Lifeless Planet is an adventure platformer blended with some minor puzzles and a fair amount of horror. Given that there is a heavy narrative focus in this game, I will do my best to avoid major spoilers. If you want to completely miss even minor spoilers, skip to the last paragraph for a summation of my review.
Lifeless Planet is a game about exploration. It’s a linear game, so you can’t explore a vast open world, but each chapter places you in a new environment, each with their own look and feel. You are an astronaut exploring a planet that supposedly can support life, but it appears barren upon arrival. There are some key discoveries you make which shape your understanding of the planet. None of this is groundbreaking for an adventure game, but it’s well done. The main issue that took away from the experience was the puzzle mechanics.
Lifeless Planet features some basic puzzles, but none of them are particularly engaging or challenging. Sometimes it can even be confusing what the puzzle is asking of you. I liked learning more about the planet, but puzzles kept getting in the way and slowing me down. It would have worked better if the puzzles were either removed or made more complex, but as it stands, they feel more like filler. They don’t completely ruin the flow of the game because many of them only take a minute or two, although the more confusing ones can grind the story to a halt.
The writing in Lifeless Planet is great. It has some minor flaws with regards to clarity and the number of topics touched upon in the game, but there aren’t any big low points in the story. Lifeless Planet seems to be going for an “interactive movie” type of vibe, and the developer pulled it off. Most of the story is told through things that you find while exploring, which fits perfectly with an uninhabited planet. Sometimes the narrator can hold your hand too much and spells out the story for you, but it only happens a handful of times.
It’s tough to comment on the content of the writing without spoilers, but the most prevalent theme in the game is how humans interact with their environment. The game draws a lot of parallels between how humanity negatively impacts Earth’s environment and the eponymous lifeless planet that you have arrived on. You explore this planet and try to determine how it got this way, given that all the data you have says that this planet should be teeming with life. The writing also dips into Cold War sci-fi, with an obvious USSR vs. USA rivalry. I won’t claim to be especially familiar with this sub-genre of sci-fi, but as a reader without much experience, I enjoyed the ideas that the game puts forward.
While Lifeless Planet is engaging from a writing perspective, the presentation is what really sells it. As the name implies, the planet is uninhabited. This has the potential to make exploration dull, but thanks to some beautiful set pieces, it becomes one of the best parts of the game. From a technical perspective, the graphics are mid-range and nothing special, but the art direction is fantastic. Some of my favorite moments in the game were simply entering a new area and seeing what this part of the planet is like. Each chapter has a unique setting that looks realistic and believable in the context of the planet. This is especially notable when many games that take place on fictional planets go too far with making everything crazy and weird. This grounded approach allows you to focus more on the story, while also appreciating the different backdrops.
Unfortunately, the game has some performance issues. Being a Unity game, it’s probably a case of the developer not being particularly experienced when it comes to optimization. The game world is expansive and loading screens are rare, so it makes sense that the game would have to sacrifice some performance to try and give a sense of immersion, but for players with older computers, it can get a little choppy during certain scenes.
Lifeless Planet also has solid sound design, even if it can get repetitive given how little activity there is in the game. Sound effects are high quality and the soundtrack is great, especially in the more horror-oriented sections of the game. The soundtrack complements the action perfectly. Tense, dangerous scenes have music that adds to the gravity of the situation, while exploration at night features ominous music that puts you on edge. I never felt like a track was out of place or jarring, even when the music sometimes drops out completely during more “normal” exploration sections.
Overall, I enjoyed Lifeless Planet despite its flaws. It isn’t the most thought provoking sci-fi story, but it’s still worth experiencing. As long as you don’t mind bland puzzles and decent 3D platforming, you should at least get something out of this game. If the game sounds a little too clunky for you, the developer is working on a sequel that will hopefully clear up many of the first game’s issues.
7/10
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