Talk:The Planet Crafter
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| The Planet Crafter is a former featured article candidate. Please view the links under Article milestones below to see why the nomination was archived. For older candidates, please check the archive. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Planet Crafter has been listed as one of the Video games good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The following reference(s) may be useful when improving this article in the future: |
Reason for accepting
I didn't think we had a game with over 32k steam reviews without an article. But anyway, I see at least a reliable sources from PCGamer, per WP:VG/S. TechRaptor is inconclusive, even after multiple discussions, as shown by VG/S. I also see that this article is (or was) mentioned at a userpage listing possibly notable articles. Therefore, I'm going to accept this shortly. JuniperChill (talk) 16:36, 13 December 2025 (UTC)
Peer review
The Planet Crafter
| This peer review discussion is closed. |
I've listed this article for peer review because I would like feedback on its overall structure, sourcing, and clarity, and to identify any issues that should be addressed before a potential Good Article nomination.
Thanks, Monkegamer123 (talk) 18:57, 28 December 2025 (UTC)
Comments from Z1720
@Monkegamer123: Comments after a quick skim:
- The lead should be expanded to cover all major aspects of the article. Every level 2 heading should be summarised in the lead.
- The "Development" and "Reception" sections are quite long. I suggest summarising the text more effectively and using level 3 headings to break up the text
- Suggest using [iabot.toolforge.org/index.php] to archive the websites. You might also want to expand out these citations by adding access dates and author last names.
Hope this helps. Z1720 (talk) 04:30, 29 December 2025 (UTC)
From JuniperChill (as AfC acceptor)
As someone that accepted this article, these are my suggestions:
- The text in the lead
During development, Miju Games shared two roadmaps in 2022 and 2023 outlining planned features and updates.
andThe PC version holds a Metacritic score of 81 out of 100.
could be removed. Same could be said about citations in the lead per WP:CITELEAD, provided that the information in the lead is repeated elsewhere in the article. - Perhaps the definition of "overwhelmingly positive" and "very positive" should be clarified as not all readers have Steam.
- Also, if you haven't already, please feel free to read the good article criteria, and take a look at existing GA video game articles (perhaps those released after 2015) to get an idea of what it should look like. Otherwise, I feel this could be ready for GA! JuniperChill (talk) 23:16, 15 January 2026 (UTC)
Comment from Monkegamer123
I’ve addressed previous comments and revised the lead, sections, and citations. Thanks again for your feedback! If you notice anything else that should be improved to prepare the article for Good Article nomination, I’d appreciate any additional suggestions.
GA review
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
- This review is transcluded from Talk:The Planet Crafter/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Nominator: Monkegamer123 (talk · contribs) 23:33, 20 February 2026 (UTC)
Reviewer: A412 (talk · contribs) 17:44, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
I'll take a look at this one. ~ A412 talk! 17:44, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
- I updated the article with everything you mentioned, now done. Let me know if there is anything else that needs fixing. Monkegamer123 (talk) 23:20, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
- Thanks for the quick reply. I'll go through the rest of the prose when I get a chance. ~ A412 talk! 23:22, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
- Done. Holding for prose. ~ A412 talk! 05:26, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
- I have changed some of the prose, not all of what you listed. I have something important to do, so I will respond again when I change everything you mentioned. Monkegamer123 (talk) 20:06, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
- Okay, I think I changed everything mentioned. Monkegamer123 (talk) 00:05, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
- Done. Holding for prose. ~ A412 talk! 05:26, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
- Thanks for the quick reply. I'll go through the rest of the prose when I get a chance. ~ A412 talk! 23:22, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
| GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not) |
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Overall: |
Sourcing
Ref numbers as of this revision.
Spotcheck
[5] - In the first paragraph of Gameplay, this source appears to support neither including additional planets and moons introduced later in the game
nor Each celestial body presents unique challenges
.
[10] - Fine.
[17] - Fine.
[21] - reflecting the team's commitment to expanding the game during early access
is not supported by the source and is subjective.
[25] - Technically fine. PC Gamer noted that The Planet Crafter had been in early access since March 2022 and had shown significant development progress since its demo release in December 2021
is an accurate summary of the source, but why would the reader want or need to know this?
[32] - Fine.
[35] - Fine.
[40] - Is Notebookcheck a reliable source? Even if so, they appear to be a laptop-focused publication. Are they a reliable source for video games?
Generally fine, couple inaccuracies but no egregious TSI violations.
Reliable sources
[13] - Neither I, WP:VG/RS, nor WP:RSPP have heard of Corrosion Hour. Is this a reliable source?
[40] - As highlighted above.
Everything else is fine.
Other nonprose concerns
4 (NPOV)
I have WP:PROMO concerns, though they're very fixable.
Gameplay P4 - contributing to the game's environmental storytelling and lore.
Having this in Gameplay compliments the story in wikivoice. Move the opinion part to Reception.
Gameplay P8 - The DLC supports cooperative play, allowing players to join multiplayer sessions on the Humble planet even if only one participant owns the DLC. This feature enables friends to explore and terraform the new world together without requiring all players to purchase the expansion individually.
This reads like ad copy for selling the DLC. Are the mechanics of buying the DLC encyclopedically relevant?
Development - In general the development section does a lot of what I would call "listing features" as opposed to summarizing the game's development.
Development P2 - reflecting the team's commitment to expanding the game during early access.
Subjective, as mentioned above.
Development P4 - signaling a structured development plan leading to the 1.0 release.
Subjective.
Reception - There's a pattern that's pervasive through this section. If a critic says "Game system X is good because it is Y", with Y being a subjective adjective, it's an NPOV violation to say "Reviewers highlighted the game's Y-ness", because that states in Wikivoice that the game is Y. More neutral is "Reviewers highlighted X, describing it as Y".
6b (Use of images)
I fear two gameplay screenshots, when there's not a ton being illustrated besides "the base game is red and the expansion is blue", runs afoul of WP:NFCC 3a.
Also, relatively minor, does this game not have UI elements? If it does, convention is to use a screenshot with UI elements, because that better represents the gameplay and is really hard to describe well otherwise.
Prose
Lead
- It looks like there are ~three major content updates for the game in the body, but the lead only mentions the first.
- Can we expand the summary of the reception slightly? Mentioning which qualities critics were less positive on is probably the best method.
Gameplay
- We're missing a description of the game, and go right into mechanics. What genre of game is it? How many players is it for? What is the goal of players in the game and what do they control to interact with it?
To build and operate terraformation machines, players must first construct generators to provide power. Generators can be placed freely on a planet or moon and contribute to the total available energy. Each machine increases the overall power requirements, and if these requirements exceed the available supply, all machines temporarily cease operation until sufficient power is restored.
- This paragraph takes 3 sentences to say that machines use power and generators produce it.Throughout the game, players encounter points of interest such as wrecked spacecraft, storage crates, and underground bunkers. These locations contain materials and other valuable items, and are presented as remnants of earlier, failed terraforming attempts, contributing to the game's plot.
- This paragraph can probably be removed entirely as redundant with the description in the plot section.Players start on this planet with the objective of terraforming it and can explore locations that provide context about its abandoned state.
- Is this trying to say that the DLC planet is somehow different than the first planet? The first planet is also described as a barren planet with abandoned ruins.
Plot
"Ancient Paradise" achievement
- Is this important somehow? If it is, we should describe why, because to a reader this achievement name may be meaningless.Warden
is mentioned twice but never defined. Is this a character we should describe?
Development
- It's unclear to me as a reader what is being differentiated about the various early access patches described here. Did secondary sources highlight specific milestones in development, or positively receive certain features, that we can draw from? Otherwise, these read like "they added content to, and released a roadmap describing, their early access game", which seems extremely normal for an EA game.
and anticipated version 1.0 for Q4 2023 or Q1 2024, marking the end of early access.
- we know when 1.0 actually released, and it is in fact the very next thing discussed.PC Gamer noted that The Planet Crafter's steady development, showing significant development progress since its demo release in December 2021
- I still don't understand what this tells the reader. I would expect in-development games to be further developed between their demo and their release?Upon reaching version 1.0, The Planet Crafter received a major update
- Is the 1.0 update somehow different than the major update?
Reception
Generally fine.
Non-GAN criteria stuff
Here's a couple thoughts and improvement suggestions I had that fall outside of GAN criteria.
- TechRaptor is cited ten times. It's usually good to cite a wide variety of sources to avoid WP:UNDUE weight and make sure we're getting a diversity of opinion.
- See WP:RECEPTION for advice on writing reception sections. Basically it makes for more engaging prose to not list things by reviewer.
- - I think this is an hour long talk by the devs that could flesh out the development section.
- I wonder if there are more French-language review and interview sources, if this is a French dev. So far we only have IGN France.
Peer review
The Planet Crafter
| This peer review discussion is closed. |
I have listed this article for peer review to seek feedback on its structure, sourcing, and clarity, and to identify any issues that should be addressed before a Featured Article nomination.
Thanks, Monkegamer123 (talk) 23:19, 24 April 2026 (UTC)
- There's been no activity here in a month, so I'm going to close this. RoySmith (talk) 20:03, 20 June 2026 (UTC)
Nub098765
Hi! I have several comments I think should be rectified:
First, prose.
- "Players awaken in a crashed spacecraft..." — This is a bit in-universe, no? The players themselves don't awaken, the player character does.
- "...in which players control an astronaut tasked with terraforming a hostile planet into a habitable environment. Players start on a barren, rocky planet and are tasked with terraforming planetary environments." — Don't these two sentences (or, rather, sentence and clause) state the same thing? Could they be streamlined into one?
- "Terraforming involves...Terraforming requires..." — These two sentences are adjacent. Restating the subject of the previous sentence is generally not the best writing practice (provided there is no noun in between that could ambiguate it), and I recommend either using a pronoun ("It requires..."), or merging them into the same sentence, i.e., "Terraforming involves...and requires..."
- The "Planet Humble" section of Gameplay and the "Post-release updates" section of Development describe, in all, three times what the DLC adds. To me, this feels like overkill. Especially in the Post-release updates section, I feel like such a description is not needed at all.
- As a whole, the gameplay section is pretty short and a bit vague. I ask this not condescendingly but genuinely: is there not any more information you could gather from the six reviews to fill the gameplay section a bit more? If not, then it could stay as long as it is—it's perfectly fine—but looking through might be helpful.
- "...while noting that additional balancing and content could further improve the experience." — Per MOS:SAID, verbs like "note" connote objectivity or truthfulness; where not objective, simple verbs like "say" should be used. I think this is a case where "saying" would be a better alternative.
- "...while noting a sparse early game, limited map variety, and some quality-of-life issues." — Same thing.
- In all, the reception section feels, for lack of a better word, disjointed. Each review is introduced with the website (sometimes not even the reviewer) and the score they gave the game, which is okay, but there is little, if any, elaboration on how they said what you claim they said. Each review is in its own bubble, even though each paragraph is introduced with its own topic sentence (e.g., "Reviews highlighted the game's gradual terraformation system, describing it as a key part of the experience.") that has no corroboration as far as I, or the reader, can tell. As a particular example, one sentence reads: "Other critics praised the game's terraforming systems, pacing, and freedom of exploration, with Screen Rant awarding it 8 out of 10." Does Screen Rant's review praise the game's terraforming systems, pacing, and freedom of exploration? Does it describe other critics praising the game's terraforming systems, pacing, and freedom of exploration? Or have you simply tacked it on to make the sentence longer? In any case, I think you'd need specific reviews cited to corroborate this, even if you don't expand on them. But a reception section must answer these questions: "How have critics praised the game's terraforming systems, pacing, and freedom of exploration? What have they praised about those aspects of the game?" Here, it doesn't seem it does. Later, in a separate paragraph, you introduce James Cunningham of Hardcore Gamer, who "further remarked that the freedom and low-stakes survival aspects of the game created a relaxing gameplay loop, while also praising the visual payoff of terraforming." This seems like it would fit perfectly in the paragraph you set up earlier, but it appears in its own paragraph.
- In this article, you use a lot of tricolons (and even 4-colons (quadricolons?)!). On their own, tricolons are okay to use—I've certainly used them. But...it almost feels like they're being used here to compress information rather than to express it in the most concise way it can be expressed. Tricolons, in my (and I think Wikipedia's) opinion, should be used to introduce facts, not present them in full. But here, you describe three entirely separate things, which I'm sure are detailed in the source, in the same breath, as though they all hold equally unsubstantial weight.
Now, sourcing.
- The passage "The game's soundtrack, composed by Benjamin Young, was released digitally through Kid Katana Records on April 12, 2024, two days after the game's full release, with additional tracks added in later updates." is given the citation Planet Crafter Original Soundtrack/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2902050/The_Planet_Crafter_Original_Soundtrack/. Primary sources in general are entirely fine, but the passage introduces a lot of information that I don't think are fully corroborated by a Steam source offering the soundtrack for $5.99 (pricy for what I presume is a relatively short soundtrack, by the way). Where, for example, does it say that "additional tracks [were] added in later updates"?
- Game Rant and Screen Rant, being Valnet sources, have consistently been ruled by the gavel of Wikipedia FA reviewers as not of FA standard. I would consider removing/replacing them.
- The source formatting could use some work. Several reviews/general website sources do not have author names, which is a big red flag at FA. For example, Erwan Lafleuriel of IGN France is not named in the citation from which he comes. I would suggest making it explicit who is writing each article. Also, many citations list the website names as their URL (e.g., techraptor.net) instead of their actual names. FA reviewers would certainly flag that.
Third, the images.
- The images themselves are totally fine—I can discern that the gun-like object on the right in the first gameplay image is presumably in the player's hand and that the trees and liquid (water?) on the ground is the player's doing, and the second gameplay image is all the same. But the non-free use rationales seem...bare?
- The first image's "purpose of use in this article" section reads, verbatim, "The image will show the gameplay, helping that section of the article." How? How will this image help that section of the article. What does it display? What does it show that mere text would not? You partially answer this in "respect for commercial opportunities": "The image is used for identification and critical commentary. By illustrating the game's terraformation stages and UI, it helps the reader understand the subject matter, which is a transformative use rather than a commercial one." But I must say that 1) it's the wrong section and 2) transformative use does not demonstrate "respect for commercial opportunities". Basically, it is asking you "why doesn't this image compete with the media from which it comes commercially? Why aren't the developers losing money because you decided to add this image into this article?" This NFUR does not substantively answer that.
- The second image does not improve on the first. The purpose section reads "The image will help support the article's text." How? Why? In what way? For whom? There is no description of how the image helps the article extend beyond mere text and why this image was chosen over others. How does this image convey meaning that could not otherwise be conveyed by text? What is the purpose, beyond simply complimenting the text, of this image? As of now, the NFUR does not provide information for, or about, this image, this article, or this reader.
Overall, it's certainly not a bad article. Definitely worthy of its GA badge. But I don't think it's quite ready for the eyes at FA. nub :) 08:49, 25 April 2026 (UTC)
Comments by AdaCiccone
I'd just like to point out one tiny detail about conceptual flow. Right now, the article's introduction after the lead looks like this: Gameplay > Planet Humble > Plot. I think that the early sections should be about laying the ground for readers to understand the game's basics, so I feel that Planet Humble DLC content being there just feels abrupt and early. I know that DLC section has points about gameplay, which is why I think you placed it under gameplay, but FA reviewers might notice that abrupt change. So I'd suggest moving it somewhere else. AdaCiccone (talk) 11:13, 25 April 2026 (UTC)
Comments from Monkegamer123
I have finished making these changes to the article. Thanks for the feedback! If you have any more suggestions for the article, leave them here. Monkegamer123 (talk) 23:14, 25 April 2026 (UTC)
Comments from Alaexis
I've run an automated analysis of sources used in the article using a tool I co-developed with two more editors. It checks whether the claims in the article are supported by inline sources. Please see the results below. Most of the "Not supported" results are false positives - currently the tool can only check claim-citation pairs and so a group of citations that jointly support a claim are flagged as "Not/partially supported" (such as the [3][4] group in the table below).
I manually checked and confirmed one minor inaccuracy. [7] doesn't mention Riley by name and doesn't say what kind of tips they give. There are a few more hits which I haven't checked. I'd be grateful for any feedback. Alaexis¿question? 21:14, 10 May 2026 (UTC)
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This is an experimental check of the article sources by Citation Verifier. Treat it with caution, be aware of its limitations and feel free to leave feedback at the talk page. Revision checked: 1353525232
Summary: 34 supported, 13 partially supported, 13 not supported, 7 source unavailable out of 67 citations. Generated by Citation Verifier using a HuggingFace-hosted open-source LLM (openai/gpt-oss-20b) on 20:30, 10 May 2026 (UTC). Tokens used: 189,744 input, 31,671 output. |
RoySmith
I'm not into video games, so I'll just mention one of my standard complaints, which is the use of a lot of jargon. Per WP:MTAU, you should briefly explain what words and phrases like the following mean: open-world, terraforming, survival game, Unity engine, automation games, Steam, GOG.com, gameplay loop, map (i.e. Level (video games), not the more obvious Map), game balancing, building misalignment.
I'll also comment on
As these metrics increase, the global ecology shifts to support biomass through plants and animals.[3] Machines require power to operate.[4][5] Early exploration is limited by a finite oxygen supply. The player character wields a "matter-manipulation gun."[6]
I often complain about choppy writing and on the surface, the succession of the three short declarative sentences would be an indication of that. In this case, however, I think the construction actually works quite well, giving a bit of emphasis to the list. So that's interesting.
