Planetbase as the name suggests is a game about bases on a planet. You lead a team of colonists and robots who are on a mission to colonize a remote planet. It is a strategy game with a survival aspect added to it.
The game features four planets, each with increasing difficulty. The second, third and fourth planets can only be unlocked after reaching a certain number of “milestones” which are essentially achievements or goals that you must achieve on a planet.
Planetbase has a learning curve that will take you a few attempts to get used to because of how quick and easy it is to die, especially on the later planets but once you do get past the initial stages of setting up a base to produce power, water and oxygen it gets easier. However once you start expanding your base further, things can slow down quite a bit and can get a little boring, even though the game does have a feature to increase the speed of the game.
The biggest challenge in the game will be the AI. Your own AI. They tend to have bad priotization which is more evident when you have a bigger colony. They tend to prioritize badly which can lead to them not doing their vitally important jobs or go do something else instead of what they are supposed to do. It would have been good if the game had some sort of AI management system but sadly, there is none. Besides that there are sandstorms, solar flares, meteor strikes and various other environmental hazards that can destroy your base and its occupants. There’s also the looming threat of pirates who can come and try to raid your base.
The game is good but certainly feels like it is lacking in content especially with the lack of late game technology and purpose. Once everything is somewhat settled down and good, you will end up sitting around waiting for something interesting to happen, like a meteor strike or a raid, so you can actually play and do something. There’s not a lot of tech either that you can build so it does feel stale and the awe of building a new piece of equipment or machinery is lost quite soon. The camera can also be an issue since it is not that great and is somewhat stiff which led to a lot of frustrating or simply put, annoying moments.
Planetbase is a good management and survival game but it’s not one of the best. While it is quite fun and engaging, it can get boring and cumbersome later on and the lack of more tech really hinders that experience along with the A.I that can be very dumb which will lead to some moments of frustration. If it is on sale, go ahead and grab it if you’re a fan of games of this genre otherwise, I would really not recommend this game to you.
Planetbase is available on the Xbox One, PC and Mac OS X platforms for $20.
