Terraforming survival game The Planet Crafter gets a beefy 2.0 update and a 50% discount: 'We wanted to take some time to improve multiple things'

The Planet Crafter is a survival game that goes way beyond the traditional remit of the genre. You're not trying to stay alive by building campfires and hunting animals and smashing together a rock and a stick to make a pickaxe appear in your inventory. Rather than bending to suit the world, you bend the world to suit you, terraforming an entire planet to make it habitable for humans.

Released in 2024 after a long stint in early access, The Planet Crafter is already among Steam's highest-rated games. But it seems developer Miju Games still wasn't fully satisfied with the experience, having just released a meaty 2.0 update for the game which gives it a tune-up across all fronts.

"We wanted to take some time to improve multiple things to make the game as beautiful and enjoyable as possible, for new and returning players," the developers explained in a Steam post. The biggest addition here is a new biome for players to explore, situated on Prime, The Planet Crafter's main world. Miju doesn't reveal too many details about this biome, presumably to maintain the surprise. But this addition comes alongside improved biomes elsewhere, plus new decorations and portals to help you traverse the world more quickly.

In addition, Miju have given The Planet Crafter a visual overhaul, improving skyboxes, terrain, vegetation and water shaders. While I wouldn't go so far as to say this was much needed, given The Planet Crafter is so much more than how it looks, it was always a bit lower-fi than much of its competition, so a bit of smartening up is welcome.

Indeed, one of the more interesting features of this pass is that other bodies within the solar system that you've done terraforming work on (such as the Moons that orbit Prime, added in an update last year) will now evolve in the sky, meaning you can sit back and watch your work spread across the system in real-time.

Elsewhere, Mizu has added a jetpack chip for your rover, which should make it easier to navigate cliffs and ravines, while new craftable items include lockers, arcade machines, vending machines, showers, and toilets. All of this arrives alongside a much longer list of improvements, balance tweaks, and bugfixes.

To coincide with the update The Planet Crafter is also 50% as part of Steam's midweek sale, bringing the price down to $12 (£9). Extraterrestrial terraforming will remain available for half price until April 20.