"Journey to the Savage Planet" is shrewd and a great name for a sci-fi game, but the name it got when we walked in is a bit inaccurate. A "wild planet" evokes thoughts of hostility and survival, alluding to the inherent dangers of life on the fringes of space. Sure, there are things that want to kill you in Journey to the Wild Planet, but they're just a minor annoyance rather than the main focus. Instead, developer Typhoon Studios puts an emphasis on exploration, combining it with real humor and a captivating tone to deliver an open-minded and self-focused sci-fi adventure.
The entire game takes place on a single planet located deep in uncharted space. You step into the space boots of a Kindred Aerospace employee - in a crazy dink outfit proud to stand as the fourth best interstellar exploration company, you fear what you're going to encounter. but you will only begin to catalog the flora, fauna and life among the various biomes of planet AR-Y 26 to determine whether they are suitable for human habitation, whether the whole climate change event has devastated the Earth.
"Journey to the Wild Planet" is excellent when it comes to the variety of tools and equipment you can slowly craft and use to reach every nook and corner of the planet's surface. As you can see on the form, you can start exploring right away, but it won't take long to explore inaccessible areas.
While some plants may contain seeds that restore your health or produce bullet blasters, most of the planet's hodgepodge dictionary of alien creatures is filled with resources you can gather if you're heartless enough to fire a laser blast between your eyes. Gathering these resources and finding items that can be reverse engineered using your ship's 3D printer will allow you to craft grappling hooks, double jump upgrades for your jetpack, and other tools that enable crossover and deeper exploration.
The entire game takes on this palpable sense of momentum as each new upgrade opens up more of the planet for your exploration. Your feet may be planted firmly on the ground during the opening stages, but at the end of the 10-hour adventure, you'll be floating hundreds of meters in the air along a natural zipline. Journey to the Savage Planet takes the classic Metroidvania formula and executes it wonderfully, giving you the ever-growing tools that are satisfying to use and nurture the game's inherent exploration focus.
Still, the journey to the Savage Planet will not be a completely comfortable tour. Your first order of business is to develop a futuristic blaster pistol, but combat is more of a tool to an end than a large part of the game. While most of the planet's creatures are docile, they become hostile as soon as they spot you. Defeating these aggressive predators involves a rinse-and-repeat cycle where you use a nifty bypass or jump to avoid an attack by hitting one or more weak spots. This back and forth move has minor challenges that require you to throw an explosive or poisonous cloud at the enemy before peppering his weak spot.
You can play the entire game cooperatively with a friend, which makes the combat a little more bearable, but doesn't change the co-op moment game in any significant way. Two-player skirmishes are easier, sure, but there's nothing about the corely built co-op experience for more than a single player. You can explore the planet together or choose to divide and cover different ground, but that's it.
Journey to the Savage Planet borrows a lot of familiar elements from other games, but what sets it apart from other sci-fi exploration games is a relaxing gameplay where you can stay focused and informed by its single, living planet. It only takes a few hours to uncover the battle of Humdrum, but that's the only major factor in a fun slice of light-hearted planet exploration.
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