In Planet Explorers, it is the year 2287, one of the first colony ships sent out by Earth arrives at the planet Maria, in the Epsilon Indi Star System. During its landing sequence, something appears in front of the massive ship that causes it to lose control and crash into the planet.

Some of the colonists survive in lifeboats, but what they find is an unforgiving land filled with creatures ready to outlast the visitors from Earth. Now the survivors must explorer, gather, build, create, fight, and ultimately, build a new home.

The gameplay is in 3rd and 1st person perspectives. Players are be able to customize their character, combine and create swords, guns, vehicles, objects, and buildings. At the same time, players will have to defeat multitudes of enemies of varying intelligence and defend the remnants of the colonists. There are also multiplayer modes where players cooperate to survive on procedural alien worlds.

Planet Explorers launches on Steam Early Access in 2014 and has since moved from Alpha into Beta stage ($24.99).

Planet Explorers will feature single and multiplayer modes.

In single player there are 3 distinct selections

• Story Mode – Story mode is the main meat and bones of the game, it is the action-adventure-rpg-somewhat-4X segment, offering npcs, missions, colony building, farming, ranching, training, diplomacy, and of course, a storyline that you can follow or ignore. This story features a 17X8km world map with many unique character, landscapes, biomes, locations, and over 100 types of potential enemies. Even though we’ve made it seem like a very action oriented game in the trailers, in reality, players can choose to not fight so much as to just plant a farm, make some food, keep the colonists alive, negotiate with the sentient aliens, and defend the perimeter from the local life forms. That can still eventually arrive at the ending. And yes, there is an ending. Story mode also features coop with other players.
• Adventure Mode – This mode is based on a procedural map generated from a seed. Currently, it comes in a 40X40 kilometer map. Players will be able to complete random missions, defeat bosses, and explore different landscapes in the mode and eventually be able to setup conditions that they want to play (such as tower defense or attack an alien camp). This mode will also feature survival gameplay. The randomization in this mode will eventually pull in player made objects and locations so that a world will always feature something new and unique.
• Build Mode – In this mode, there are no enemies and an infinite amount of building material. It also currently comes in a 40X40km map. Players will be able to build whatever they want in this mode, including everything in the Creations Editor. Think of this as the perfect testing ground to test everything you build. Or…it’s your place to build your garden without ever worrying about the pesky aliens.

Multiplayer allows Local Area Network and player hosted servers. It features several modes but some are still on the drawing board or going through technical trials so the final result is still in flux. Players playing multiplayer should be able to bring at least one of their created objects into multiplayer games, be it a sword, gun, or vehicle.

• Coop – Coop comes in many selections, such as adventure mode, tower defense mode, build mode, etc. This is pretty much an open world sandbox with a max of 32 players (this number still needs to be stress tested).
• Versus – This mode allows teams of up to 16 players to battle against 16 players from another team. We allow full terrain manipulation in this mode. Currently, it's a point based system where one team wins if they reach a certain point level based on kills, built objects, resources mined, etc.

In this build, we’ve continued to kill bugs and tweak issues. We added in a new tutorial system in Story mode so that new players will not be lost (it's a little wonky right now). For the next build, we’ll start the comprehensive balance tweaks and adventure mode storyline, it should be out around September 5th. We’re also looking at how to get the game working correctly in 4K, we finally got a 4K monitor in the studio.

Changelist

Fixed audio manager crash
Fixed colony network nullreference crash
Fixed behave runtime select weapon crash
Fixed bonepanel UI crash
Fixed not being able to change the brush from the quickbar in build mode
Fixed window not closing when exporting iso buildings
Fixed only seeing the weapons of a NPC and not the body
Fixed dash stuttering when turning camera very fast
Fixed Chen not joing colony if left at Giant Tree
Fixed Adisa eyes problem when in idle
Fixed players and NPCs not being able to use items in multiplayer on Linux
Tweaked andhera attack and defense, probably should avoid now
Tweaked story NPC missions so that they’re not prepetual
Tweaked disease system so players will know when you’re about to get sick and do something about it
Tweaked AI spawn map
Tweaked follow missions so that NPCs can also fast travel
Tweaked adventure terrain generation
Tweaked Calling Home mission
Tweaked lights in the tutorial level for better performance
Tweaked old effects
Tweaked vehicle attack power for cannons
Tweaked animal sounds
Tweaked animal spawn numbers a little lower
Tweaked shockwave gun so it takes more energy
Tweaked mouse pointer
Deleted some unidentified objects
Optimized group AI
Optimized AI physics
Optimized birds running into objects
Added new guidance for the Creations System
Added simple template ISOs to the Creations System
Added new effects
Added NPC skill advanced explorer icon
Added new Andy guidance system in game (can turn off in options, some bugs)
Added voiceovers for 5 NPCs
Added ISO parts descriptions
Added more ambient sounds
Added new NPC animations
Added new player animations
Added reloading a gun for NPCs

Key Features

• Incredible open world, voxel based, sandbox adventure single and multiplayer RPG game
• Total freedom of choice for the player - sandbox or adventure? Diplomacy or warfare? You decide.
• The ability to create new objects, weapons, buildings and vehicles allows players to progress and change the gamplay as they go
• Huge quantities of content, featuring a single player campaign, along with single and multiplayer adventure maps