It's hard being an android. Especially after crash-landing on an unknown planet with a directive that you and your AI friend conveniently forgot. Fortunately for the android in PlanetScape, a procedurally-generated resource-management game, the necessary materials to reconstruct your pod are below the surface of the hostile planet.

You begin with your pod, your encyclopedia of a friend, and a few construction blocks. The [arrow] keys are naturally used to get around the planet, while [spacebar] uses your current tool/block. [Z] opens your limitless inventory (making storage blocks a thing of the past), and [X] displays your skills, each of them growing the more you use them. Once you've made a nice, cozy, Ghoul-free home, you can begin drilling down into the planet, each layer filled with more valuable resources. Enemies become stronger, however, and lava and acid will need to be sealed, dwarf-style.

I only have a few, minor complaints about PlanetScape, one of them being that the enemy's intelligence is about equivalent to a goldfish's, as they face against walls more often than chasing you. They leave something to be desired when you can stand two blocks away and blast them to your heart's content. Another problem is the astonishingly small amount of hotkeys for immediately placeable/usable items. if you want to use an item that isn't on your four-item hotbar, you have to go through your inventory while vulnerable to the enemies that don't have an attraction to walls. This is a very easy way to die. Besides these two very small problems, this game perfectly feeds my jittery mining habits that Minecraft has forced upon me. And let's face it, what's more soothing than grinding away on an inhabitable planet?

Thanks to Piers Gilpin for the review!

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