
At its lonely, distant core, Lifeless Planet is a third-person open world platformer, pure and simple. But it’s exactly through this minimalist and poignant design that developer Dave Board is able to build up this rich and fascinating world, and he succeeds in making the player run through the same gamut of emotions and uncertainties as their astronaut does. It’s an even more impressive feat, considering that the graphics in Lifeless Planet are fairly basic at best. What this really means is that you have enough oxygen until the next time you’re in an area with an oxygen station or tank which only occurred a handful of times in the game and without any sense of the supposed time limit actually mattering. Once filled you’re then informed that you have eight hours of oxygen. Conveniently, there is always an oxygen station or tank available nearby when this occurs. For example, at the start of the game you have a leak in your oxygen tank and the game informs you via text that you need to refill the tank.

And on more than one occasion, the item would fly away again and I would have to repeat the process.There are also some obvious mechanics that are introduced that are artificially timed. Man on a Mission: Richard Garriott's Road to the Starsĭisclosure: a review copy of this game was provided to me by the publisher.There are also some intermittent physics-based puzzles which can be frustrating because the items you need to use can inexplicably fly in the air, far away from where you need it to be, meaning you have to use the wonky controls to get it back to where you need it.Luna's Wandering Stars by Serenity Forge on IndieSider.What a big Kickstarter success looked like - before Double Fine came along.Hayden Waugh's interview with Lifeless Planet’s David Board.In this episode, I speak with David Board of developer Stage 2 Studios about the game's evolution from its Kickstarter in 2011 to its PS4 release in 2016 the updated graphics engine how movies such as The Martian, Gravity, and Interstellar have affected public perception of space exploration manned vs. How did they get here, and what happened to the lush planet NASA had detected? A astronaut has been sent to what's supposed to be a verdant, unpopulated world - but his arrival reveals a barren wasteland populated by Cold War-era Russians.

Lifeless Planet is a narrative puzzle-platformer for Steam, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
