Lifeless? Sure. But a Fantastic Bit of Lifelessness | Lifeless Planet Game’s Over Review
The credits are rolling on Lifeless Planet, a game with a title that marketing people probably hate, but you know, it’s accurate. It’s a game about a lifeless planet. And it’s a game as lifeless but unexpectedly captivating as that title suggests. So, shut up marketing people!
Lifeless Planet is a buggy, illogical, mess of a game. Collision detection is there when it needs to be but not always there where it should be. Though there are only two real characters, when those characters collide, they, well, they don’t collide. The visuals are drab and repetitive, and though that’s partly the point of the game, it’s possible to do drab and repetitive without the player realizing just how drab and repetitive the visuals are. Fallout New Vegas does this well, for example. Falls from similar heights onto similar terrains will cause death only sometimes. Character models are gross. The story is nonsensical. The voice acting is very rough. But though I lead this Quick Thought video with a litany of complaints, I must say that I was absolutely enthralled for every single moment of my 5-ish hour play-through.
How? How did I actually like this game despite the many problems. Well, maybe this is the armchair game developer in me, but I was and am so very impressed with how the game uses its level design to guide the player.
First, it’s important to know that this game takes place on a desert-like planet with no vegetation or sign of life, at least at the beginning. The player is dropped into the middle of what could be a default Unity prototyping sandbox given just how empty and expansive it is. But then the player sees a flicker of light in the distance and with nothing else overly distracting, the player moves toward the flicker. Once there, a unique rock formation lures the player further toward the horizon. Then the cues get subtler: tiny rocks, green patches of plant life on the ground, an angular protrusion in the distance where otherwise organic rock shapes dominate the view, and on and on. Despite the game lacking obvious signposts and directional exposition, the player always knows where to go. Sure, there were a few times I got lost, but those pale when compared to the number of times I found myself constantly progressing even though I had a seemingly endless choice of directions to go.
Now, I did have to beat down my gamer tendency to ignore signposts. When the game tells me to go right, I always go left. I’ve been rewarded with enough treasure over the years to make this act less a deviation from the intent of the game designer and more of an adherence to what the game designer knows players are going to do. It’s almost weird to not be rewarded for a wrong turn in a game. But with Lifeless Planet, I had to curb that urge. Yes, there are a few hidden collectables, but the player character moves so slowly that I doubt most players will have the patience to explore. Instead, I fell into the rhythm of the world designers. I accepted what they gave me. And the experience was amazing for it.
I won’t say this is a game for everyone. It’s not. But it is a game for people who want to sit back with some very mild 3d puzzle platforming and equally mild exploration and just let a game take the reigns for a few hours.
Credits
- Lifeless Planet: Premier Edition on the Nintendo Switch eShop
- 8bit Dungeon Level Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
