In the beginning…the game engine created the heavens and the earth. You get to play god to turn this hunk of hot rock and turn it into something capable of life.
You’ll adjust everything from the heat of the planets core to the landmasses and cloud cover. You’ll smash comets into your new planet in order to add water, and eventually life.
The real meat of the game seems to be the creature creator, evolving up from single cell organisms to more complex beings with organs and limbs. When finished, the game should have civilizations for creatures who have become intelligent enough.
It’s neat and frustrating to get that balance, I spent a good amount of time tweaking and thinking I had a solid set of organisms to go for the population-based achievements and watched natural disasters and my own lack of planning fail me. I did eventually get most of the way there for the overpopulation achievement, and if the game had more than a 3x speed option, I might have waited it out.
Sadly, the demo doesn’t have any safe functionality, so I’ll have to be happy with ~500/700. Planetary life is in early access and will be released in 2024.