Planetship Reviews

Fun little timewaster if you have an hour or so to kill. Might get boring after a while, but so does tetris. For the general audience, it's alright. Maybe this would work nicely as an IOS or android app. ...now for Stoners, fans of psychadelic art, or a big fan of music that sounds like Boards of Canada? game becomes an addiction, send help. Please.

This is one of those gather resources to keep the colony alive with some random story elements. There is no real direction and it can go on infinitly. Its really a trippy solo player game, I like how your planet and the sun pulse to the awesome music. There are lots of cool visuals to explore in every galaxy but they do get repetive. This would be a fun game for kids to learn the periodic tables of elements symbols.

This is one of the most relaxing games I've played. I also found "books" in space and when I went to the main menu, I found out that these were actual 80+ page retro science fiction novels that you could read within the game. The writing is quirky, and funny and the music is 10/10. I'm going to play this some more once it's finished.

Cool aesthetic, and their hearts are definitely in the right place. I love the various encounters that my crew can get into when I send them down to planets. I think it needs a little more time to cook in Early Access, though - there's not quite enough going on "under the hood" to keep me enthralled while I go from system to system and occasionally shoot things. Were I the developers, I would improve the navigation system and map, so that I can tell where I'm going and where I've been a bit more easily (my strategy thus far has been to go willy-nilly towards whatever jump gate has "???" above it, until I run out of one of the supplies and backtrack frantically looking for a planet rich in that supply). Perhaps a listing of scanned planets could pop up when you hover your cursor over an explored system on the map? It takes a loooong time to earn an upgrade, which is fine as long as I'm excited to continue the grind. I'm not certain there's a way to save at this point, which makes grinding less palatable. It also seems a little arbitrary which supplies your crew come back to your ship with. I'd like an option to go for particular supplies, or at least a system that automatically put more emphasis on needed supplies. I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. This game is probably going to be really spiffy, once it's fully-formed! This is what Early Access is for!

A very chill and trippy game where you're a planet-sized spaceship cruising the galaxy. You warp from system to system, scanning planets and landing shuttles to resupply, occasionally having to fight off or avoid hostile planets or ships or whatever. There's mini-events as you encounter aliens and whatnot, there's some very limited crafting using elements you pick up from gas clouds or blowing up stuff, and the end goal apparently is to find another planet for humanity, but really the game feels more like an unguided space acid trip. For me it was a little too unguided, a little too wander-y. I like games that are a more driven, where I can sort of feel myself taking steps towards a goal. So I personally got tired of the game pretty quick, and it's definitely not for everyone. But I do think it is a very good game for anyone who likes slower paced open-ended explorey games that don't pressure you too much, especially if you want to play something super unique and very trippy.

This is a hard one to review: the concept is great and it is certainly presented well. Particularly as a VR title, this had a pretty good aesthetic to it that drew me in, and I had an interesting 2 sessions of about 30 minutes each. I was initially pretty excited when I realized all of the different resources (primarily food, water, fuel, population, and science) and the rogue-like objective of staying alive in a pretty hostile, procedurally generated universe. The writing and random events are good, but that's where the meat of the gameplay ends. I never felt like I was actually doing anything except scanning planets and sending ships to collect resources, and hoping for an event to pop up. Between those pop-ups it was more of the same, and keeping my resources up was easy and dull. Even on the hard difficulty I never felt threatened or... really felt anything at all except tripped out which, in the right mood, could be good. Otherwise, I can't see myself playing this any more than I already have. It was a decent pickup on sale, but not something I could recommend to my friends or anyone else.

EDIT 3: Holy fuckin' shit! The "Death Stars," the girders in the massive comets/asteroids / dead planets, and the Fast Travel minigame?! Every time I play Planetship, there's some new content to see. And it's all fuckin' brilliant. EDIT 2: I found space pirates hidden in a huge hive-like asteroid. I translated alien languages and then bartered with them. I blew up gas clouds, crafted drones to fight beside me, set up an Embassy on an alien planet. And I saved my game. Planetship is now less a diversion and more of a game what could have time and effort beyond the [i]now[/i] invested in it, especially with the overhaul of the map. It's still in its infancy (relatively), but now there should be no hesitation in getting Planetship. I guess I should actually write some sort of review, going back and striking through a lot of the old one. You are a brain in a jar on a spaceship that is some sort of planet. Yeah, Planetship is real "out there(, yo)." The text-events are farfetched enough to entertain even after the seventh time you've read them (there are lots of different events, but of course some are more common than others) but not enough to alienate the reader. There is lots of imagination on display that should satisfy both a certain niche audience as well as scifi fans in general. You start with a population of 10... million? Billion? Something. That number steadily declines over time, but after playing for about six hours straight, it was still hanging around 7-8 b/m-illion (and I was making bad choices intentionally). There are also events and equipment you can craft that increases your population. Your ship runs off Food, Water and Fuel. You have a pool of energy for boosting and firing (recharges pretty quickly). You have a shield that recharges independently of that. Zoom through space, scanning planets. Each has six factors: the three resources (Food, Water, Fuel) and three hazardous conditions to watch (such as Surface Temperature). Each planet also has a label (Neutral, Hostile, Friendly, Research, [Element] Source, etc.). You can send shuttles to planets, to extract resources, to attempt to make contact, to try and trigger a random event. There are several different... anomalies/setpieces/(")static(") objects. Space-cubes, clouds and "meshes" that you fly through while your scanner identifies Elements. Fields of asteroids you can destroy for Elements. Satelite-Televisions that you can float beside and watch. Pulp books that you can collect and read later. Black holes that take you to Bizarro Systems. Wormholes that take you to different systems. You use Elements in crafting. There are things that increase the birth rate with a chance of mutation, alter your population with metal teeth for times when food is scarce, increased weapon power with increased energy consumption, etc. The goal is to find a habitable planet. I've yet to. Original Review: Wow. Please, dear developer. Please. Pack this game with more content (as in text) than I could ever hope to possibly read. That [strike] (AND THE LACK OF A SAVE FEATURE)[/strike] are the only causes for hesitation I mean there are legit novel(la)s included within the game!!!, but I'm talking about the random Encounters. I just dread the thought that the infinitude of space might hold several of the same encounters with only the highlighted text changed. Game is in Early Access; them's my two cents. Also, please release this game on disk so I can buy three; one for me, one for time capsule, one to shoot up into the cosmos like that one ship that has the DNA from the (")elite people(") like Hawking and Jo Garcia (the Immortality Drive). To myself/us all: I/we absolutely recommend this game. Gameplay is so simple (I/you deduce after .5 hrs playtime) but Mr. Lawrence's dedication to this game emanates from the Planetship. [strike][Don't want to get too far into the game, lest I have to play forever to keep the progress. Once a save feature is implemented (IF ONE IS GOING TO BE - unsure how to take that intro text) I will be all over the game and will probably be able to write a review that far exceeds the character limit][/strike] EDIT: I posted in http://steamcommunity.com/app/337280/discussions/0/610574394236247951/ and the dev subsequently friended me. Again (as will always be the case) no fraternization (i.e. free copies) between dev and me. I just faun over good indie games - going all out with the positive ramblings - and some of them appreciate it (while the other gamers don't, nyeh).

The game is fun. It's neat. It's... very, very trippy. The trailer does [i]not[/i] embellish. The problem is that it has a few small bugs and one huge, nasty bug. One of the conversation topics with friendly aliens results in part of the interface becoming inoperable. Sometimes first contact will glitch out and bork the interface even if a new game is started. And then there's saving... Saving is automatic when you go to the main menu. Sometimes saving will work. Most of the time it will not. This means that all of the progress you have made could be flushed down the toilet when you exit, and you won't realize until you start the game up again. You can easily spend hours [i]experiencing[/i] this game, only to have to start again at square one next time you play.

I really wanted to like this game based on the trailers, my appreciation for abstract science fiction, and some of the review comments but there's too much of a disconnect between the game play and the aesthetics for me. If a game wants to indulge in trippy visuals, I would prefer it to limit both the amount and complexity of information that needs to be digested in order to make choices in game. For instance, trying to evaluate planets requires reading descriptions and bar graphs of several different attributes while the text is moving around on the screen and often in and out of view. That sounds nitpicky, but the effect is like trying to read while in the back of a car on a bumpy road. Moreover, the more demands that are made of the player to process and monitor information make all the otherwise interesting background visuals and noise into distractions. I'd have preferred if the spontaneous (and seemingly arbitrary) random encounters had a similar feel to the introduction story (something more like 2001 or Solaris) but the reference filled humour felt out of place with the premise that had been set up. I can appreciate the need for trial and error as part of the learning curve for games (particularly procedural generated games) but there is a serious lack of breadcrumbs as far as some basic mechanics in this game: The single screen with instructions informs players of how to operate weapons on the ship, yet pressing the mouse key did nothing when the planetship was under attack. A few hints as to how to scavenge food and replenish resources would be appreciated Some tutorial levels and more guided instruction as opposed to the single panel prior to gameplay would have helped. Overall, a good idea and premise with some interesting visuals that's bogged down by overly rigorous game mechanics for my taste. I'd be interested in considering future amendments to this game or other offerings from the designers based on what caught my interest with this game, however.

[NOTE: Review will become more in-depth in the future] A trippy experience, reminds me of days long past watching old Science Fiction B-movies and Twilight Zone. And some of my favorite Sci-Fi authors, such as Isaac Asimov and Philip K Dick. Flying around in a planetship is excessive fun, though your mileage may vary. There's a kind of crafting system in this game, where you utilize the periodic table (disclaimer: You don't need to know anything about science, though it might help as the game is very intuitive science-wise. Ex: You'll find gasses in nebulous clouds, heavy metals in asteroids, etc). With crafting, you can make things or conduct research with the available elements. Through research, you can affect the lives of those inhabiting the planetship. Research also interacts with events that occur outside of your ship. For instance, I researched something that increased repopulation exponentially. While flying around, some of our food supply got infected by a fungi. I could have dropped it, or the option I chose: Try it out as a food source! It had a reaction with our reproductive breakthrough, which allowed for spores to grow and detach from their parents to become offspring. Offspring who doubled as a food source. Sometimes you'll come across old satellites from Earth, endlessly broadcasting whatever video footage was placed on them. There's so much more. Infinite cubes, hostile planets, pissed off space moths, suns that you can fly into (or thru), black holes, worm holes. And so on.