By Jim Rossignol on February 25th, 2013 at 6:00 pm.
Planet Explorers has one of my favourite premises for a game, which is: you’ve crashed-landed on an alien planet, now go off and explore and survive. The way you do this is by engaging in a game that is somewhere half way between Minecraft and an MMO. (You start off getting a mission from someone with an ! above their head, and that mission is to hit a tree so that you can gather materials to build stuff.) It’s in alpha right now, but it’s on its way to being a big builder’s sandbox, complete with a voxel landscape that you can deform, or at least run around in digging holes with a shovel, as I did for the first half hour. It’s a world filled with alien plants, alien beasts, and towering robot things. The game is in early alpha right now, so it’s very much a work in progress, but it’s a (currently) free game that already does do what it’s says on the tin. There’s a trailer below showing off some of the delights of the latest build.
You can play it for free, just here.
25/02/2013 at 18:05 BurningPet says:
This is looking better and better as they progress! i just love crazy big monsters. more games should make their monsters ridiculously huge.
25/02/2013 at 18:13 RedViv says:
True words.
25/02/2013 at 18:50 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:
Indeed.
25/02/2013 at 22:00 JabbleWok says:
Or small. How d’ye think those big dudes feel about the scary alien invader running around their planet, smiting everything he comes across?
25/02/2013 at 18:12 RedViv says:
It has monsters of sizes small to giant, enormous amounts of customisation, and will stay free until the really lovely devs think they’ve worked on it enough, so:
I am prepared to throw a lot of money at them once they allow me to.
25/02/2013 at 18:29 caddyB says:
I agree with my pony friend here.
25/02/2013 at 22:10 BlueDragon says:
Friendship is Magicka!
25/02/2013 at 18:15 soco says:
I’m getting a Starforge vibe from this, especially from those parts of the video where it looks like they set up a base to defend. I wonder how it will differ.
25/02/2013 at 18:16 X_kot says:
The most fun I had playing SPORE was during the creature phase, exploring the new land and bumping into all sorts of odd beasts. Especially the towering collossi that could wipe out entire species. This looks like captures some of that spirit.
World of SPOREcraft
25/02/2013 at 21:16 derella says:
So true. Spore was such a disappointment in so many ways… But exploring the world as a creature was rather fun for while.
25/02/2013 at 18:17 daphne says:
Obligatory Noctis reference.
…:(
26/02/2013 at 09:45 Magnulus says:
Yes! Absolutely! This was my first thought. And then I was sad about Noctis V, which will obviously never happen.
25/02/2013 at 18:19 jonfitt says:
OOOh, that does look good. Minecraft meets Pandora if you will.
26/02/2013 at 04:21 P7uen says:
I will not.
25/02/2013 at 18:28 TheMightyEthan says:
That’s awesome. Whenever I was playing Minecraft the story in my head was always that I’d crash-landed on this alien planet and had to survive.
25/02/2013 at 18:34 Pryde says:
I want an option to play as wildlife and explore planet explorers.
26/02/2013 at 00:12 Dances to Podcasts says:
Before anyone mentions tower defense: Planet Keeper!
26/02/2013 at 04:21 P7uen says:
What if we could play as the monsters?
25/02/2013 at 18:35 McCool says:
If this was first person this would be my dream game.
25/02/2013 at 18:50 Jim Rossignol says:
You can play it in first-person.
25/02/2013 at 21:35 McCool says:
This is my dream game.
26/02/2013 at 17:31 sinister agent says:
I don’t know why I am laughing so much at this. Thanks though!
25/02/2013 at 19:47 Triplanetary says:
I literally don’t understand why people care so much about camera perspective.
25/02/2013 at 21:13 jonfitt says:
It’s a matter of immersion for some. Controlling your virtual body VS moving a virtual marionette.
For others it determines if they can play the game or will blow chunks all over their keyboard.
25/02/2013 at 21:51 LuizPSC says:
So that´s mean the player is not controlled like point and click like Dragon Age?
I don´t like how it is controlled, i like the story (still playing) but not how is controlled, so if have first person is controlled like Mount & Blade or Elder Scrolls?
25/02/2013 at 21:40 McCool says:
It’s the immersion thing. The games that fascinated me as a child were Ultima Underworld, Doom, and later Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight and the System Shocks – the pinnacle for me being Morrowind. All I’ve ever wanted is a game to drop me in some amazing world and let me get lost in it. Watching some character do cool stuff and helping them accomplish it is fun, but nothing compared to a simulation of doing those things yourself. Which apparently this game has!
And so I shall play. Thanks for the tip-off, RPS. You are still lovely, sometimes.
25/02/2013 at 21:50 Stevostin says:
This.
25/02/2013 at 23:05 particlese says:
Very much this, which makes this the first MMO I’ve really been excited about playing.
Compulsive buts: Guild Wars was loads of fun for a while, but wasn’t at all immersive, even in first-person. Star Citizen is exciting, but I’m primarily in it for the single-player, plus a bit of coop.
26/02/2013 at 13:00 Continuity says:
*Cough* Oculus Rift *Cough*
26/02/2013 at 14:22 Cunning Linguist says:
It really is abut aesthetics and what goes on in people’s heads when they play a 3D game.
Personally (sorry) I cannot play in fist person , I find it nauseating and abhorrent, especially with violent games (as in everything but Portal)
One of the biggest attractions for me in video games, ever since Pac-Man , was controlling a video game character, not being one. First person games feel to me like they’re trying to be VR simulations , and they all fail . Disembodied hands and guns floating around is what it feels like.
25/02/2013 at 18:39 bascule42 says:
I’ve had a fair number of hours fun on this…definitely one to watch.
25/02/2013 at 18:43 Meister of Articulate Statelments says:
That would be “an !”, thank you very much. Going downhill, this site is, I say.
25/02/2013 at 23:46 Faxmachinen says:
I’ll play devil’s advocate and say it’s one of the many slang words for the exclamation point. The real crime here though, is using the pling itself rather than its name and then not even putting quotes around it.
26/02/2013 at 00:15 Dances to Podcasts says:
I believe it’s pronounced ‘chk’.
26/02/2013 at 00:27 benkc says:
It’s definitely a bang, unless I’m explicitly talking to non-nerds (and paying attention to my choice of words).
26/02/2013 at 05:58 Meister of Articulate Statelments says:
Well I can’t say that I oppose a good bang! And thank you for calling me a non-nerd. I shall feel very hip for the next hebdomad, maybe even beyond.
25/02/2013 at 18:50 Archipelagos says:
We need to get a moratorium on NPC’s with exclamation marks above their heads. File it under the same category as UN-skippable cut scenes and being unable to jump in an MMO.
25/02/2013 at 22:45 arccos says:
Why does it bother you? For as long as we have window dressing NPCs around instead of interesting interactions with all of them, the ! makes sense. It’s a shortcut to content instead of talking to every cookie-cutter NPC on the map.
26/02/2013 at 00:18 Dances to Podcasts says:
They should all have little kittens on their head instead.
26/02/2013 at 01:21 SkittleDiddler says:
How about question marks instead?
26/02/2013 at 14:27 Cunning Linguist says:
I agree with the examples you gave, especially unskippable cut scenes. But I would like to see much more stuff like this, like different symbols over NPCs to indicate moods , and speech bubbles rather than awkard voice-overs. The exclamation marks are there to make it easier to get to the NPC you need to see. Without those the games would be even more of a chore and we’d need a different quest system altogether- which I’d like to see as well.
26/02/2013 at 17:25 Highstorm says:
Rather than arbitrary (and immersion-breaking) icons hovering over their heads, I’d prefer NPCs to actually gesture and animate in a way that says they want my attention.
25/02/2013 at 18:51 JimDiGritz says:
Looks like a brilliant concept..
Am bitterly disappointed that this hasn’t got procedurally generated landscapes though.
The idea of encountering completely different planetscapes each game made me smile.
Now I’m expecting to land and say “oooh I think I’m 2km from that game I started last week”
Will probably still buy this though…!
26/02/2013 at 07:59 Beemann says:
There`s an adventure mode bit with map seeds and biomes you can select that I suspect will get some work at some point. It`s rather primitive right now though (when I created a zone it made a small box of a world with some rather awkward landscape and supporting oneself meant utilizing a tedious questing process in which quests were given and received by nobody).
Also “dying” there appears to have no effect aside from 4 seconds of being “dead” and an awkwardly long “respawn” animation that sets you up to get knocked down (or at least injured) by whatever knocked you out in the first place
25/02/2013 at 19:06 guygodbois00 says:
Looks very promising indeed.
25/02/2013 at 19:16 Unclepauly says:
The poor baby-face alien at 2:13 looks like it just wants a hug then she shoots it dead :(
25/02/2013 at 19:53 Sc0r says:
I tried this version and the more I played, the more I fell in love with it.
I built a Sword thats also a saw!
http://i.imgur.com/FSAs1wt.png
And also a car with weapons so large it almost toppled over (not even the biggest weapons)
http://i.imgur.com/74fLzFe.jpg
25/02/2013 at 19:59 Triplanetary says:
I can’t play it. I’ve never been able to get OpenCL to work with my graphics card. It is about three generations out of date at this point, after all. *sobs*
25/02/2013 at 21:05 geldonyetich says:
Slightly too much freedom to create, in my opinion. Sounds like a travesty of a statement, yes, but what bothers me about it is that there’s nary a reason to care about custom guns or forts if anyone can just create whatever they want, one voxel at a time. It undermines the sense of there being concrete game pieces. I’d rather they have a system more like Borderlands or Dead Space 3: lots of prefab pieces you can put together in many different combinations, creating the best of both worlds of there being concrete game pieces while still allowing the players some freedom of customization. So when you look at another player bearing a sidearm, your knowledge of the components that went into that sidearm could tell you what it’s capable of.
25/02/2013 at 23:27 TsunamiWombat says:
“Too much freedom…”
…I..nh..what?
26/02/2013 at 00:23 Josh Brandt says:
As an example, Second Life has too much freedom to actually be a game.
26/02/2013 at 02:38 geldonyetich says:
More like how Gary’s Mod has too much freedom to actually be a game.
26/02/2013 at 03:07 Brun says:
Garry’s Mod is as much of a game as the player is willing to make of it. There’s a reason they call these games “Sandboxes” – it’s because you use them to do the same kind of things you did in a real box-full-of-sand as a kid. Combine some solid but flexible base materials with maybe some toys to let your imagination do the rest.
26/02/2013 at 03:39 geldonyetich says:
One can go back and forth on “sandbox vrs game” to a far greater degree than this comment thread would adequately accommodate, but even then, I don’t think you’d get a consensus. Suffice to say, I would say that there’s a difference, and if Planet Explorers wants to stay sandbox, it’s their game and it’s their decision. However, it’s not a direction that excites me as much as implementing something a little more substantial.
26/02/2013 at 01:51 Iamerror says:
Excellent point.
26/02/2013 at 14:34 Cunning Linguist says:
“Q: So what if I just goof off and build stuff in game?
A: That’s fine with us, the player doesn’t have to follow the storyline at all.”
Whenever I hear that I know there isn’t much of a game there, more like a sandbox that I’ll get bored of once I’ve explored the graphics it has to offer.
27/02/2013 at 19:08 pupsikaso says:
Clever… you had me there for a second.
25/02/2013 at 21:25 DarkFarmer says:
Still very rough, but a very promising game. But… Dat Mouse Sensitivity. Its way too low and no way to adjust it. At least not that I found.
25/02/2013 at 21:27 derella says:
My dream game is set on an unexplored alien planet that you wake up on after a crash. Part of it would play like an RPG/adventure, where you are trying to piece together what happened, look for other survivors, and explore alien ruins… The other part would be trying to find food, water, and shelter.
This sounds like it hits a few of those notes.
26/02/2013 at 07:58 Harlander says:
Ever play Notrium?
25/02/2013 at 22:22 Hmm-Hmm. says:
Interesting. I wonder how much interactivity with the world and its inhabitants is planned, because exploring building and fighting can only last one so far. Taming animals, ridinging and training them, creating vegetable gardens and the like would help.
But we’ll see. It looks rather nice as it is even though I don’t plan on playing it as it is.
26/02/2013 at 00:09 FullMetalMonkey says:
They seriously need to think about a better name. Planet Explorers, just seems abit too…..meh.
26/02/2013 at 02:23 Dances to Podcasts says:
PLANET OF DEATH! EXPLORERS OF EVIL!
(Staircase of Satan)
26/02/2013 at 08:36 RedViv says:
The Redemptionativengeanationing!
27/02/2013 at 19:11 pupsikaso says:
Oh you want it to be Kingdoms of Planets: Explorers 4 – The beginnening?
02/03/2013 at 17:06 FullMetalMonkey says:
Its a start
26/02/2013 at 00:18 Kestrel says:
Site unavailable =/
26/02/2013 at 00:20 Jhoosier says:
I’d like to play, but all I get is a black screen. Occasionally I’ll get a cursor, but still a black screen I can’t do anything in.
I’d like to go ask in the forums, but their site seems to be down.
26/02/2013 at 00:30 kasen says:
Yeah the link provided to download the game does not work :(
26/02/2013 at 00:31 Danorz says:
we seem to have murdered their website :<
FORTUNATELY HERE IS ANOTHER SITE TO DOWNLOAD IT
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> http://www.indiedb.com/games/planet-explorers/downloads/planet-explorers-alpha-051 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
26/02/2013 at 01:02 kasen says:
Awesome thanks for the link :)
26/02/2013 at 01:20 Danorz says:
kind of irrelevant cause they got the site back up like 15 seconds after i posted that but oh well :)
26/02/2013 at 04:27 jrodman says:
That was a pretty good spambot impression though. I was fooled for a second.
(Not a complaint.)
26/02/2013 at 01:54 crinkles esq. says:
This looks incredibly promising. I would pay them all the monies to get OS X support going sooner than later, as it’s exactly the type of game I’d dabble in when avoiding work on the Mac.
One thing conceptually that bothers me — are there no higher lifeforms with which to communicate and make friendships/allies with? It seems like the main goal is just, “mow down the natives with ever-greater firepower”. Also a little disappointed to see on their FAQ that the landscape will not be procedurally-generated (except multiplayer maps). I’d prefer to land on truly random worlds, instead of alien the first time and then by the 10th time, not-so-alien.
26/02/2013 at 02:41 anosrep says:
Would please me immensely if they then modded this game and threw in a stargate and the SG1 crew.. I just want a good SG1 game.. thats all I want.. ever.
But yeah I do love the look of this so far, would back it for sure!
26/02/2013 at 03:53 realityflaw says:
I am frantically hacking at this tree with my knife but it won’t produce any wood, I wasn’t given an axe or materials to craft one at the outset! What am I to do?
26/02/2013 at 04:15 realityflaw says:
Ah ha! Hold down the button, I am the simplest of geniuses.
26/02/2013 at 17:30 Highstorm says:
Wow. You just took me back to my very first Minecraft experience.
“I saw him punch a tree down in that video, how the fu– oh…” :D
26/02/2013 at 06:33 porschecm2 says:
This game does indeed have a terrific premise. It took an awful lot of fooling around and mashing buttons and wondering what in the world I just did to select something and how do I un-select it, though. A slightly more thorough tutorial would be of great help, even if it’s only text-based. Nevertheless, this game looks like it has a lot of promise, and I’ll be keep an eye on it. It’s already fun, but currently only in small doses. Once it gets more polished and more UI wonkiness worked out, I can see losing vast amounts of time to it.
26/02/2013 at 17:34 sinister agent says:
Man, I downloaded this weeks (months?) ago and still haven’t installed it. Bad agent. There’s only so much time for games though, and I’ve been trying to open my mind more to the increasingly common MMOs that actually make an effort to distinguish themselves, which is just SO time-consuming. Ugh.
I don’t know how you lot manage to find the time, frankly.
27/02/2013 at 19:13 pupsikaso says:
Wow, they’ve sure put a whole lot into it since I last tried it. Very promising at this speed of iteration.