New Open-World Survival Game on PS5 Makes No Man's Sky Feel Incomplete

No Man's Sky will forever be one of gaming's greatest comeback stories, and there's no honest way to talk about sci-fi survival games without acknowledging what Hello Games has accomplished since the game launched in 2016. Its universe gives players planets to explore, bases to build, resources to collect, and dangers to survive across a vast galaxy that still feels impossible. For many gamers, landing on an alien world and wondering what might be waiting beyond the next ridge is still the defining fantasy. However, The Planet Crafters upcoming PS5 launch highlights one thing No Man's Sky have never fully embraced.

No Man's Sky allows players to discover planets, survive on them, build within them, and reshape local terrain, but The Planet Crafter takes the same broad sci-fi survival fantasy and points it towards the more specific goal of turning hostile worlds into habitable ones. In the end it does No Man's Sky feels almost incomplete—like it's missing one thing that could really take its sense of discovery, freedom, and ownership to the next level. Now, No Man's Sky fans will finally get to experience what the missing piece feels like on PS5 for once The Planet Crafter launched on July 21.

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Planet Crafter turns survival into transformation

The biggest difference between The Planet Crafter and No Man's Sky is not scale. No Man's Sky obviously wins that contest. Hello Games built a game around exploration and survival across a procedurally generated universe, while The Planet Crafter is more focused on terraforming as a central part of its game loop. So, The Planet Crafter isn't just asking players to discover brand new planets and then survive on them as much as it's asking them to fundamentally change those planets by gathering resources, building machines, generating oxygen, raising temperatures, increasing pressure, and slowly driving dead environments towards life.

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In many survival games, progression essentially means that the player becomes better equipped to withstand the world over time. IN The Planet CrafterBut progress means that the world itself becomes different. The standard survival mechanics and expectations are still there, but the end goal isn't just to stay alive long enough just to build a bigger, better base.

Hello Games built a game around exploration and survival in a procedurally generated universe, while The Planet Crafter is more focused on terraforming as a central part of its gameplay loop.

No Man's Sky has base building, resource gathering, hard planets, planet travel and Terrain Manipulator – which Hello Games has actually updated with features like reset and flattening modes. These tools allow players to simply change the terrain locally, especially around bases, and they remain part of the game's creative appeal. But local terrain editing isn't the same as making terraforming the core of sci-fi survival fantasy, and that's exactly what The Planet Crafter specializes in.

While players are encouraged to find a planet and build a base there No Man's Skythe bulk of their own imagination—which is the thrill of discovery—actually urges them to leave a planet after they become familiar with it. At this point in its development, The Planet Crafter allows players to visit other planets, but the point isn't actually to discover more planets, it's to find one and unleash its full potential through terraforming.

Planet Crafter key features

Survival crafting in an open world
Terraform hostile planets into habitable worlds
Generate oxygen, heat and atmospheric pressure
Build bases, machines, tools and survival equipment
Manage oxygen, thirst, temperature and health
No enemies, timers or forced pressure
Explore ruins, shipwrecks and alien biomes
Unlock new areas through terraforming progress
See that environments visibly change over time
Use rovers, jetpacks and portals
Discover resources, knowledge and hidden places

Another important difference worth noting is The Planet Crafterthe lack of enemies of any kind. IN No Man's Skythe primary focus is exploration and survival, but there are still enemies like Sentinels and Space Pirates that can hurt the player. IN The Planet Crafteron the other hand, there are no enemy threats, meaning the focus is kept solely on the creative and transformative side of its loop, ultimately allowing it to do more with that aspect of the game. The more peaceful approach might sound boring in the wrong game, but it fits The Planet Crafter perfect, since terraforming is at the heart of how players discover the world.

No Man's Sky Owns Scale, But The Planet Crafter Owns Impact

Of course, none of this means that The Planet Crafter is greater or more important than No Man's Sky. Hello Games' sci-fi survival game has spent years growing into a massive platformer, and its updates have made it much richer than the game that originally launched. The sharpest point is that No Man's Skys greatest strength can also create distance. When a game offers countless planets, each discovery sits alongside the promise of another. It's exciting, sure, but it also means that many worlds become stops along the way rather than places players can settle down and take ownership of.

The Planet Crafter allows players to visit other planets, but the point isn't actually to discover more planets, it's to find one and unleash its full potential through terraforming.

The Planet Crafter gives the opposite feeling. Its worlds matter because players can leave them different than they found them. The satisfaction comes from turning hostile spaces into living and then seeing that change change where players can go next.

That's the part that does No Man's Sky feeling incomplete in comparison. No Man's Sky captures the reverence of planetary discovery better than almost anything else in gaming, but what it doesn't do in the same central way is make the future of these planets feel like the player's primary responsibility.

No Man's Sky doesn't have to be any kind of sci-fi survival game. Its identity is built around scale, freedom, discovery and the feeling of being a tiny traveler in a vast universe – and that imagination still works. However, The Planet Crafter reveals a missing piece in that imagination. Discovering a planet is exciting, surviving one is satisfying, and building on a planet is rewarding, but seeing one change due to the player's work is the extra layer that makes No Man's Skys loop feels complete. Where No Man's Sky giving players endless worlds to visit, The Planet Crafter giving them worlds that could become something else because they were there.