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Planet Nomads officially lands into Early Access

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Planet Nomads [Steam, Official Site, GOG], the rather fancy looking sandbox survival game has now officially launched into Early Access and it's looking pretty good.

Disclosure: Key provided by the developer.

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Note: As always, a thorough review will take place when it leaves Early Access. It's not fair to give it a proper review when it's still early in development.

Planet Nomads is a survival game taking inspiration from many others. The resource gathering is very much like No Man's Sky, incredibly similar in fact to the point that it really does feel like I'm playing it. The game features both a survival mode, where you're battling the elements for survival and also a creative mode to play around as you see fit.

The survival mode gave me a pretty decent impression, even if performance isn't great right now. It starts off with you in some kind of pod falling towards the planet and an inevitable hard landing. Once out, you're now greeted with some small starting hints to help you get some of the basics.

There's animals too, it's not just about mining resources. One I constantly come across looks a little like a space Turkey. I find them everywhere, crazy little critters. They're a damn menace too, they spit some weird crap at you and bounce like they're made out of Flubber, they bounce so much they're near impossible to actually hit, which is a problem early on.

It's changed a lot since the earlier builds and it looks like it's really starting to come together nicely. As it stand right now, it's still quite basic, but a good start. It sure does look beautiful as they have the graphical style nailed down near perfectly, but it has that dreaded empty survival game feeling, where it feels like there just isn't all that much to see and do. Sure you can spend hours grinding resources, building a house and a vehicle, do a little exploring, but then what?

I do get the feeling of "yet another survival game" even if their future plans for it are grand, right now the genre has a lot of titles, some good, some terrible and this sits somewhere in the middle.

They do eventually plan to have spaceflight, multiple planets and multiplayer, so it could be massive amounts of fun when things like that are in. Once it has multiplayer, I will be far more interested. Hell, when exploration is more rewarding and more interesting I will be more interested.

I don't mean to put a downer on their new release that we've been waiting on for some time, but those are my honest thoughts on it as it stands right now. It's not a bad game, far from it, just needs a lot more of everything right now.

It's available now in Early Access, with 10% off on both Steam & GOG. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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WorMzy May 26, 2017
I'm really looking forward to getting this, but I think I will wait for the performance issues to be addressed.
Kallestofeles May 26, 2017
Seems to run just fine on windows:
View video on youtube.com
Another promised land like ARK... let's hope I'm wrong, very wrong.
Nanobang May 26, 2017
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This is exciting news! I feel inexplicably confident that Planet Nomads will see its way to a final release, and I'm going to wait for that release before I buy for the usual I-don't-want-to-tire-of-it-before-the-final-release reasons.
Seegras May 27, 2017
It does run fine on my i7 with a GTX 960.
Smellymangames May 27, 2017
It struggles with my 770. I need to play with settings more or it is just early access woes or it is too beefy me.

Too much stuttering and freezes. Has potential if things get ironed out.
Xpander May 28, 2017
it runs great on my end. 60+ fps all maxed except bloom and motion blur. with few dips down to 45 in places where it loads new trees or terrain. thats 1920x1080. pc specs in profile.

i havent reached far yet though, small building with few machines. playing survival mode.

its installed on a SSD


Last edited by Xpander on 28 May 2017 at 9:11 am UTC
Ketil May 28, 2017
My only issue is when travelling to new areas, and when it is autosaving. When that happens the image freezes for maybe a second or two, and when it continues, some time has passed so ideally, that doesn't happen in combat.
Ehvis May 28, 2017
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Really annoying is that it pauses a while before the "saving" icon appears. Making you wonder if it has crashed.
Liam Dawe May 29, 2017
Quoting: KallestofelesSeems to run just fine on windows:
View video on youtube.com
Another promised land like ARK... let's hope I'm wrong, very wrong.
Well the difference here is that Planet Nomads doesnt look terrible on Linux, whereas ARK has a huge downgrade on Linux.
Kallestofeles May 29, 2017
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: KallestofelesSeems to run just fine on windows:
Another promised land like ARK... let's hope I'm wrong, very wrong.
Well the difference here is that Planet Nomads doesnt look terrible on Linux, whereas ARK has a huge downgrade on Linux.
True that!
Xpander got the game as well and reported that it ran rather fine, the issue just seems to be that the game is jiggy as hell when recording - I can live with that.
Will give it a go next month. :P
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