like this sort of game… and what sort of game is it now… then you could certainly do worse. Looking towards the future… or a cave… one of the two Save Sync Meanwhile, since the two are currently linked in our process, an update on Save Sync. So far it has worked very well for Potshot and I, though I suspect that it favors our particular play styles and time budgets. During the week we tend to play at different times. I will sometimes log in for a bit before work or just after work, which is early in the evening. Potshot, when he is home, seems to log in at lunch and later in the evening. For that it works very well as we are essentially handing off the save. When we play together one of needs to be logged in and then send the other an invite code for the game so you can join on their version of the save with updating your own local copy. The person who is holding the save needs to stay on so long as you are both online. We have yet to screw up the save, though not for lack of trying. At one point the game was balking and we logged out. I had been holding the save, but Potshot started it back up. However, I also started up on the save, forgetting to join via code, something we only discovered when we were supposed to be in the same room in the base and couldn’t see each other. Oh great, a fork in the save! We decided to preserve Potshot’s branch since he had been building and I had only been hauling some supplies. I quit out, at which point the shared save was update to my branch. Then Potshot saved in game and logged out, and the shared save was updated to his branch. Everything was fine. Disaster was averted. But you could see how this could get really screwed up if people are not careful. Save Sync also has the annoying quality of showing up as the game you’re playing in Discord. I spent some time trying to get it to stop showing up and failed. But having flipped a few switch on Steam and Discord to suppress the game’s visibility, I did manage to get Discord to show when I was playing Planet Crafter rather than Save Sync when I was actually in game. And that is the important bit. It doesn’t matter if we both have Save Sync open. But if one of us has loaded up the save, it is kind of a big deal for the other person to be able to tell you’re in game. (I tend to use Discord as my visual cue, but checking in Steam works as well. I just have to get on the right page to see it.) So it works well enough for the two of us, so long as we communicate. But for a larger group… I’d really rather rent a server. Related: Steam – The Planet Crafter store page Steam – Save Sync store page TAGN – Planet Crafter and Save Sync