Unsurprising given its success, Minecraft has, let’s say, inspired a whole range of new games. Some, like Terraria, have been pretty good. Others, like the endless sea of shameless clones, have been terribly unimaginative. At first glance Planets³ sounds like the latter.
It’s got voxels. It’s open-world. Most things are cubes. It mentions “creativity”. There is crafting. The developers love Minecraft, and they’re wearing that inspiration on their sleeve.
But then you notice a few things about Planets³. For one, it’s unusually polished, with a fantastic polygonal art style going on. Then you see that it’s got a nice sci-fi slant that’s more in line with Starbound than Minecraft; your game takes place in a galaxy, not just one planet, and after a while you can build a ship and travel between planets, each one built entirely out of blocks and lying there for you to explore.
It’s also got a story. Dungeons. Bosses. And instead of having to trudge through a wiki to learn how to craft stuff, Planets³ has in-game characters you encounter who will actually teach you new skills.
Oh, and the crafting system lets you build real, moving, proper vehicles. So yes, while it’s doing a lot of the things Minecraft did, it’s also doing a lot of new things (or just the same things, only with the potential to do them better).
Planets³ is currently up on Kickstarter. Check out more info below.
Planets³ [Kickstarter]
Comments
9 responses to “Not All Minecraft Clones Are A Waste Of Time”
Would play.
Interesting! I like it!
Omg…the world is flat. I can look for things literally in the darkest corners of the planet!
I wanna build a ship 🙂 now if only someone can make this very game, but with the Star Citizen engine…is it CryEngine? Imagine that. Now I wanna build giant thrusters on my planet and launch it at my enemies 🙂
You need to check out Planetary Annihilation then :>
Minecraft never appealed to me, but this i would certainly try
This definitely intrigues me… of course, once this becomes a paid product and Konami see the Solid Snake and Grey Fox skins in there, they’ll have to remove or change them. Pity.
Hated Minecraft with a passion. This could be a different story. I’ll have to wait and see.
Loving Starbound though.
I’ve been on the fence about kicking this for a few days now. I should bite the bullet and do it. This thing is really good and isn’t getting the support. Hopefully exposure on Kotaku will help the numbers.
If it gets a mention on Penny Arcade it will probably hit its target in an hour.
Remember spore? Incorporate some of its core elements such as the evolution of your character; starting from simple one celled organisms to gigantic galactic empires into a game like this. Awesome.