Eden Crafters by developer and publisher
Osaris Games—PC (Steam) preview written by
Valerie with copies provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
In this open-world game you are challenged with turning a hostile planet
into a habitable haven for all of human kind. You have the ability and
equipment to temper the climate, and to create a breathable atmosphere!
Oh, and on top of all that you get to turn toxic lakes into clean water!
Talk about a huge undertaking, but you are given planets where
resources can be found to be forged into parts for the machinery to
automate your way to bigger buildings and advanced equipment. You start
out with two planets to terraform, Ocean World we had in the prologue
along with the toxic water planet called Echo Prime. Aetheria comes out
later this year, and the rest in 2025.
So, for those of you who have already played Ocean World: Eden
Crafters Prologue, let us introduce you to Eden Crafters Early Access!
The second planet is our choice for our coop play and the first thing we
noticed is how much the landscape resembled the Ocean World with more
hills and landmass. Part of the terraforming process on this planet
extends to the water where it is toxic, so we have to filter it too.
There also isn’t any ‘disaster’ like the huge wave that you have in
Ocean World and we are very thankful for that. The main reason being we
don’t lose our power grid.
We can’t help but notice just how much this game plays like Planet Crafters and in some parts like Satisfactory. The building parts for our base are a different texture to the ones in Subnautica and Planet Crafter. During our progress in the game we found that crafting some of the automation parts unlocked other parts and building pieces. The material analyzer is a new machine in the game that gives us more unlocks as we discover more resources. You can’t do any of the material research ahead of what is active, nor can you put in the amount already collected so you have more inventory space. We've also noticed that there isn't any visual representation of supplies put into the material analyzer for it to process the next research item.
The starting area is along the coastline of an island. You have a ship with some starting supplies: 2 oxygen capsules, 2 food rations (+50hp), some cement, and the starting tool (which is auto assigned to button 1). You sit in the ship to replenish your oxygen until you grab enough resources to make your starting building. This game also allows you to build from inside your base provided the connecting wall turns green. Since I am the person invited to my son’s game I found that I could not build on a wall of the building that my son had already placed. That is very annoying along with the not being able to use the Ctrl key and left click on a resource to transfer all of it to a container.
Your build menu is called up with the Q key and your inventory with the TAB key. That inventory screen also shows your personal survival equipment and as you progress through research and unlocks you’ll find a few more openings for new survival equipment. The health, energy, and oxygen bars on the bottom left of the screen with a temperature gauge above it lets you know when you are low on health (replenished by food), energy (replenished by power from base building), and oxygen (also replenished from base buildings and oxygen capsules with tanks unlocked later). One gripe here is the fact that using our starting tool drains away the energy (or stamina) where we feel it should be a separate bar to itself. Standing still also replenishes your energy/stamina bar.
One thing my son noted is his building of something out on the water quite a piece away that should have a building distance limit. However, I did get him to use buildings to make a long tunnel to get out to the item to disassemble it for proper placing along the coast. In the above screenshot you can see the poof of disassembling smoke which I found a nice touch. There are no distance markers or features for us to know how far away things are. Satisfactory has a distance limit which is shown by both text warning and the object turning red. Satisfactory also shows the distance to resources on the compass as well as highlighted on the map. Planet Crafters has a 500 meter build limit away from the player.
Crafting in the game is easy enough. The build menu, even with the tabs for the sections of objects to build, we found the recipe pinning very useful. There is the starting workbench and then not long after we can build and use the assembling bench. One big discrepency I noticed in the production assembler machine is the amount of resource boxes for input aren’t even. So, when I was crafting iron beams, there were two slots being used for the plate while only one slot for the rods which has the greater amount needed to produce one iron beam.
Another thing we noticed with the crafting process is that the detail will only show the per minute statistic, and only on the build menu screen. It doesn't show on the machine information and resource screen. For analytical minds with detailed strategic planning, my son found that missing stat created a gap in his counts of resources to parts created when accessing the machine menu. For myself, it was cumbersome to constantly pull up the build menu screen to refresh my memory of the per minute stats. My son also noted that there is “no way there’s that much waste” in most of the recipes. That adds to the fact that he found the recipes unrealistic.
My son and I both love the drone for building! Since we don't use stairs that often at the beginning after unlocking, it helps greatly in placing our power network on top of the building. Later when we tried out using the stairs for inside the base we found out that the block used to fill that area back in didn't quite make it to the edge to seal up the building for your oxygen. That would be hazardous in an extreme environment if one only built the first floor and then placed the stairs.
In building up our automation processes we were annoyed that we could not cross conveyors, nor was there any verticality to create a stream-lined automated production line like in Satisfactory. The ‘spaghetti network’ is real when you view your handiwork and that your network shows up on the map. Is that intentional? We don’t know, but it wasn’t a pleasing sight. There is an object in the game now that we can view the terraforming process in greater detail than the tasks menu. Definitely colorful and detailed when you can pick out the areas that you had already terraformed.
A few more cons to this game. There isn’t an autorun feature, and my son has a problem with the health degradation due to hunger being your health gauge and not a food gauge. The gold and sulphur icons on the map are too close in yellow color to distinguish one from the other at a glance. It takes hovering over the icons to see which is which. Another con is in the second player joining the game. When I joined my son’s game the text of my name blocks the vital stats between the energy and oxygen on his hub.
When we are running around we were constantly getting stuck on the terrain voxels. The time it takes to build up the terrrain takes away from the build time for our base and the terraforming process. Later we get access to a vehicle that can smooth out the terrain, and if you’re not careful, take down a mountain! Also, one glitch with the steamroller where it dipped into the ground or popped a wheely happened if I wasn’t holding down the left mouse button to ‘smooth’ the terrain. That made it hard to line myself up to smooth out a slope.
I get that same glitch with the rover when travelling over uneven terrain. It's almost forgiving in not getting stuck, but damned annoying when trying to steer!
Flying the ship was a challenge for me in the prologue and now in the early access game I found that challenge remains. The controls are W for accelerate, A & D for left & right directions, moving mouse changes your view, and S for landing. I am unsure whether or not S is also used to slow my flight as each press just brought me down lower to land. Oh, and get ready for takeoff with the SPACE BAR!
While flying at such a fast speed, it makes it very hard to line up to set down on the landing pad. Sure, I could use the controller to call it back to the landing pad, but that isn't the point when I want to land where I had put the pad in line with the production I was going to take ingots/parts for my next project.
All in all the game feels very relaxed, and you can build and move at your own
pace. There are no time limits to anything (except maybe not enough
power or water for machinery to run) even at night.
So, while we continue on with our coop game, we leave you with happy thoughts that things are going to improve and more stuff for you to accomplish. We are having a great time with expanding our power grid for the next phase of advanced machinery to build more stuff in our efforts to terraform this planet! Echo One, do you copy? I couldn't resist!
Score: N/A
Update: Since we're still going strong playing our coop game, I thought I'd let y'all know that I am having a whale of a time with my jetpack I finally built for myself! A heck of a lot easier than flying either of our ships we have. I had made an extra large landing pad *laughs* just so I can line myself up to land
the cargo ship.
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