This game is absolutely the niche I had been looking for. I adore exploration, building, farming, and progression in games where you can see the difference in your impact on the environment. I am obsessed with so many of the mechanics- from big pieces of gameplay like collecting bugs and frogs, to smaller pieces like easy to use automation. I will play this game until I am old and arthritic and will still be just as excited about my aquarium and little creatures.
I would highly recommend this game to anyone who a fan of a certain blockgame's tech and automation modpacks. It can be a slower grind, but I've not found a single piece of it that didn't feel rewarding. Perhaps my favorite part is the fact that if you have the DLC planets, you can play them in the same game you terraform your first planet on. So you can travel between them and keep your progress but still uncover unique and interesting tools and processes.
There are a few "Wishlist" requests I do have and I hope they are things that get added in the future.
- The first being color and light saturation settings. You are stranded on an alien planet, so it's expected that you will have a vibrant and lush world. However, at times things can be a bit too bright (Specifically with the frogs!) and the colors will have an over saturation effect that feels similar to staring directly at a neon light. This, in combination with the fact that sometimes meteor and weather event lighting will stack and your entire base will be bathed in bright white light (to the point that textures bleed away and you can't see text on chests unless you are right up next to them). I so wish that we get a setting where we can turn these down just a touch, just so that it's less headache inducing after playing for longer sprints.
- The second 'wish' is that we are eventually able to remove, relocate, or replace rocks, logs, and plants. Sometimes due to the large hitboxes these items have, it is nearly impossible to build a single large building, as inevitably you will run into something you can't build around.
- I do hope that the base building gets a few tweaks that makes it easier to link base parts together. Currently there is a weird issue where, even if the ground looks level, some base parts just refuse to 'snap' together.
- Finally, I do hope that we eventually get to capture wild animals! There is a system for this (Where if you pet an animal, you have a chance of getting a gene to remake the species), but I'm also carrying a car in my pocket so why can't I also put an animal or seven in there, y'know?
Anyway, overall, I love this game. I've put 54 hours on it in the last few weeks and I plan on many more.
