Shattered Planet is a neat roguelike about exploring procedurally generated planets slowly succumbing to a dark plague while fighting enemies, collecting loot and trying to survive while unlocking - and upgrading - new characters, discovering enemies, gear and events. I had a good time with it! I kinda wish it did more than what it does, but what is there is fun, addictive and still fun to play, even though it was released in 2014.
Typical Shattered Planet ‘runs’ are fairly simple. You start with a character from a specific class and some gear - a weapon and a helmet. You are then dropped into a randomly generated map full of enemies and resources to collect. You find portals to the next area and eventually you die. I died for a bunch of reasons, I got killed by monsters, jumped to my death by mistake - that’s a bit frustrating - and died from drinking poison or explosive potions - because there are about 7 types of potions and they’re randomly changed each game, always being in an ‘unidentified’ stage, which can also be frustrating.
By dying, you can upgrade your characters’s stats using one resource and craft new gear with another. All classes have special passive and active abilities - I wish the game was clearer about what these did, but it’s not too bad because you only need to try them once to figure them out - and you can upgrade their stats as well. Health, dodge chance and critical hit chance are what you care about here - I wish your upgrades would be applied to all classes and not just one, but as I figured out which class I preferred, I stuck with it, so this was fine. The weapons and armors you craft are randomly generated from three rarity tiers, so you can get cool gear you never found before. Whenever you find a new piece of loot, defeat a new enemy, encounter a new situation or a new map, you’ll get a research entry and getting enough will level you up, unlocking different rewards.
The core gameplay is fairly addictive and you can do run after run, leveling up your characters, unlocking more rewards and discovering new things. There is a bit of randomness in each run (whether you’ll drink or toss the right potion, if you can find healing anywhere - I thought you’d died a bit too quickly - if you took the wrong turn and boxed yourself in with the creeping poison slowly gaining ground on you, or if you fail a stat check and wonder whether you had any chance of succeeding. The worst you’ll lose is a really good weapon or helmet and you can start a new run right away. I did that for a few hours, then I decided it was enough. I had fun with Shattered Planet, but I wish there had been a little something else to motivate me to keep exploring these planets and punch these crabs!
