Not All Minecraft Clones Are A Waste Of Time

Unsurprising given its success, Minecraft has, let's say, inspired a whole range of new games. Some, like Terraria, have been pretty good. Others, like the endless sea of shameless clones, have been terribly unimaginative. At first glance Planets³ sounds like the latter.

It's got voxels. It's open-world. Most things are cubes. It mentions "creativity". There is crafting. The developers love Minecraft, and they're wearing that inspiration on their sleeve.

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But then you notice a few things about Planets³. For one, it's unusually polished, with a fantastic polygonal art style going on. Then you see that it's got a nice sci-fi slant that's more in line with Starbound than Minecraft; your game takes place in a galaxy, not just one planet, and after a while you can build a ship and travel between planets, each one built entirely out of blocks and lying there for you to explore.

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It's also got a story. Dungeons. Bosses. And instead of having to trudge through a wiki to learn how to craft stuff, Planets³ has in-game characters you encounter who will actually teach you new skills.

Oh, and the crafting system lets you build real, moving, proper vehicles. So yes, while it's doing a lot of the things Minecraft did, it's also doing a lot of new things (or just the same things, only with the potential to do them better).

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Planets³ is currently up on Kickstarter. Check out more info below.

Planets³ [Kickstarter]