Edit: formatting, and I forgot to enable comments.

I wanted to wait for Planet Crafter to come out of Early Access before giving it a review. This is... a difficult game to review.

First of all, this game is not 1.0 ready, not even close. There are so many bugs, rough edges, QOL features you would expect to be there but just aren't. I've done two playthroughs, one during Early Access and the other in "1.0" and I honestly can't tell you what the difference is between them, besides removing the old music and replacing it with new stuff, I guess.

I don't know if I like this game. The first third is sandbox survival, the second third is base building, and the last third is an idle/clicker game where you make numbers go up. It is truly bizarre, and I'm pretty sure my nearly 190 hours as of writing are from the dopamine high of making number bigger.

Some reviews I've seen compare the automation in Planet Crafter to Satisfactory or Factorio. That is an insult to both Satisfactory and Factorio. In Satisfactory, you have nuclear power plants that require solid and liquid fuel in order to output energy to the power grid. The plants produce radioactive waste, which cannot be used or destroyed and must be stored safely. In Factorio, you have nuclear reactors that require solid and liquid fuel in order to produce steam, which you can then use another machine to convert into power and then add to the grid. If the reactor is ever damaged while it is over a certain amount of heat level, it will explode. This is an oversimplification on both game's mechanics.

In Planet Crafter, you have nuclear reactors. That's it. Full stop. You place them down, and they magically add power to the grid. Wirelessly. Solar panels work during the night time. Power lines do not exist on Store-Brand-Mars. You may think that I'm making a big stink over a game that clearly is not an automation game having lacklustre automation, and I would agree, but one of the achievements is called "The Factory Must Grow", so clearly the devs knew what they were doing.

Every time I interact with the drone system (yes this non-automation game has drones) I want to rip my hair out. Each inventory has a cog icon on it's UI screen, that cog has three things it can do; demand, supply, and set priority. You cannot request and demand the same item. So if you have a machine that has a byproduct of water, but it also requires water to work, then too bad, do it yourself. You cannot restrict inventory to a specific size. If you only want 5 of an output, too bad, craft it yourself. If you want to use autocrafters, which auto-craft... items, (it's not an automation game tho promise) then you have to have one inventory for each item. If I need iron, silicon, and titanium to craft [X], and I set my drones to deposit into one inventory, they will fill that entire inventory with silicon. I've watched it happen right in front of me. And I was screaming.

Drones have a docking platform they stay in when they aren't working. When they are working, they have infinite range and can no-clip into the map. Kinda like we can as well, I guess. A drone will target any item in any inventory regardless of range, then. So you might assume that if you have a farm or a mining operation that you should put a drone platform near both with some drones so that the farm drones can work close to the farm, and the mining drones would work at the mines. You would of course be wrong. I have never been so angry at a game before then I have from watching my mine drones come over to my farm while my farm drones work at the mine. It is utter chaos. There is absolutely no way to tell them not to go in certain areas. They don't even use the teleporters you can use! So you just have to wait as one drone from one side of the map comes all the way over, picks up the thing, then goes all the way somewhere else while there's a drone sitting idle literally right next to where it needs to work.

The more time I have spent with this game, the more I hate it. I don't want to hate it. It's cool to watch the planet change as you terraform it in real time. It's cool to go from having to rely on oxygen canisters in order to not die to being able to breathe outdoors. It's cool to build your base and then later having it destroyed because the water levels are rising. But I'm a hard core survival nut so of course I like that stuff. I just cannot recommend this to people. I'm sorry.

Edit: formatting, and I forgot to enable comments. I wanted to wait for Planet Crafter to come out of Early Access before giving it a review. This is... a difficult game to review. First of all, this game is not 1.0 ready, not even close. There are so many bugs, rough edges, QOL features you would expect to be there but just aren't. I've done two playthroughs, one during Early Access and the other in "1.0" and I honestly can't tell you what the difference is between them, besides removing the old music and replacing it with new stuff, I guess. I don't know if I like this game. The first third is sandbox survival, the second third is base building, and the last third is an idle/clicker game where you make numbers go up. It is truly bizarre, and I'm pretty sure my nearly 190 hours as of writing are from the dopamine high of making number bigger. Some reviews I've seen compare the automation in Planet Crafter to Satisfactory or Factorio. That is an insult to both Satisfactory and Factorio. In Satisfactory, you have nuclear power plants that require solid and liquid fuel in order to output energy to the power grid. The plants produce radioactive waste, which cannot be used or destroyed and must be stored safely. In Factorio, you have nuclear reactors that require solid and liquid fuel in order to produce steam, which you can then use another machine to convert into power and then add to the grid. If the reactor is ever damaged while it is over a certain amount of heat level, it will explode. This is an oversimplification on both game's mechanics. In Planet Crafter, you have nuclear reactors. That's it. Full stop. You place them down, and they magically add power to the grid. Wirelessly. Solar panels work during the night time. Power lines do not exist on Store-Brand-Mars. You may think that I'm making a big stink over a game that clearly is not an automation game having lacklustre automation, and I would agree, but one of the achievements is called "The Factory Must Grow", so clearly the devs knew what they were doing. Every time I interact with the drone system (yes this non-automation game has drones) I want to rip my hair out. Each inventory has a cog icon on it's UI screen, that cog has three things it can do; demand, supply, and set priority. You cannot request and demand the same item. So if you have a machine that has a byproduct of water, but it also requires water to work, then too bad, do it yourself. You cannot restrict inventory to a specific size. If you only want 5 of an output, too bad, craft it yourself. If you want to use autocrafters, which auto-craft... items, (it's not an automation game tho promise) then you have to have one inventory for each item. If I need iron, silicon, and titanium to craft [X], and I set my drones to deposit into one inventory, they will fill that entire inventory with silicon. I've watched it happen right in front of me. And I was screaming. Drones have a docking platform they stay in when they aren't working. When they are working, they have infinite range and can no-clip into the map. Kinda like we can as well, I guess. A drone will target any item in any inventory regardless of range, then. So you might assume that if you have a farm or a mining operation that you should put a drone platform near both with some drones so that the farm drones can work close to the farm, and the mining drones would work at the mines. You would of course be wrong. I have never been so angry at a game before then I have from watching my mine drones come over to my farm while my farm drones work at the mine. It is utter chaos. There is absolutely no way to tell them not to go in certain areas. They don't even use the teleporters you can use! So you just have to wait as one drone from one side of the map comes all the way over, picks up the thing, then goes all the way somewhere else while there's a drone sitting idle literally right next to where it needs to work. The more time I have spent with this game, the more I hate it. I don't want to hate it. It's cool to watch the planet change as you terraform it in real time. It's cool to go from having to rely on oxygen canisters in order to not die to being able to breathe outdoors. It's cool to build your base and then later having it destroyed because the water levels are rising. But I'm a hard core survival nut so of course I like that stuff. I just cannot recommend this to people. I'm sorry.