Planet Explorers Promises Otherworldly Adventure Of Base Defence And Aliens

Pathea Games’ Planet Explorers tries to do a lot of things at once. The developers of this adventuring-base building-RPG hybrid are looking to gather $US100,000 from the Kickstarter community to finish up and polish their game — a funding goal that, honestly, seems quite humble for a project this size.

The game, on one side, will have a story mode; basically a whole RPG campaign with elements of base building, resource management, diplomacy, and a whole lot of quests, both of the story and side varieties. Adventure mode, on the other hand, will be more like a survival experience, with a procedurally generated map and randomised missions. Build mode will be a lot like Minecraft’s creative mode, where you can create to your heart’s content, with unlimited resources and no hostile aliens to worry about. And that’s just the single-player.

I’ll let the rather hefty features list speak for itself:

• Smooth Voxel Terrain – Want a different look for once from the blocky usual? Planet Explorers uses the Marching Cubes algorithm to calculate a smooth and diverse terrain.

• Long View Distances – Players can enjoy vistas of up to 1km from where he or she is standing through LOD, not too many voxel games can pull this off.

• Large Overworld — The main story world is actually NOT procedural. We went out of our way to make a unique 17X8km sized continent. There are also some large islands. The world will contain multiple biomes from grassland to rain forest to volcanic plains. The world is large, once you walk around it, you’ll know the feeling.

• Procedural Worlds — We also made it available for players to play on procedurally generated worlds in both adventure and building modes.

• Creations System – A subsystem in the game that enables the player to construct weapons, vehicles, planes, boats, objects, and maybe even mechs.

• Building and Digging – Like pretty much all other voxel games, you’ll be able to build and dig anywhere. Unlike a lot of other voxel games, we’ll have a lot more types of resources (uranium, anyone?).

• Replication System – The player will be able to find templates within the game called Scripts. Once the player gets enough materials required by each script, he or she will be able to replicate the object into being through his or her pocket replicator. There will be many objects.

• A Science Fiction Colonization Story – We’re being very careful in what we put in the game so that it stays true to the spirit of space exploration, and you are not likely to see completely impossible things (mostly). It’s not hardcore scifi though, as we don’t want to scare people off. This game at its heart, is for those of us who want to be a stranger in a strange land for a few hours (or maybe a few days or weeks).

Tired? Well, we’re not done yet.

• Multiplayer – We want to have the voxel gathering and building and mix in a little MMO style action for our multiplayer experience. Plus something like DOTA. We want players to be able to enjoy multiplayer long after they’ve played the single player. We want people to make vehicles and battle it out Twisted Metal style. We want a lot of things.

• Beautiful Set Pieces – We have spent a lot of time designing everything on Planet Maria. Every tree and animal you see in the game is part of that ecosystem, and they will look the part. We want to take players on a grand adventure in a very alien setting.

• Enemies – There are a lot of enemies (eventually over 100 types) for the players to encounter, some will be out to get you and some will run from you. They are on the land, in the air, underwater, and even underground. Some are dumb as rocks and some are as smart as you.

• Build Your Own Settlement – The player will have the option of building a settlement in the game and recruit some NPCs to come and live in it. The town building will feature upgradable buildings and structures that are required to get better equipment or some other functions.

• Farming and Growing – Everyone in the player built settlements must have food to survive, so it’s the player’s responsibility to figure out ways to feed the population, from farming to herding to fishing. That won’t be easy, from predators and alien raid parties.

• Diplomacy or War? – There are sentient alien species on Maria, they are a mystery. There will be a lot of run ins with them. The player will need to decide to fight them or leave them alone or build a diplomatic relationship with them. You are the intruder after all, so while you might fear them, they also fear you and this will be reflected in their actions accordingly.

It’s almost like what Star Wars Galaxy used to look like back in the day. Except for the whole not-actually-an-MMO thing.

At the time of writing, the project has eighteen days left to go, and is at about halfway in funding. This one looks like it could shape up into something really impressive, so it might be worth a look — and, if you’re so inclined, you can also play around with the game’s current alpha build.

Planet Explorers [Kickstarter]