Info about Journey To The Savage Planet:

Official game description:
CRIME BOSS
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About the Game
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**Onward to Adventure**
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WELCOME TO THE PIONEER PROGRAM! As the newest recruit of Kindred Aerospace - The 4th best interstellar space exploration company - Your job is to determine if the planet ARY-26 planet is fit for humans. You may be short on equipment and experience, but good luck!
**Play with a friend**
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Play solo or online with a friend. If you have one.  
**Explore and catalog the flora and fauna.**
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From strange spherical birds to hallucinogenic plants to ‘festering alien orifices.’ Try not to die.  
**No Expense Spared\***
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You get some cool tools for free, like a laser pistol, rocket booster pack, and ‘probe’, but if you need something you have a slick 3D printer can turn space trash into sweet items.  
**Are you alone?**
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Bonus mysteries! Complete your survey of the planet to find out. You’ll know you’re on the road to completion when you’ve heard the words ‘cucumber sh\*twater’ and found the ‘festering butthole’.  
\*Most Expenses Spared.

Release date: 28 Jan, 2021

Categories: Action-adventure, Cooperative Multiplayer, Metroidvania, Crafting, Puzzle Solving, Resource Management, First-Person Perspective


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Overall Fun & Engaging Experience (weight 0.99): Players consistently praise the game for its overall fun, engaging, and entertaining experience. It offers a refreshing adventure with a unique charm, making it a highly enjoyable and memorable journey for many.
- Hilarious & Unique Humor (weight 0.39): The game's humor, ranging from quirky and sarcastic to absurd and dark, is a major highlight. Players frequently mention the funny dialogue, in-game ads, and overall silly tone as key elements that enhance the experience and provide constant laughs.
- Rewarding & Captivating Exploration (weight 0.27): Exploration is a core and highly rewarding aspect of the game. Players love discovering diverse biomes, hidden secrets, and new areas, with progression systems and movement upgrades making traversal even more enjoyable and addictive.
- Excellent Co-op Experience (weight 0.21): The cooperative multiplayer mode is a significant strength, with many players stating that the game is even more enjoyable when played with friends. The seamless co-op enhances the fun, teamwork, and overall replayability.
- Stunning Visuals & Art Style (weight 0.17): The game receives high marks for its vibrant, colorful, and unique art style and graphics. Players appreciate the visually appealing alien environments, imaginative creature designs, and overall aesthetic that makes the world a joy to explore.
- Accessible & Relaxed Gameplay (weight 0.11): The game is noted for its casual and forgiving nature, making it accessible to a wide range of players. Its low system requirements, manageable difficulty, and relaxed gameplay loop contribute to a stress-free experience.
- Balanced Content & Pacing (weight 0.1): The game offers a good amount of content without overstaying its welcome. Players appreciate the balanced length of the main story and side quests, with plenty of collectibles and new mechanics introduced to maintain engagement.
- Fun Bosses & Creature Designs (weight 0.1): Boss fights are highlighted as fun and well-designed, offering a refreshing change of pace without being overly difficult. Creature designs are also praised for their uniqueness and visual appeal.
- Enjoyable Puzzles & Mechanics (weight 0.06): The game features enjoyable and varied puzzles that are generally not too difficult. These puzzles, often integrated with exploration and mechanics, provide a fun and thought-provoking element to the gameplay.

Common complaints:
- Short, Repetitive, and Uninspired Gameplay (weight 0.74): Many players found the game's overall design, including its length, progression, and general gameplay loop, to be underwhelming and repetitive. The main story is often criticized for being too short, while attempts to extend playtime through collectibles or grindy upgrades are seen as artificial and boring. This leads to a feeling of incompleteness and a lack of value for its price.
- Lack of Map and Poor Navigation (weight 0.16): A recurring complaint is the complete absence of a map or minimap, which makes navigation incredibly frustrating. Players frequently get lost in the semi-open world, struggling to find objectives, collectibles, or their way back, leading to aimless wandering and a diminished exploration experience.
- Numerous Bugs and Glitches (weight 0.11): The game is plagued by various technical issues, including frequent bugs that cause players to get stuck in terrain, collision detection problems, and game-breaking glitches that can prevent mission completion or force restarts. These issues significantly detract from the gameplay experience.
- Simplistic and Monotonous Combat (weight 0.11): Combat mechanics are frequently criticized for being simplistic, repetitive, and lacking depth. The limited weapon variety (often just one pistol) and monotonous enemy encounters make combat feel uninspired and boring, with little strategic engagement.
- Limited Creature Variety (weight 0.07): Players are disappointed by the lack of creature diversity, noting that many monsters are merely reskins or slight variations of a few basic types. This repetition makes encounters feel stale and the bestiary uninspired, reducing the desire to explore and engage with the world's fauna.
- Insignificant Upgrades and Crafting (weight 0.05): The upgrade and crafting systems are perceived as largely meaningless and unimpactful. Upgrades often feel like minor stat boosts rather than significant gameplay enhancements, and the need to grind for materials to craft them disrupts the game's flow, making the process feel like a chore.
- Clunky Movement and Controls (weight 0.05): Movement and controls are often described as slow, clunky, and imprecise, particularly during platforming or dodging. This leads to frustration, especially in sections requiring precise jumps or quick reactions, making basic traversal feel cumbersome.
- Frustrating Difficulty and Guidance (weight 0.04): Players frequently get lost or die due to unclear objectives, constant enemy encounters, or frustrating design choices. The game's difficulty can feel inconsistent, with some areas being overly easy and others leading to constant deaths without clear guidance.
- Disappointing DLC Content (weight 0.04): The DLC is widely criticized for its lack of new content, mechanics, or creature variety. It's perceived as short, repetitive, and reusing too many assets from the main game, making it feel like a disappointing and overpriced addition.
- Buggy and Grindy Achievements (weight 0.04): Achievement hunting is a source of frustration due to buggy achievements, host-specific unlocks in co-op, and requirements for excessive grinding. This prevents players from fully completing the game and diminishes the satisfaction of achievement hunting.

Gameplay feedback:
- First-person Metroidvania exploration (weight 0.45): The game is primarily a first-person exploration adventure with strong Metroidvania elements. Players explore diverse alien biomes, solve environmental puzzles, and engage in combat against unique creatures and bosses. The core loop involves discovering new areas, collecting resources, and utilizing various movement abilities like jetpacks and grappling hooks.
- Variable playtime and completion (weight 0.16): The game offers a variable playtime, with the main story completable in 4-10 hours. However, achieving 100% completion, including all collectibles, side quests, and DLC, can extend playtime to 12-15 hours. There are also achievements for speedrunning the main story.
- Casual, humorous, and easy (weight 0.16): The game is generally considered easy and casual, suitable for beginners. It features lighthearted humor, often sarcastic, and doesn't take itself seriously. While there are enemies and challenges, the difficulty is low, focusing more on exploration and puzzle-solving than intense combat or survival.
- Resource collection and upgrades (weight 0.11): Resource collection is integral for progression, primarily used to craft and upgrade gear, tools, and abilities. These upgrades are crucial for unlocking new paths, improving navigation, and enhancing combat effectiveness. While collection is present, it's not a complex crafting or survival system.
- Simple but tactical combat (weight 0.09): Combat is present, featuring unique enemies and boss fights. While generally simple, it requires players to target weak points and utilize their pistol's abilities. Bosses can offer a challenge, often requiring specific tactics like dodging attacks and platforming to expose vulnerabilities.
- Two-player co-op supported (weight 0.08): The game fully supports two-player cooperative multiplayer, allowing friends to explore the alien planet together. While designed for co-op, it is also perfectly playable and completable in single-player mode.
- Repetitive puzzles, rushed ending (weight 0.06): Some players found the gameplay loop, particularly the puzzles and navigation, to become repetitive or linear, leading to a slower pace in later areas. There can be moments of confusion regarding progression, and the ending and final boss were noted as feeling rushed or lacking challenge.
- Quest system and lore (weight 0.06): The game features a quest system, including main objectives and optional side quests. These quests often involve exploration, collection, or defeating specific enemies. Lore and story elements are discovered through exploration and data entries, but the quest system itself can feel basic.
- Core platforming mechanics (weight 0.05): Platforming is a significant gameplay element, with players utilizing various movement abilities like double jumps, grappling hooks, and charge jumps. These abilities are often upgraded throughout the game, allowing access to new areas and facilitating exploration.
- Snarky AI companion (weight 0.04): The game features a snarky, GLaDOS-like AI companion who constantly mocks and belittles the player, especially upon death. Dying results in respawning at the ship, with resources needing to be re-collected from the death location.
- Minimal narrative focus (weight 0.03): The game's narrative is minimal and not a primary focus. The storyline is often described as short, simple, and not particularly impactful, serving mainly as a backdrop for the exploration and gameplay.
- Playable dog avatar (weight 0.03): A unique cosmetic choice allows players to select a dog avatar at the start, resulting in the character barking throughout the game. This choice is permanent and adds a humorous, albeit non-gameplay-altering, element.

Performance notes:
- Good overall performance and optimization (weight 0.09): Overall, the game demonstrates good optimization, running smoothly on various systems with low resource usage (CPU, RAM, VRAM). While some users reported unstable frame rates in specific areas, the general consensus is positive regarding performance and reasonable system requirements.
- Excellent Steam Deck performance (weight 0.04): The game is highly praised for its excellent performance on the Steam Deck, with many users reporting no significant bugs, crashes, or framerate issues. One specific issue with DLC causing startup freezing was noted, but a workaround exists.
- Minimal bugs and crashes (weight 0.03): Most players experienced a largely bug-free game, with many reporting no crashes or game-breaking glitches. A few minor bugs were occasionally encountered, but they did not significantly detract from the overall experience.
- Stable and DRM-free (weight 0.01): The game functions well, and some players specifically noted that its DRM-free nature contributes to a smoother and more reliable experience.
- Loading screen freeze on teleport (weight 0.01): A specific technical issue was reported where the game would get stuck on the loading screen during teleportation, indicating a potential bug in that specific mechanic.
- Progress saved despite crashes (weight 0.01): Despite any potential crashes, the game effectively saves progress, ensuring that player advancement is not lost, which is a positive technical aspect.
- Best on Windows 11 (weight 0.01): One specific piece of feedback indicated that the game performs optimally when running on Windows 11.

Recommendations:
- Highly Recommended Game (weight 0.4): The game is widely recommended by players, often highlighted for its co-op experience, humor, and exploration elements. Many consider it a fun and worthwhile adventure, especially for casual players or those seeking a lighthearted distraction.
- Best Purchased on Sale (weight 0.12): A significant number of players recommend purchasing the game primarily when it is on sale, suggesting that its full price might be a barrier for some. Discounts are seen as making the game a much better value proposition.
- Sequel Highly Anticipated (weight 0.08): Many players expressed excitement and anticipation for a sequel, indicating that the game left a positive impression and a desire for more content in the same universe. This suggests strong engagement and satisfaction with the core experience.
- Subjective Player Experience (weight 0.05): Player opinions on replayability and overall satisfaction vary widely, from immediate refunds to infinite replays. This suggests the game's appeal is highly subjective and depends on individual player preferences.
- DLC for Completionists (weight 0.04): The DLC is primarily recommended for players who are interested in achieving 100% completion or collecting all achievements. For others, it may not be considered essential, suggesting its content is geared towards completionists.
- Ideal for Co-op Play (weight 0.03): The game is frequently recommended for co-op play, with some players suggesting that the solo experience is less engaging. Playing with a friend is highlighted as the optimal way to enjoy the game's humor and adventure.
- Strong Exploration Focus (weight 0.02): The game is particularly appealing to players who enjoy exploration and discovery, often compared to other titles in the exploration genre. It caters to those who appreciate uncovering new areas and content.
- Prioritize Main Story (weight 0.02): Players suggest focusing on the main story first, especially if not inclined towards extensive collecting or achievement hunting. This indicates that the core narrative provides a complete experience, with additional content being optional.

Other player notes:
- Mixed replayability and co-op (weight 0.12): Player experiences varied widely regarding replayability and co-op. Some enjoyed multiple playthroughs and 100% completion, often with a partner, while others found it difficult to return to the game after an initial solo run.
- Basic story premise (weight 0.04): The game's story provides a basic premise of space exploration and research on an eccentric planet, often involving a character with debts. The plot is not dominant and there's no strong narrative connection to a potential second game.
- Decent value and quality (weight 0.03): The game generally received a decent rating (around 7/10) for its overall quality and price point. Graphics were considered fine, and PC requirements were reasonable.
- Genre and style comparisons (weight 0.03): The game's style and genre elements drew comparisons to titles like Ratchet and Clank, Skylanders, The Outer Worlds, and Metroid. Some players noted its lack of traditional platforming, which might not appeal to all.
- Mixed humor and tone (weight 0.03): Player opinions on the game's humor and tone were mixed. Some found it full of dark jokes and satire, while others felt it leaned more towards ultra-violence or was suitable for all audiences.
- Amusing in-game ads (weight 0.01): The in-game commercials and advertisements found on the ship were highlighted as a source of unexpected humor and entertainment, described as weird and amusing.
- Vibrant alien world (weight 0.01): The game features a vibrant alien world with a variety of colors and creatures, contributing to its unique aesthetic.
- Suitable for all ages (weight 0.01): The game is widely considered suitable for a broad audience, including children, teens, and adults, suggesting its content is generally family-friendly.
- Semi-open world design (weight 0.01): The game incorporates elements of a sandbox and semi-open world design, allowing for some degree of player freedom and exploration.
- Potential for simulation sickness (weight 0.01): Some players reported experiencing simulation sickness while playing, and the game's atmosphere can occasionally evoke feelings of discomfort or unsafety.
- Suggests new companion (weight 0.01): A specific suggestion was made to introduce Kronos as a companion character, potentially as a double agent, which could open up a new combat-focused skill tree with unique abilities.
- Concerns about lost support (weight 0.01): There is a concern among some players that the game is effectively 'dead' or unsupported due to a reported glitch leading to lost code, impacting future updates or fixes.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.23): Players felt satisfied due to the game's engaging exploration, humorous writing, and well-designed world and creatures. The co-op experience, addictive gameplay loop, and overall polish, including graphics, sound, and performance, also contributed significantly to positive feelings, often exceeding expectations and providing good value for money.
- Frustration (weight 0.16): Frustration stemmed primarily from poor navigation and guidance, including a missing map and unclear quest objectives, leading players to get lost frequently. Technical issues such as bugs, crashes, and finicky controls, especially in platforming and co-op, also caused significant annoyance. Additionally, frustrating boss mechanics, repetitive content, and issues with achievement systems contributed to negative experiences.
- Disappointment (weight 0.14): Disappointment was largely driven by the game's short length, especially for its price, and a perceived lack of content or replayability. Repetitive humor, uninspired combat, and shallow story or character progression also contributed to players feeling let down. Technical issues like missing cloud saves and poor optimization further exacerbated this sentiment.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.11): Players experienced enjoyment from the game's fun exploration, engaging co-op experience, and humorous writing. The quirky art style, creative creature design, and overall lighthearted atmosphere contributed to a positive and entertaining gameplay experience. The game's simplicity and addictiveness also played a role in sustained enjoyment.
- Joy (weight 0.09): Joy was frequently expressed due to the game's humor, particularly its slapstick comedy, witty dialogue, and amusing in-game advertisements. The fun co-op experience, charming world, and engaging exploration, often involving cute or bizarre creatures, also brought significant delight to players.
- Excitement (weight 0.07): Excitement was generated by the game's overall high quality, addictive gameplay, and engaging exploration. The humorous elements, unique world, and anticipation for a potential sequel or new content also contributed to a strong positive feeling and a desire to continue playing.
- Amusement (weight 0.05): Amusement arose from the game's unique and often bizarre humor, including its quirky characters, witty dialogue, and strange in-game commercials. The ridiculous situations, silly creatures, and overall tongue-in-cheek tone consistently provided comedic relief and entertainment.
- Boredom (weight 0.03): Boredom was primarily caused by repetitive gameplay, particularly in combat and exploration, and a lack of meaningful progression or challenge, especially during solo play. The humor also became repetitive for some, and tedious grinding for resources contributed to a monotonous experience.
- Anger (weight 0.02): Anger stemmed from critical bugs that prevented progression, poor game design choices, and a feeling of wasted money due to perceived low quality. Frustrating boss mechanics, bad guidance, and a lack of developer support for persistent issues also contributed to intense negative reactions.
- Annoyance (weight 0.02): Annoyance was caused by repetitive or subjective humor that didn't land well, annoying character voices, and atmosphere-breaking in-game videos. Technical issues like the lack of a pause function and design choices that restricted player freedom or created artificial roadblocks also contributed to irritation.
- Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion arose from a lack of clear direction, especially after boss fights or in the post-credits content, and difficulty navigating without a map. Players also struggled to understand certain puzzles or game mechanics due to insufficient guidance.
- Appreciation (weight 0.01): Appreciation was expressed for the game's originality, unique art style, and the developers' clear dedication and humor infused into the design. The vast and vibrant environment, tight controls, and lack of significant bugs also contributed to a positive perception of quality.
- Surprise (weight 0.01): Surprise often came from unexpected enjoyment, the recognition of voice actors, or the discovery that the storyline and content extended beyond initial expectations, revealing a greater density than anticipated.
- Love (weight 0.01): Love for the game was expressed due to its overall quality, engaging theme, and the immersive feeling of being part of its unique world. This strong positive sentiment often led players to repurchase the game or consider it a favorite.
- Anticipation (weight 0.01): Anticipation was primarily driven by the upcoming sequel, with players eagerly looking forward to more content, features, and the continuation of the game's humor and unique world.
- Curiosity (weight 0): Curiosity was sparked by the game's abstract design, bizarre nature, and the desire to explore its unique world and uncover secrets. The initial impression of the unknown elements within the game world also fueled this emotion.
- Discomfort (weight 0): Discomfort was reported due to the first-person view combined with high saturation colors, and some players experienced 3D motion sickness while playing.
- Caution (weight 0): Caution was advised regarding potential unpleasantness from the game's humor and atmosphere, and a recommendation to purchase the game only when it is on sale, suggesting concerns about its full price value.
- Recommendation (weight 0): The game was recommended, particularly for co-op play and for fans of its specific genre, indicating a positive overall experience when played under these conditions.
- Challenge (weight 0): Players found challenge in the game's boss fights and the process of figuring out puzzles and mechanics on their own.}