Narrative, open-world survival in The Planet Crafter will have a co-op mode and a 1.0 release this year
This is the one we previously called "Subnautica on Mars."
It's shaping up to be a big year for survival crafting game The Planet Crafter, as developer Miju Games has not only announced that the 1.0 release of the Early Access game will come this year, but that the hoped-for cooperative multiplayer mode is also in development and will release this year.
"It's always something we've kept in our mind while developing the game, as we knew that exploring and terraforming a planet would be as fun with friends that it is doing it alone," said Miju Games in the announcement.
The Planet Crafter has been in Early Access development since March of 2022, and has come a long, long way since then. Heck, I remember trying the demo back in December 2021. No matter when they got on board, though, people seem to love it—The Planet Crafter carries an impressive 96% Positive player reviews on Steam.
In The Planet Crafter you're a solo (soon to be a team of) space explorer sent to a barren and hostile world in hopes of turning it into one that's habitable for human life. While your first priority is a minimum of shelter and life support for survival, eventually you work to turn the atmosphere into one with the oxygen, pressure, and heat you need before introducing life for a sustainable biosphere.
Alongside the full release and co-op update, The Planet Crafter devs Miju also say that mammalian life is coming in 2024. The latest update to get teased is about new portal generators, which will send the player off to explore procedurally generated planetary wilderness and spaceship wrecks rife with delicious loot.
"The Planet Crafter has an appealing Subnautica vibe to it, and there's a nice chunky sci-fi look to the base modules and other machines you build. And unlike many survival games where you spend a lot of time hunting animals for food or defending against attacks, The Planet Crafter is a non-violent game," said PC Gamer's Christopher Livingston when he tried it back in 2022.
You can find The Planet Crafter on Steam.