Planet Explorers

Planet Explorers

Pathea Games · November 8, 2016 · Open World Survival Craft, Sandbox, Open World, Survival, Multiplayer

Planet Explorers is free to play — no purchase needed. We track it so you know if that ever changes.

PC
Mixed62% · 6,8163playing now
Best price
Free
Get it free on Steam

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CJS CD Keys
CJS CD Keys
Standard Edition · Steam
$9.50
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Screenshots

Planet Explorers price

Planet Explorers is free to play — there is no purchase price, on Steam or anywhere else we track. We keep watching it, so if it ever stops being free the price history on this page will show when that happened and what it changed to.

About Planet Explorers

✦ AI summary

Survive a crash landing on an alien planet where you must explore, build, farm, and fight to establish a new colony in this massive 17x8km world filled with creatures and secrets. Create vehicles and weapons from scratch, negotiate with intelligent aliens, or wage war against them—the choice is yours as you work toward the ending on your own terms.

In Planet Explorers, it is the year 2287, one of the first colony ships sent out by Earth arrives at the planet Maria, in the Epsilon Indi Star System. During its landing sequence, something appears in front of the massive ship that causes it to lose control and crash into the planet. Some of the colonists survive in lifeboats, but what they find is an unforgiving land filled with creatures ready to outlast the visitors from Earth. Now the survivors must explorer, gather, build, create, fight, and ultimately, build a new home.

Game Modes



Planet Explorers right now only features single player.

In single player there are 3 distinct selections
  • Story Mode – Story mode is the main meat and bones of the game, it is the action-adventure-rpg-somewhat-4X segment, offering npcs, missions, colony building, farming, training, diplomacy, and of course, a storyline that you can follow or ignore. This story features a 17X8km world map with many unique character, landscapes, biomes, locations, and over 140 types of potential enemies. Even though we’ve made it seem like a very action oriented game in the trailers, in reality, players can choose to not fight so much as to just plant a farm, make some food, keep the colonists alive, negotiate with the sentient aliens, and defend the perimeter from the local life forms. That can still eventually arrive at the ending. And yes, there is an ending. Story mode also features coop with other players.
  • Adventure Mode – This mode is based on a procedural map generated from a seed. It comes in a 40X40 kilometer map. Players will be able to complete random missions, defeat bosses, dive through dungeons, and explore different landscapes. This mode also features survival and versus.
  • Build Mode – In this mode, there are no enemies and an infinite amount of building material. It also currently comes in a 40X40km map. Players will be able to build whatever they want in this mode, including everything in the Creations Editor. Think of this as the perfect testing ground to test everything you build. Or…it’s your place to build your garden without ever worrying about the pesky aliens.


Game Features


Current
  • 30+ hours of storyline
  • 140+ types of enemies
  • 40+ unique mainline NPCs
  • Able to dig
  • Able to build
  • Able to plant farm
  • Able to build colony
  • Able to have followers
  • Creation Editor to create vehicles, weapons, objects, vtols, boats, armor, and more
  • Day/night cycle with realistic moon cycles
  • Weather system
  • 15+ types of mineral types
  • 200+ unique items
  • Resource scanner
  • Realtime AI pathfinding
  • Realtime water physics
  • Multiple boss types
  • Story Editor
  • AI robot follower
  • Negotiation with aliens
  • War with aliens

Planet Explorers — game info

Platforms
Windows, macOS, Linux / SteamOS
Steam Deck
Playable
Player modes
Single-player
Controller
Partial controller support
PC Game Pass
Not included
More games like this:Mac gamesLinux games

DLC & expansions

What Steam players say

Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.

✦ AI summary

Planet Explorers had engaging co-op exploration and creative building mechanics that showed promise, but the game was abandoned in early access and never properly finished, leaving it janky and incomplete with non-functional multiplayer and poor controls. Players praise the fun memories they made with friends and the interesting core ideas around physics-based construction and alien worlds, but widely criticize the unpolished mechanics, unclear story, and developer's handling of the project including loss of backups and refusal of community support.

Not recommended Sep 1, 2026
This game was never really finished. It had an interesting physics-based gear, vehicle, and object editor which might have amounted to something unique if it had received a bit more attention to make the controls stable and well explained. It had a potentially interesting story which if it had ever actually been finished and the various story-related sites had ever been fully populated, but they weren't. It had a potentially interesting colony system, which had their building tools been refined might have been quite fun. Sadly, it was abandoned well before any of that happened, hastily "finished" along one very unclear linear story line, and then promptly lost its community as well (which might have been able to contribute an amazingly diverse amount of customization had the building tools been refined further). So, no, there's nothing to recommend here but ideas. It's a frustratingly paced, frustratingly slow, frustratingly incomplete game which had dated graphics and odd physics from launch.
6 found this helpful
Not recommended Jul 16, 2026
I understand the devs lost their source code with some server issue, but what kind of developers are so incompetent that their are no backups of their data? Seriously.
5 found this helpful
Not recommended Jul 26, 2026
Planet Explorers multiplayer is not working. then i read they have no backups and they dont wanted a community multiplayer mod added. they destroyed her game in multible ways. Pathea Games is a red flag for me. They trashed my license without refund or compensation.
2 found this helpful
Recommended Jul 7, 2026
Really enjoyed this game. It had fantastic co-op gameplay, and my family and I spent many hours exploring, building, and having fun together. The alien world was both beautiful and dangerous, making exploration exciting. The building mechanics were enjoyable too. They were a little clunky at times, but considering this was many years ago, they were still very impressive. One of my favourite memories was building a house and then creating a miniature version of it to display on a table inside the original. It's disappointing that development stopped, as the game had so much potential. With continued support, I genuinely believe it could have become something special. Even as it stands, it's a game I'll always remember.
2 found this helpful
Not recommended Jun 21, 2026
this game came out way back, in early access and never actually finished (think osiris:new dawn. devs marked it as finished but it was never "actually" finished). Its okay but full of jank. You can build design ect but its mechanics is terrible compared to other games. Not worth the the money, This is more like of a terrible verson of kenshi (which is a great game) with worse combat and build mechanics. Do not recommend.
2 found this helpful
Not recommended Sep 25, 2026
completly screwed the pooch on the L shift key unable to change it to right shift to use with the arrow keys completely ruined it for me UNISTALLED game is trash Dev is limited to an 80 IQ max

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