If you ever thought of a game with survival elements but with less combat and more crafting and terraforming, then you might be interested in Astroneer. In this game, you and up to three other online friends get to explore beautiful planets while gathering resources to build up a base. It seems a lot like Minecraft with its focus on crafting (there’s a lot of items to be unlocked by research) and survival elements (you could die of suffocation or other elemental hazards). But it is all wrapped up in a very sweet and nice looking aesthetic.
And it’s enough features being featured in Astroneer in its current form to differentiate it from other survival games. A very practical backpack UI where everything at the back of your little Astroneer is basically info that would have been on a HUD (like Dead Space does with its health and energy meters). There’s tethers which will be required if you want to move around the planet more safely as it feeds energy and oxygen. Vehicles are modular and can be mixed and matched, including combining several of them to make a long train of a truck. Then there’s the terraforming tool, that is effective at digging and covering up a lot of the planet surfaces.
Check out the trailer below:
Astroneer is currently in Early Access, so it’s not a finished product just yet. So if you rather wait for the game to be completed with more features that’s a safer bet. But if you’re willing to take the risk by supporting the developers, it’s only RM38 right now on Steam, and is also available on the Xbox One and Windows 10 Store for the same price with Xbox Play Anywhere (cross-buy) suported.
We sure hope developers Era System Softworks deliver with this, as it looks promising. Don’t want another No Man’s Sky happening with this one.