PC Gamer - USA 2019-09)

Hold the
mushrooms.

Journey to the Savage Planet

PREVIEW

RELEASE

2020

DEVELOPER

Typhoon Games

PUBLISHER

505 Games

LINK

www,savageplanetgame.com

NEED TO KNOW

Well, why the hell not? I’m stranded on this

strange alien planet so I’ll take my meals

where I can find them. And it’s not the

most disgusting thing I’ll do while I’m here.

I recently got to play a short demo of

Journey to the Savage Planet, a first-

person exploration game planned for

2020. It’s the first game from
      Typhoon Studios, which was founded
      by former creative director of Far Cry
      4 and Assassin’s Creed 3, Alex
      Hutchinson, along with other
      industry veterans from EA and Warner
      Bros. As an astronaut and pioneer for
      Kindred Aerospace—they’re the
      fourth-best interstellar exploration
      company, which is really confidence-
      boosting—I’m tasked with exploring and
      cataloguing everything on this wild planet
      to determine if it’s suitable for colonization
      by human beings.
      I wouldn’t even call this planet a
      particularly savage one, really. There are
      some hostile creatures here, and I do
      occasionally hear a deep and ferocious
      roar in the distance... but how dangerous
      could whatever’s making it be? Everything
      else here seems either indifferent to me or
      just plain scared. I laugh when I approach

some short purple dinosaurs and they flee

from me, shrieking in fear, sounding for all

the world like a maid in a 1950’s slapstick

comedy who’s just seen a mouse.

There are also pufferbirds hopping

harmlessly here and there; round little

creatures that mean me no harm and who

are easily splattered into glop by my gun. I

carry cans of compressed cheese with me

in my free hand, and when I throw them

the pufferbirds scuttle over to eat it. This

is useful when I need to, say, trick the

pufferbirds into flocking into the maw of a

plant with spinning fan blades for a mouth.

Those pufferbirds are very trusting.

DEEPER UNDERGROUND

The planet may not be terribly savage at

the moment, but it is an extraordinarily

bright and colorful one. It’s also a bit tricky

to navigate. Savage Planet has a

first-person platformer feel to it, with cliffs

and ledges and areas that take some

puzzling over before you can figure out

how to reach them. I find myself trying to

reach a peak and having to circle around

and try different methods of hopping and

climbing to reach it.

One of my first tasks is to find the

necessary resources to craft a

grappling hook, which I assume will

make getting around much easier,

but I keep getting sidetracked by

alluring new areas of the planet. Which is a

good thing! Alien planets are meant to be

explored and I don’t want to simply follow

a quest marker for fear of missing

something unusual or interesting.

Seeing as how I’m armed with a

scanner, I naturally want to identify and

record every species I can. During my

demo I never even get around to crafting

my grappling hook, but in an extended

spelunking expedition into an

underground cavern I do find a sort of

spore grenade, which I can fling into the

world and create a giant springy growth I

can bounce around on. There is also a

mysterious glowing altar underground

that I can’t figure out the purpose of.

I’m eager to see more of Savage

Planet. In just the tentative bit of exploring

there seemed to be all manner of different

biomes to discover, and I look forward to

exploring more dungeons, and meeting

more oddball creatures.

Chris Livingston

O

ne of the first things I discover on the

Savage Planet is an enormous skull, so

big I can wander around inside it like a

cave. There I kill a few flying octopus

monsters, and then I see a gigantic pink uvula

dangling from that roof of the skull’s mouth. I leap

up, rip it loose, and quickly eat it.

Exploring a colorful and

gross alien world

JOURNEY TO THE

SAVAGE PLANET

I KEEP GETTING SIDETRACKED

BY ALLURING NEW

AREAS OF THE PLANET

PLAYED

IT