Lifeless Planet does suffer in a few areas. “The expansive vistas of the alien world in Lifeless Planet add to the loneliness and the emptiness of being the sole living being on an entire planet (sort of).” While the platforming and explorations never fully let you become immersed in these feelings and the game never fully explores this to its full potential, the intentions of the game are evident, if only slightly misused. The score, meanwhile, helps accentuate this and really ramps these feelings up, drawing you further into the story and bringing a real emotional pull to some of the scenes. The expansive vistas of the alien world in Lifeless Planet add to the loneliness and the emptiness of being the sole living being on an entire planet (sort of).
The style of negative space and exploration unfolding the story is quite popular on the indie scene and has been done very well in games like The Vanishing of Ethan Carter or Everybody’s Gone to Rapture.
Drawing on old sci-fi roots, the developer frequently references Aelita, a Soviet-era sci-fi classic, as a major influence, something that becomes obvious the further you delve into the game. However, if we get right down to it, LP is primarily about its story and the gameplay is really just to propel that story forward. They aren’t really challenging or even time consuming, but they come at regular enough intervals to keep you from getting bored scrambling around the far corners of the planet. The game also throws some puzzles in to spice up the flow of the game, but that’s all they’re pretty much there for. Yes, there are trophies to be had if you discover each and every way that this alien world wants to kill you and trust me, there’s a lot.
Speaking of not making jumps, LP also rewards you for something that you regularly do in games but are rarely rewarded for – aka, dying. There were several times that I didn’t think I could make a jump but somehow managed to cross what must have been a kilometre, just to scrape on to the platform which was certainly fun. Traversing massive alien canyons is as simply as a leap of faith and some expert tweaks of your jetpack. The jetpack will semi-regularly get ‘refuelled’ to allow you to maximize your jumps and that’s when the real fun sets in. The platforming comes courtesy of a jetpack attached to your suit and what I can only imagine is lighter gravity cause you have some serious ups. The gameplay of LP is fairly straight forward as it is primarily a platformer that likes to splice in some puzzles here and there.
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