Lifeless Planet: Not all that Lifeless

 Lifeless Planet is a walking simulator that follows a nameless astronaut awakening after a crash landing on a planet that was supposed to be full of life. Now stranded, low on oxygen and alone, all this man can do is wander, hope to find his other teammates and do something about this hopeless situation. 

Being a normal astronaut, the player doesn’t have many mobility options, you can run and jump like a normal human. Thanks to astronaut technology however, you have access to a small jet thrust that can help push you just a bit further or give you more jump height. You can also push certain objects around, usually to create platforms, open up a path or complete some of the very basic puzzles in the game. Later on the player gains access to consecutive jet jumps and a long robot arm to solve specific puzzles with. It’s very simple gameplay, even with multiple jumps, and that’s all it really needs.

Lifeless Planet does the standard “data logs tell you the lore” that most Walking Simulators do. The story is about the soviet union colonizing the planet before the American astronauts. The colonization attempt failed and all attempts to contact earth failed, as the portal used to get to this planet connected back to earth a hundred years into the future. They all died out as they could no longer come into contact with their government and lacked any actual agricultural ability on the planet.

Adding to this, the only organism on the planet is this plant-like organism that impale and drain other organisms. Begging the obvious question of how this creature survived at all as there is no evidence of any organisms other than the plants and the humans that attempted to colonize the planet. The obvious answer is that these are just roadblocks to impede progress and add some kind of failure state to the game which the game doesn’t really need.

The story adds some weird psychological angle with the astronaut and his comatose wife. A hiking trip gone wrong left the poor woman comatose and the astronaut left, taking the mission to leave her enough money to live until she passes naturally or some kind of treatment could be developed. It adds nothing to the game other than a few hallucinations for the astronaut to follow.

Eventually the astronaut meets a mysterious human-looking woman that leads him around the planet. The game of cat and mouse eventually culminates in the woman sacrificing herself to give the plant organisms new life, how that works is a mystery, and one that doesn’t matter as they still have no food source once the astronaut leaves for home through the portal the soviet’s used.

Lifeless planet is exactly what is said on the tin, you are exploring a lifeless plane formerly colonized by the soviets and not much else. The game has strands of something else, but nothing actually gripping enough to keep one’s interest. Thankfully it is a short game, around 5 hours, and provides fun enough platforming, especially during sections in which the player has the multi-thrust upgrade, but everything else is a meh journey. 

TLDR: Lifeless planet has little going for it to be worth more than a passing glance. It tells a fairly meh story with meh gameplay that occasionally becomes a tad more exciting. It lasts as long as it needs to and remains in the mind for just as long.