Shattered Planet

Shattered Planet looks like a small sci-fi roguelike and then turns out to be a game about route choice, risk, and surviving one more step. By our assessment, that is the right kind of strength for this format: each run has to matter, and the player is kept thinking about when to push on and when to pull back. The limit is also familiar, because roguelikes can become repetitive if the early hours do not click and the randomness starts to feel like the whole show. In play, the loop is simple but tense, with exploration, bad trade-offs, and the constant possibility that a good run can collapse quickly. Shattered Planet sits in the crowd of compact turn-based survival games rather than in the wide world of story-heavy science fiction. It is for people who like making hard little choices under pressure, not for anyone wanting a long, smooth adventure.