If Peggle-era PopCap (Gawd relaxation its consumed soul) had survived into the period of survival, I reckon they’d have made one thing lots like Astroneer. Where different sci-fi don’t-die-’em-ups are soundtracked by the offended buzz of e’er-encroaching loss of life, Astroneer’s is all endorphin-inducing rising notes, pleasant popping noises and the blissful whirr of toylike tractors.
Slowly asphyxiating to loss of life in an unforgiving alien wasteland has by no means been so joyful.
In description alone, Astroneer sounds maybe over-familiar. You’ve crashed-landed on an uninhabited planet, however fortuitously you could have, through a trumpet-like gun-tool clearly purchased from the Early Learning Centre, the ability to remodel its varied uncooked supplies into an assortment of devices and buildings. Resources might be cooked into different sources, from which you’re blessed with larger and higher erections, and customarily you escalate from unhappy little plastic hut to hive of business. You know the drill.
But, y’know, most people have two eyes, a nostril and a mouth-hole, however a few of them wish to use you, a few of them wish to get utilized by you, a few of them wish to abuse you, a few of them wish to be abused, and a few of them simply fancy going for a mid-week pint. Point being, perspective can dramatically rewrite the character of a sci-fi survival/crafting game, and Astroneer’s perspective is totally have a superb time, on a regular basis.
Now, I can’t say a lot about No Man’s Sky, the obvious level of comparability for a game about exploring and relentlessly mining unusual new, procedurally-generated worlds, as a result of I did a small quantity of writing for it. Purely to level out the factual distinction, nevertheless, I’ll observe that NMS’s survival modes are broadly outlined by acquiring sources with a view to not be ambiently murdered by the varied merciless parts.
By distinction, Astroneer isn’t significantly concerned with fertilising its alien earth together with your decaying meat — although it may and can, albeit with little consequence — however as a substitute its broad unfold of sources exist nearly completely for constructing with. Though outwardly simply as lonely an interplanetary trip, the tone’s extra Vengaboys than 65daysofstatic. Tragically, I meant that solely metaphorically, not actually.
“I made this planet for you, do what you like with it”, is the philosophy right here. All you want to do is keep in mind to breathe, which is to say commonly assemble extra oxygen tethers, creating an enormous pipe community of life-giving air pumped out of your base, to maintain you alive wherever you go. This is by far my favorite facet of Astroneer — leaving your mark, harmlessly, upon this new world, a glowing breadcrumb path of all over the place you’ve been. This contains the underground caverns you fall into, or carve out your self, delightfully. The tethers dual-purposing as oxygen extension cords and mild strip-lighting is a stroke of design genius.
It brings a sure life to those nonetheless locations, and it acts as an informal reminiscence support to the place sure sources, or tantalising alien monuments, are. I by no means felt I wanted a map, as a result of the land itself grew to become a residing chart of my travels/the locations the place I’d dug a bloody nice gap within the grand.
For all that, the planets themselves aren’t significantly visually fascinating. The colors pop and the skies are pretty, however the blandly blocky terrain and flora aesthetic is uncomfortably near some half-remembered CBeebies CGI present I needed to grimly sit via each morning for a 12 months. Fortunately, the ode-to-joyful, PopCappy sounds, the jaunty wobbles as you play turbines and photo voltaic panels on their bases and the baby-toy chubbiness of every part you construct goes a great distance in the direction of compensating for that anodyne basis.
Also worthy of reward is how Astroneer leaves lots unexplained, by way of find out how to craft and construct, however its non-sadistic nature meant I figured every part out via experimentation, with the galling danger of doom or wastage. If I put this mineral right here or join this cable to that, what occurs? Nothing or one thing, mainly. This is concerning the pleasure of discovery, not punishment for failing to second-guess.
If all this makes Astroneer sound somewhat slight, I don’t disagree. The query right here is whether or not a survivo-build game of this kind ought to develop into a second job, or if it’s completely acceptable — a reduction, even — for it to be extra about mooching about and seeing what occurs. There are high-level objectives, each within the steeper useful resource necessities of top-tier tech (together with varied autos) and the choice to ‘win’ by making a means off-world, however there’s no strain to chase them. This is simply as a lot a game about seeing what’s over there.
Which can also be its biggest failing. There are just a few minor threats and surprises, just a few eerie monoliths, and some barely determined bouts of spelunking via an underground cave system you tumbled into with out having sufficient oxygen tethers left. Really although, it all the time finally ends up changing into about which useful resource or free piece of tech lies on the finish of your bouncy trek via dayglo plains or sparkly highlands. Its jigsaw items, jolly and randomly-scattered as they may be, solely assemble in a finite quantity of how.
That might be remixed considerably by taking part in it in as much as four-player co-op mode, wherein you’ll spend at the very least as a lot time staging tractor races and taking part in soccer with hunks of mysterious alien rock as you’ll attempting to collaborate on building. Even so, Astroneer is rarely going to take over your life in the way in which some its friends and rivals do.
I don’t begrudge it that. It’s refreshing to have One Of These that doesn’t require taking part in day-after-day for 3 weeks earlier than I can say I really perceive the way it works. And, on the danger of displaying my prejudices an excessive amount of, it’s additionally an awesome one for enjoying with a child. It isn’t a youngsters’ game, however it ticks each containers pretty effortlessly.
Astroneer’s been in early entry for over two years, and there’s a sense that this launch model contracted a gentle case of That’ll-do-itis, somewhat than going to the brand new locations it might need completed. Sure, a ballpit gives extra long-term play worth if there’s hatch on its backside that opens up right into a world of dinosaurs, spacefighters and alien civil wars. Sometimes, although, all you wanna do is leap right into a ballpit.
