Another colony city builder that released on the PlayStation 4 last year, Aven Colony, had a far better understanding on how to visually distinguish buildings from one another to that the end result was a glistening, majestic city. It is possible to press a button to make the domes disappear, revealing the content of each facility, but even then the variety between them is minimal. Of course, it’s realistic that a colony on an otherwise inhospitable planet would indeed look like an endless stretch of domes, but it doesn’t make for the most inspired visual experience. There are a lot of buildings to construct, too, but unfortunately the visual variety between them isn’t up to standard. The developers have done well in capturing that sense of progress. There should be that sense of satisfaction and reward for hitting major milestones and achieving a self-sustaining colony. Sure the larger bases also have an increased risk of a wayward meteor or two crashing into buildings and causing some havoc, but as a whole, as a colony starts to thrive, there remains lots to do, but it all starts to feel good. You’ve got bars for colonists to chill out at, a medical facility to reduce the risk of deadly injuries, and a steady stream of intrepid colonists to help spread the workload out. Once you’ve got large farms churning out food of a wide range of different flavours, and a substantial manufacturing space churning out materials that you can sell to traders for extra cash, it all starts to feel comfortable. When the sun goes down and you just haven’t had the time to build a power storage battery to get you through the night, or morale among the colonists starts to dip below healthy because the only relief they have from the monotony of work is a tiny TV screen in the tiny communal living quarters.Īs you’d expect, the further you get into the game, the easier basic survival becomes. Planetbase’s best moments are in the early days of your colony, when survival is a real challenge. Then – and only then – can they start to think about building a landing pad and encouraging more colonists and traders from off world to land. The colonists will need to build water extractors, living quarters, mines and farms, so that they can then continue to build and feed themselves once the initial supplies they landed with have run out.
They’ll need to build power generators (solar or wind), and storage batteries as a backup, so that once the sun goes down and the wind eases, the base’s critical life support functions can continue to operate. That tiny handful of people are responsible for landing on a desolate hunk of rock, and immediately getting to work building the foundations of a base. You start out with a tiny population of the bravest colonists of all. Related reading: Another city builder with a similar theme on PlayStation 4 is Aven Colony.
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