Plan B: Terraform has a lot of potential with its solid foundation. Now all that”s left is to make terraforming fun

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Science fiction isn”t really my thing, but building games are. And Plan B: Terraform also reminded me of Terra Nil, which is high on my personal wish list. That”s why I spent an afternoon in the demo and am now convinced that an excellent building game awaits me.

Farming up a planet

Plan B: Terraform is set in an apparently utopian future where humanity has come a long way. As space pioneers, we are allowed to colonise a newly discovered planet, build up an entire civilisation and transform the former wasteland into a fertile oasis. A first trailer already shows what this looks like:

A noble goal, but one that also sounds like a lot of work. Fortunately, we start small and erect some basic buildings. Extractors mine iron, factories process the raw metal into steel ingots and send them on to assembly plants. By the way, each individual resource is visibly transported by drones to the next building and we can see at a glance whether our respective warehouses are full or empty.

Assembly plants also produce all our New Buildings, Roads, Trucks and more. So we don”t build with resources, but distribute finished buildings on the map. At first, we only need steel ingots for such a building, but later we also need mechanical parts that are first made of steel or even several different materials. As in other construction games, our production chains become more and more complex.

The next step is to expand our city centre. To do this, we have to deliver concrete, so we build a road and assign trucks to it. Afterwards, we can watch as new buildings slowly appear around the centre and our settlement grows from a village to a big city. To switch back and forth between resource mining and the city, we seamlessly go to the planetary view, select the desired location and zoom in again. So there”s no annoying scrolling.

The best feature is still missing

Our planet is still barren and empty, there is still no living nature. With certain numbers of inhabitants, we unlock new buildings and finally also advanced technologies that enable terraforming. Unfortunately, this part cannot be played in the demo yet; we have to wait for the Early Access release on 15 February 2023.

What we already know, however, is that we will build greenhouse gas factories that warm the atmosphere and partially melt the ice on the polar caps. This should then create rain clouds that empty into oceans and rivers. We then plant whole forests on the fertile soil and create a green planet.

What do we like, what remains unclear?

There Plan B: Terraform is already doing really well:

• Operability and display of information: Menus and displays remain quite clear and easy to understand, only when building roads did we have to take a look at the game tips. Since produced and transported resources are always visible, we have a good overview of our production.
• Production and logistics: The construction of production chains is fun and sensibly implemented, although not very challenging at the beginning. Transporting resources adds a moderate but fun challenge to their extraction.
• Looks and soundtrack: The game implements the simple graphics style convincingly and looks quite appealing as an indie game. The atmospheric soundtrack provides an optimistic building atmosphere.

This remains to be seen or we don”t like it as much:

• Long-term motivation: It is not yet known whether there will be several planets, each with different challenges, and whether we will get a campaign or other additional game modes. It therefore remains questionable whether the game will still be fun after one finished planet.
• Scope: In the demo, only a handful of production chains and buildings could be constructed. Not much more is shown in trailers and screenshots. If the finished game only delivers some terraforming buildings and trees, there would be quite little to unlock. We also hope for food production or something similar.

I was a little disappointed when I played the demo that I couldn”t use the feature that made me want to try Plan B: Terraform. But since I enjoyed the building game quite a lot even without terraforming, I am looking forward to the release.

The only question so far is how long I can keep myself busy populating planets. I really hope that there will be much more to unlock and discover in the finished game. Because otherwise Plan B would remain a very short pleasure, in which we would only experience more of the same at some point.

However, if the path to colonising the entire planet is designed in an exciting and varied way, this building game could be really good.