Synopsis:
In this colorful, co-op adventure game you play as the newest recruit to Kindred Aerospace. Dropped onto an uncharted planet with little equipment, you must determine if this planet is fit for human habitation—but perhaps you are not the first to set foot here…

Publisher: 505 Games
Reviewed on: PS4 (Pro unit)
Also available for: Xbox One, PC (Epic Games Store)

Cast: Kendall Savage, Adrian Burhop, Maxwell Paice, Brent Skagford, Roxane Tremblay-Marcotte

Developer: Typhoon Studios
Creative Director: Alex Hutchinson
Senior Concept Artist: Andrew Olson
Gameplay Programmer: Brian Stewart

Working for the fourth-best interstellar exploration company in the galaxy — their eighth year running, apparently — is not usually the kind of accolade you’d flash widely and yet Kindred Aerospace is very happy with their position of just off to the side of the leaders in space exploration. Unfortunately for you, they are the company you work for in Journey to the Savage Planet and your arrival on the planet named “AR-Y 26” isn’t going to be a very normal exploration mission.

As you kick off your spaceman, spacewoman, space-person or space-dog (yep) adventure you’ll be tasked with exploring the planet and finding a suitable replacement fuel source for your spacecraft to get you home. Making your way toward the center of the planet you’ll spot a giant tower that looks to be made by more evolved life-forms; however, as your AI earpiece will explain from back at your ship’s computer, there are no signs of that kind of lifeform on the planet. Your mission is then to get into that tower, of course, but you’ll need to find a way to get inside first.

As you make your way around the planet’s surface searching for a way inside you’ll quickly run into the small and cute puffer birds and be ordered to kill them for materials, because of course, you’re on a mission to save the earth and no wildlife can get in the way of this colonization. Thus, the cycle begins.

The most common comparison Journey to the Savage Planet will get is with No Man’s Sky, and although visually they can look the same and share some small elements like scanning wildlife and fauna, they’re two sides of a coin.

Although Journey to the Savage Planet is very much about exploring and ultimately hoping to colonize the planet AR-Y 26, it’s done in a ridiculously comedic manner that feels like a parody of a small genre of games. Even the game’s title felt misleading by the end of the journey. Sure, there are creatures here, some quite big, but the most savage thing on the surface seemed to be me destroying, jumping upon, shooting and prodding everything I can. And I chose to play as a dog for the memes so I was barking while doing all this to make it even worse.

As you explore the planet, which is made up of three varied biomes, you’ll come across a variety of creations, some aggressive, but most not. One small lizard creature will just run away from you screaming like someone out of a ’50s horror movie. That sound effect is one of many odd things that seem like placeholder jokes that made it into the final product but work so well in this odd, odd game. The aggressive creatures usually require a tactic to take down with either stealth or the use of your pistol and wits. A dinosaur-like creature has a weak spot on its tail, and another creature will need a ground-pound ability to take down from above.

Most of Journey to the Savage Planet is about hitting a wall and then working to get the ability or upgrade to deal with it and progress further. Very early in the game that’s the ability to double jump, and later it’s more involved upgrades to your spacesuit that’ll allow you to grind on certain plants. By the time I rolled my first set of credits (I’ll get to that) I had come to realise that Journey to the Savage Planet was reminding me not of No Man’s Sky, but of PS2-era platformers. The game is about collecting, upgrades, exploration and slight platforming. It even has several boss battles that feel like they’re from that era of game design as well. The first boss in the game has you jumping between platforms, dodging attacks and taking shots when you can; it’s simple, but it reminded me of my childhood.

You’ll collect a variety of elements for upgrades from the creatures you slaughter on the planet, but also find necessary materials from exploring and get the necessary information to build upgrades from scanning creatures, plants, structures and more. Often these scans will lead to jokes as your ship’s AI explains what each thing is—or what they think it is.

When you die, your ship’s AI will simply print another version of you to spawn inside your ship. Each time you arrive there will be some fake advertisement playing on the TV that ranges from ludicrous to cringe-inducing, but all feeling like they belong on Adult Swim. If you’re not greeted by an ad, it’ll be a video message from Martin Tweed, the President and CEO of Kindred Aerospace. These live-action videos from Tweed start the game off with its tone clearly laid out, and every other appearance becomes more ridiculous. Hilarious, yes, but utterly ridiculous.

There’s a trophy for beating the game in under four hours, so if you’re golden-pathing with little to no deaths, you’ll beat it in 4–5 hours easily. However, that’s a very small fragment of what the Journey to the Savage Planet experience is about. Having beaten the game you’ll have acquired all the core abilities, taken down the final boss, seen the credits roll, but you won’t be able to travel home yet and you certainly haven’t collected everything you can on the planet’s surface.

And now’s where I can pitch to you the true collection experience that is Journey to the Savage Planet. Mascot platformer fans get ready; Banjo-Kazooie fans get ready; Crackdown fans get ready: this game has a lot of collectibles. These range from materials necessary for more upgrades to the core 100 gooey eggs that periodically upgrade your health and stamina stats when you eat them. Does your character think it’s a bad idea to be eating strange eggs on a planet they don’t know? Of course they don’t. On top of collectibles in the wild — of which you can eventually get an upgrade to help you pinpoint them — there are challenges, like tagging enemies without them seeing you (easier said than done). If I had the time I’d 100% devote myself to finding all of them.

You can play Journey to the Savage Planet completely in co-op, which I’m sure is a fun time; however, I didn’t get a chance to test this out. I can safely say that exploring solo didn’t feel like a hollow experience.

There are so many moments playing Journey to the Savage Planet that I wish I had been recording my reactions. Either because I began giggling or I simply turned my head in questioning curiosity. It’s an odd game, but with this charming and colourful world that is ripe for exploration—and thanks to the game’s use of humour—it quickly escapes any typical colonizer-hero story tropes. This is a journey worth taking.

(Journey to the Savage Planet code provided for review)