Planetarium

Scientists have only recently started to discover planets outside of our solar system, and even now they have to use a very indirect method to practically deduce that what they are looking at is a planet. Even so, there are hundreds of confirmed exoplanets, and some of them seem to be the right distance from their sun in order to contain liquid water, or even other forms of life.

Planetarium is more of an interactive screensaver than a game, but it can keep you occupied for a while if you enjoy science. In short, this is a planet generator that contains over one hundred planets, each one of which has a different size and terrain configuration. You cannot zoom in or admire every little detail, but there are some basic controls that allow you to interact with the celestial bodies.

Switching between planets is done by either typing the name of the one you want to visit, or by jumping to a random one at the press of a button. They can also come with a few moons orbiting them, or even rings like Saturn and Uranus. Water seems to be present on most of them, which means that you can watch it either evaporate or freeze once you mess with the temperature.

Speaking of which, each planet can sustain life, at least if you hit the right temperature setting. It’s not that difficult, on the other hand, since all you have to do is keep increasing it from zero until a message appears that provides you with details on the type of life that spawned. There’s no way to interact with the creatures or see them, but even the idea itself is quite exciting.

As far as the graphics are concerned, everything is designed to be as simple as possible, including the planets and the surrounding space. In fact, the planets almost all look the same, which is a bit of a bummer, considering the number of different examples we have in our solar system alone. Still, the style is unique and quite nice, even if the color palette is a bit restrained.

Although Planetarium is not very interactive and it lacks the necessary features to be called a proper game, you can still get lost in its magic. This could certainly transform into something a lot more intricate, at least if the developers give it a chance.