Many co-op games keep players busy with enemies, rankings, and constant pressure. The Planet Crafter, on the other hand, slows things down by asking players to reshape a barren world together until it can support life.
Friends can spend their time talking, planning their next project, and watching the environment change around them. Instead of ending the night with a final score, they leave behind a larger base, new equipment, and another part of the planet brought to life.
The survival and building game launched July 21 for Xbox Series X|S and the Windows Store. It is also included with Xbox Game Pass. The Xbox version supports online cooperative play for two to eight players.
The console release follows the game’s earlier arrival on Steam, where it launched in 2024.
Miju Games made the planet itself the main challenge. Players gather resources, build shelter, produce power, and create equipment while gradually changing the environment around them. The group begins on a hostile planet with little protection and must gather the materials needed to build shelter, produce power, and create equipment.
There are no enemy soldiers, hostile creatures, or weapons to manage. Survival depends on keeping track of oxygen, water, food, temperature, and health while learning how far players can travel before they need to return to safety.
The larger mission is to change the planet itself. Players build machines that raise heat and atmospheric pressure, generate oxygen, and eventually support plants and wildlife. What begins as an empty landscape can slowly become a world with lakes, forests, insects, and animals.
That mission gives a group plenty of work to divide. One player may search caves, ruins, and shipwrecks for uncommon materials while another expands the base. Other friends can manage storage, grow food, build the power grid, or place new terraforming machines.
Different play styles can fit into the same session. Someone who enjoys exploration can travel beyond the base and search for new locations. A player who prefers building can plan additional rooms, laboratories, farms, and storage areas. Others can organize supplies or gather the materials needed for the group’s next major project.
Progress is visible across the world rather than only through menus and statistics. Rising temperatures can melt ice and expose routes that were previously blocked. Moss and grass begin covering the ground before trees, insects, and larger creatures appear.
Those changes give the group a record of what it has accomplished together. A small shelter can grow into a large settlement filled with greenhouses, laboratories, storage rooms, and automated systems. An empty area outside the base may eventually become a lake or forest because of machines the players built earlier.
The game still creates tense moments, particularly at the beginning. Oxygen runs out quickly, useful supplies are limited, and traveling too far from shelter can end an expedition. Players must decide whether to use valuable materials immediately or save them for equipment that may become more important later.
Those risks encourage communication without turning every session into a fight. Friends can warn each other about low supplies, plan exploration routes, or prepare oxygen and food before traveling farther from the base.
Terraforming equipment continues operating as long as the power grid can support it. That means the planet can continue moving toward its next stage while players explore, collect resources, improve the base, or spend time deciding what to build next.
The game also includes adjustable difficulty settings and a creative mode. A group can choose a more demanding survival experience or reduce the pressure and concentrate on construction, exploration, and environmental changes.
Xbox Play Anywhere allows saves, achievements, and progress to follow players between supported Xbox consoles and Windows devices. The Xbox edition also supports cross-platform cooperative play, allowing friends on supported Xbox and Windows devices to enter the same world.
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