Planetka preview - "Trying to save your world"
- Planetka was featured at GDC in the IGF Section
- Save your planet by combining resources
- There are multiple endings in the game
Planetka is a more casual puzzle game, where the puzzles you solve are based on how to protect your planet from aliens who seem to want to drill it for oil. You’ll be looking to keep your planet healthy and fulfilled so that it can thrive!
At the start of the game, you can pull around roots to create new plants and clean up litter in the various sections of your planet, making sure the world is set up for success. Quickly, however, aliens will start to appear, and they don’t seem to have the planet’s life in mind. They will start cutting down plants, drilling, and otherwise getting rid of everything on the surface in order to mine for resources for whatever planet they are from.
In the middle of the planet, you can wait for the centre to charge and then bleed out that charge to orbs. These orbs do different things depending on what you use them on and which orb you use, which is where the puzzle aspects of Planetka come in. One of the orbs sort of uses itself defensively, whereas another is more psychic. You can interact with the world through these little orbs and by interacting with the environment, but it does take a lot of trial and error before you will end up figuring out exactly what you are meant to be doing. At one point, you might even be able to use these orbs to change the mind of an alien so they will stop mining your planet!
With aliens appearing fast, and very quickly drilling into your planet, you can easily lose the core and not be able to defend yourself as much as you can with it. This can be a challenge as once you aren’t able to use the orbs, you’re pretty limited on the things that you are able to do to defend yourself! There are some outer items that you can combine together to continue to help defend your planet, but it’s much easier with the orb.
Planetka was at GDC as a part of IGF, as one of the student entries on the show floor. The ending I got while playing the game was a sad one, but the developer did tell me that I could, if I tried harder, save the planet!
