The Planet Crafter

I'm not the biggest fan of games set in space and there's mechanics in this that I normally don't gravitate towards, but it seemed fun enough to play with my friends. I was wrong. Wrong about it only being fun "enough", I mean. The aspects I thought I would dislike are somehow exactly the mechanics I've been drawn to while playing. Everything is put together in such a way that you forget why you thought you might not have liked parts of it. And everything you do contributes at least /something/ to the main goal, so especially in a group it's nice to have everyone doing whatever they want in the moment and still feel like you're all working on the same thing together. At the same time there's a lot of room for minmaxing if that's what you're into, and I'm excited to replay the game on my own after we finish our current playthrough and apply all the things I've learned. I wanna collect all the thiiiiiiings! Every session we go "surely we're nearing the end now right" and then the game hits us with a completely new concept to explore. There is also tremendous screenshot potential, all the different areas look so beautiful and because the landscape changes as you terraform you can go back to places you've already been and they'll be beautiful for a completely different reason. Reducing it to the word "screenshot" feels like a bit of an insult honestly, it really is more like photography to me. Genuinely fantastic game.