PAX East First Impressions – Planetary Annihilation

It’s not everyday a game on Kickstarter raises .

. Dubbed “A Next-Generation RTS” by developer Uber Entertainment, Planetary Annihilation has taken the, umm, shipload of money they earned back in September of 2012, and turned it into an experience gamers may just find worthy of that self-given title. After spending some hands-on time with the game, I can see why so many backers believed in the project. (Back in 2012, it was one of the most successful campaigns of all time. It still ranks highly on the overall list of successful Kickstarter projects.)

The most intriguing draw of Planetary Annihilation is the gameplay scope. True to it’s name, the game tasks players with conquering entire planets, but that’s only a small piece of the cosmic action. In fact, taking over one planet is just a fraction of the task at hand when there are entire solar systems up for grabs. One of the coolest moments of playing Planetary Annihilation that I almost hesitate to “spoil” – because it makes such an impact on the player – is zooming in and out for the first time. You know what, I won’t even describe it further; I’ll just mention that during the first match that boots up, every player should zoom both in and out as far as they can, and prepare to be blown away by the scale of Planetary Annihilation .

The RTS portion of the mechanics are about what any seasoned genre veteran would expect: Some units gather resources, some gather specialty materials to build with, some create attack units, others create defensive utilities, you know the drill. There are a variety of land, sea, air, and even orbital units. (Orbital units personally intrigue me the most, as they present an unfamiliar challenge of having to monitor what’s going on above the planet, as opposed to just keeping track of what’s directly surrounding the camp.)

Where the game sets itself apart is with two unique mechanics, starting with the Chrono Cam. A DVR of sorts, the Chrono Cam allows players to rewind gameplay to immediately see how their units were destroyed, and what tactics the enemy employed. In my mind, I instantly thought of the e-sport benefit of being able to “watch tape” on the fly to adapt to your opponent. To be clear, this doesn’t affect the gameplay itself or rewind time, it’s basically an instant replay built into the game – not requiring any downloading of video – that players can take advantage of. The second mechanic that stands out is how the environment itself can sometimes play a major role in determining the outcome of a match. Strategic planning of which planet to conquer requires more than just random selection, but rather a thorough inspection of the world’s surroundings. In less subtle terms: Moons and asteroids are a hazard that must be considered, as planets don’t often recover so well from such a massive collision.

While Planetary Annihilation is designed for intense, large scale online battles that can hold up to 40 players at once, there will also be a single-player component as well. Known as the Galactic War mode, it’s not a traditional single-player campaign, but rather a solo game mode for battling against the AI. (Since the game is DRM-free, this part can be played offline.) When the battle gets as large as 40 players, Planetary Annihilation starts to get really interesting, as all-out war stretches throughout more than just a single solar system, and instead rages on across an entire galaxy. All the while, players will need to monitor their energy and resource bars, as the game’s living economy adapts to the mining of asteroids and consumption of the planet’s energy. In addition to the massive online battling and single-player component, there are a variety of other games modes, including 3v3v3 team battles.

Planetary Annihilation is currently in what the team considers “Gamma” access, as the majority of the experience is finished aside from polishing and final bug fixes/performance improvements. It can be purchased on Steamas part of the Early Access program for $49.99. Details can be found on the game’s official website. Players can keep up with the game on social media via Google+and Facebook, or by following Uber Entertainment on Twitter.