A big shoutout to Black Soup for granting me early access to The Planet Crafter. Though I missed the release date due to a prior commitment, I've been completely engrossed in The Planet Crafter while away and want to get to the next stage. I initially intended this to be in the next performance roundup, but I've been so hooked that I thought it was worth covering standalone.
The Planet Crafter starts with your character crash-landing on a desolate planet as a form of punishment, with the monumental task of terraforming the barren planet.
Blending survival with intricate building mechanics, a huge tech tree, and progress you can see around you, it's no wonder it has many hooked. After over 10 hours of gameplay, it certainly earns its 'Verified' Steam Deck status, and I feel I've still only scratched the surface.
A handy tip for new players: configure your controller options to bind a back button or an easily accessible button to F4. This will be your lifeline if you accidentally trap yourself—a scenario I encountered when misplacing a biodome.
While "The Planet Crafter" includes online gameplay, I've yet to test this feature thoroughly as it is invite-only. However, the game is incredibly absorbing; you'll find hours passing by unnoticed. On the performance front, even on the 'very high' setting, the FPS mostly stays above 40, with power consumption around 22-23 watts meaning only around 2.5 hours of battery life on the OLED and around 2 hours on the LCD Steam Deck. Consider enabling critical battery plugins like on decky loader to prevent unexpected shutdowns from losing your progress.
Gameplay evolves rapidly, from clear blue skies to developing clouds and eventually to building rockets. Watch out when launching rockets as the first I sent up without fully reading the instructions, resulting in a direct asteroid hit—an 'interesting' achievement though, yes it has full Steam Achievements too. Despite minor dips in frame rate during these events, the FPS is stable enough to forget about it for the most part, except for the occasional load spikes.
Remember, it's a survival game. Keep an eye on your basic needs like food, oxygen, and water. On standard mode, dying only causes you to drop half of your inventory, which you can retrieve. However, higher difficulties penalize you more severely, and without a built-in compass, reorienting yourself and locating your last location can be challenging.
At the time of writing, I'm well on my way to the lakes stage, and I've established mini-bases across various sections to support exploration rather than returning to a central hub. Fortunately, you get upgrades like jetpacks and faster mobility and mining as you progress, though I'm still uncovering new elements of this game.
Performance on Deck is superb. It maintains 40-60 FPS, usually at the higher end of that range, providing a smoother experience than some other handheld devices.
