Terranium

The game has a simple premise. You play as a person dropped on a barren, dead planet for Reasons™, and your mission is simply to turn the place into a complete environment livable for humans. Basically, you gather stuff, craft, survive, and build a base in a very Subnautica-y sort of way. As you increase certain (eventually) four different metrics, you unlock tech of all kinds, from backpacks with a bigger inventory to biodomes to rockets that you can launch into space that do various things. There are four different (but integrated) "tech trees," corresponding to the four metrics you work to increase -- atmospheric oxygen, temperature, atmospheric pressure, and later in the game biomass -- and each tree has different items to unlock. The thing is, the "oxygen tree" might unlock things that increase heat, and the "heat tree" unlocks items that increase atmospheric pressure, so it's all integrated such that you are encouraged to work on all the metrics at once. It's all very intricate and well-balanced, so the game is paced and flows really well and you always have a goal (or four) to strive for. And when you accomplish a goal? Dopamine hit!

But what's very cool about the game, IMO, is that as you go about your work, the planet slowly transforms visually, reflecting the work that you're doing, which gives you that steady drip of dopamine as you play. It is all very addictive. Entire days might pass while you're sucked in. LOL Because it's also very chill and relaxing because there's no combat/violence (and never will be, which I love). You just do your thing, accumulating dopamine. The only bit of stress you might feel is if you get lost while exploring and you're starting to run out of oxygen. And there's meteor showers which bring resources (sometimes rare ones) and that, for now, don't do any damage unless you're out in the open and get hit by one, but the roadmap from the devs says that structural damage from meteors will happen eventually.

That "eventually" is because the game is still in alpha, probably three updates away from V.1, and yet there's already tons of gameplay, all the way up to introducing insects and fish into the environment, plus automation. Because it's still alpha, the graphics are a little rough, but I don't care about that at all. Even if they don't change/improve, I'll be perfectly content. There are also large parts of the (open) world that aren't developed yet. But that's exciting because there's lots of space for the devs to add lots of new, cool stuff to do and explore! And speaking of the devs: It's an indie game. Developed by -- count 'em! -- TWO PEOPLE. Two. One married couple. It's a marvelous achievement.

And also? It's not an expensive game. 20USD. There's also a free demo you can try before buying. And it doesn't require a supercomputer to run. I'm pretty sure it'll run on a potato. Apparently, there are already mods for it but, frankly, I'm not feeling a need for any right now because I'm enjoying the game just as it is. Which says a lot about how the game is put together, IMO.

In short: I love this game. If you decide to try it out, I recommend that you go into it cold. Don't watch any YouTube gameplays or whatever. Half the fun, IMO, is not knowing what you're doing and having to explore and figure things out. The game sort of coaches you when you start, giving you a "to do" list. But it doesn't tell you how to do the things on the list. It's not a tutorial. And once you reach the first big goal -- turning the sky blue -- you're entirely on your own.

Anyway, I played this thing almost all day yesterday *cough* instead of catching up here *cough* just accumulating dopamine, so have some non-spoilery pics.

This is what you're looking at when you start. Orange sky, barren rocks, dust everywhere. You can't see very far into the distance because of the dust, which makes it harder to navigate, which makes it easier to lose your way when you venture farther out to explore, which you definitely need to do.

This time (this is my third save and my first "real" one; the other two were used to just figure out WTF I was doing), I spawned near one of the crashed ships. Which is good because before I saw that I had no idea where the hell I was. LOL There are a number of wrecked ships and underground bunkers (from previous failed terraforming efforts) to explore and gather resources from.

Meteor shower! These happen fairly regularly. Seems to be pretty random, though. Sometimes they'll happen one after another in short succession, but sometimes it'll be a while before you have one.

Is that a tinge of blue I'm seeing? I think it is...

Definitely getting bluer! And eventually:

Blue sky, clouds, and...RAIN! And with the rain, as the planet gets warmer...

Surface water! The water slowly rises on the planet as it warms and the surface ice melts...which can be problematic, depending on where you've built your settlement/base.

And now I've got nuclear power. What could possibly go wrong? LOL