Astroneer | PC Review
System Era Softworks’ Astroneer is a delightfully satisfying game with wonderful abstract graphics and endless hours of exploring and building. This game has a lot to offer for a survival explorer sandbox. The tutorial is a bit lacking, but once you take a little time figuring out how to research, everything else becomes easy. Explore the vast worlds above and below the surface to eventually launch your own rockets to explore other worlds as well. To top it all off, the co-op experiences makes it a ton of fun to play with friends and family.
This game reminds me of playing No Man’s Sky and what it would be like to play Factorio in a 3rd person view (minus the conveyor systems). While exploring, you’ll acquire supplies, manage oxygen reserves during cave diving, and do your best to survive. Where many survival games make this a chore, Astroneer manages to keep the gameplay fun and engaging. If you enjoy making up your own story as you go, this game is for you. It lives up to the definition of a true sandbox experience.
Craft Like You Need It…Because You Do
The crafting system in this game is very unique. It uses your backpack to make very small items, but as you go you will get a small printer to make larger items. Later on, you’ll get a large printer, which will allow you to make new shelters. There are even modified drills to make digging and exploring the underworld easier. This is risky, however, as I fell to my death on more than one occasion. Acquiring bigger and better equipment requires you to locate objects. Scanning them yields currency to purchase new items for larger oxygen reserves and a more powerful base.
Explore Strange New Worlds
My favorite part about this game is the exploring. I wasn’t expecting caves when I first ventured out, but after falling down a hole I discovered a whole new world. The underground is absolutely beautiful. It’s loaded with glowing minerals and plants that pushed me to explore even more. I even stumbled upon the ruins of other explorers’ bases, rovers, and research that I could scavenge for myself. On certain occasions, I was even able to find fully intact buildings that required no unlocking whatsoever.
Oh Come On It’s Just a Bug
There were a few bugs that made game play difficult at times. Joining co-op with another player would occasionally boot one of the players. A few times, my character would glitch into the terrain, start bouncing uncontrollably and eventually fall to his doom. These issues are minor, however, and could be easily fixed with a patch, which is expected. I would highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys playing sandbox survival games, especially if you can catch it on sale.
This review is based on a PC copy provided by Stride PR for coverage purposes and is also available on Xbox One.
Astroneer
$29.99
Pros
- Gorgeous Graphics
- Complex inventory management
- Each planet is different
- Easy to play on any machine
Cons
- Tutorial left me trying to figure out the game myself
- A few annoying glitches
- No Tooltips in research