Planet Explorers

WARNING: THE GAME IS EARLY ACCESS. 

HAVING SAID THAT, I STILL THINK ITS WORTH BUYING.

So I picked up this game a while back, called "Planet Explorers". A friend of mine bought it a long time ago and encouraged me to do so as well. I couldn't run it, and so I put it aside, until recently when I got a new computer. 

This game.. is pretty amazing.

Planet explorers is a voxel-based survival game, where you crash landed on a planet called "maria", and you eventually end up going from the clothes on your back and some wooden tools to high-tech armor and a fully powered colony, complete with an overshield and turrets to prevent any native creatures from disturbing you.

"A voxel-based survival game? Like the 1000 others, Jim?" You may ask. Yes, yes, it very much is. I haven't played many of those other games, admittedly, outside of Minecraft, so I'm not really "burnt" on the genre as many of you may be. If the word "voxel" is a massive turn off to you at this point, then keep reading -- this game does some pretty neat things that I haven't seen in other games.

So to start things off, you crash land on this planet. You literally start with a laser knife, and you're told to build a few things. Initially my impressions were that it was a much prettier minecraft, with a more entertaining combat system. As you progress through the game though, you can start making use of a handheld PC you own, that lets you scan the environment around you for specific ores (you unlock more ores to scan for as you progress the story). 

As you proceed a bit further into the game, you're taught how to build your own weapons using the voxel system, which.. is incredible. When  you access this option, it shows you a blank grid. You then choose parts for the specific weapon you're going to use (a sword would only have a hilt, while a gun would have a grip and a muzzle). You then use "materials" (dirt, steel, iron, diamond, basically anything you can build with) and "design" your own weapons. I'm terrible at this so my guns ended up just being square blocks with muzzles sticking out of them, but there exists the option to download ISO's (the file you design) from others and load them into your game as if you designed it yourself, so there's some incredible things you can end up with. I've seen Clouds sword (of course) and some guns from Warhammer available, so it's a pretty robust system. 

Moving on from that, you eventually get into creating vehicles, which are also in the voxel creation area like the weapons are. (I do have to note -- there are weapons sold in the game normally so you don't have to design your own (I would, though.. your own designed creations are much more powerful) but you HAVE to design your own vehicle, unfortunately.) You start off building a basic car with passenger seats to hoist around NPC's on "escort" missions, or your followers whenever you finally decide traveling alone isn't all that great. You eventually unlock helicopters/aircrafts, and if you're so inclined, boats as well. & What game wouldn't be complete without weapons on your vehicles? You can have mobile turrets, cannons, and even a volley of missiles if you so choose. It's .. amazing.

My favorite part of the game is when you start moving away from low-tech to high-tech, though. When you finally are able to wield a laser gun, equip a jetpack, and have an overshield, and you go from "Steve" in minecraft to Shepard from mass effect. You end up being able to build items that let you set up your own colony (complete with it's own fast travel point, and an area to let NPC's move in with you) that has a bubble overshield to prevent native creatures from getting too close, it has it's own generator that you have to fuel to power machines that you need, like a recycling machine, and a repair machine, and a advanced replicator to make even more crazy items; hell, there's even an enhancement machine that lets you upgrade the strength and durability of your items, so those hand-made weapons of yours can be even more OP.

You can set up a farm, and have NPC's assigned to planet, harvest, and manage it (to spray it for pesticides and water the plants regularly). You can have NPC's work on your machines (to speed up the process of making/enhancing/etc. items) You can even have NPC's patrol the border of your bubble shield to make sure that any native creatures that do get too close are dealt with swiftly. NPC management is pretty basic, but you get to assign job roles and give them new equipment.

Once you've built your colony, you can even manage it from anywhere in the world. If your powerplant is low on fuel, you can refuel it from a management screen that pops up. Forgot to set a few NPC's to manage your crops and see that they need water? Go ahead and assign those NPC's. Hell, you can even look in your colony's storage and see what NPC's are adding/taking (but you can't actually take items from it without being within a proximity to it, unfortunately) but MAN, there's just so much great stuff about the colony management that I haven't seen in any other game to date. 

Your colony CAN be attacked, as well. You'll get a message saying "Your colony is under attack!" which should pressure you to get your ass home and get ready to fend off a wave or two of native creatures. If the prospect of that sounds unappealing to you? You can always do what I did, and set up a bunch of turrets that don't require ammunition or maintenance (and they're top tier, so they're pretty devastating) and let your colony defend itself. 

The tech tree for this game is a little weird, though. You don't have the minecraft style "throw things together and make something new", you have a recipe book almost in your PDA (called a replicator) and you unlock new recipes by buying them or being given them from NPC's. It's actually pretty convenient, however; if you don't have the required item and it can be built, simply clicking that item in your PDA takes you to THAT items creation link, and you can just create from there. It even has a bar above that item listing what other items this one can be used for, so if you're making items just for fun, you can see what you can potentially create.

This game is still very early access (alpha 0.84 as of this post) and there are a lot of bugs, crashes, and some difficulty spikes in the story (those damn desert giants) but overall? I really, really like this game. It does things different and scratches my "survival" itch for "I'm living in a hole" to "LOOK AT MY LAVISH DIAMOND CASTLE! DON'T GET TOO CLOSE NOW, MY TURRETS ARE AUTOMATED!" which I previously only found through extensively modding Minecraft (technic pack is AMAZINGGG) 

Custom items, custom vehicles (hell, vehicles in GENERAL) and just being FUN in general? Yeah, I'd definitely say buy this game. It's early access, so of course buyer beware, but I'd still heavily recommend it in spite of that. Buy. This. Game.