When comparing Planet Explorers vs The Magic Circle, the Slant community recommends The Magic Circle for most people. In the question“What are the best Exploration games on Steam?” The Magic Circle is ranked 8th while Planet Explorers is ranked 22nd. The most important reason people chose The Magic Circle is:
There are many ways to play the game, whether that's finding the location of secrets while you're a ghost, or using your resources to scam your way into them while you're alive. Good example? There's a cave across a lava river. You could either make a flat rock fireproof, give it the ability to walk and take orders, jump on it and command it to take you to the other side. OR You can just kill yourself, walk over the river while you're dead, and find a hidden spawn point while in the cave. You find these keys that look important but there's nothing to do with them, along with an old recording log from a former beta tester. You can either be perceptive and find where you need to put the blocks after looking everywhere worth looking, OR You can just read the logs, listening to this tester complain that players don't look up and the puzzle is freakin' stupid and it needs to be erased. After taking the hint, you'll find where you put the keys: Directly above your head.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Lots of transportation options
Users can build their own vehicles which makes the options pretty much limitless.
Pro Massive game world
The world is almost too big to traverse on foot.
Pro Solid gameplay and puzzles with multiple solutions, and not just an interactive piece of art
There are many ways to play the game, whether that's finding the location of secrets while you're a ghost, or using your resources to scam your way into them while you're alive.
Good example? There's a cave across a lava river. You could either make a flat rock fireproof, give it the ability to walk and take orders, jump on it and command it to take you to the other side.
OR
You can just kill yourself, walk over the river while you're dead, and find a hidden spawn point while in the cave.
You find these keys that look important but there's nothing to do with them, along with an old recording log from a former beta tester.
You can either be perceptive and find where you need to put the blocks after looking everywhere worth looking,
OR
You can just read the logs, listening to this tester complain that players don't look up and the puzzle is freakin' stupid and it needs to be erased. After taking the hint, you'll find where you put the keys: Directly above your head.
Cons
Con In early access
The game is not yet finished and any design decisions can change. A good amount of the functionality is in an early state and bugs are common.
Con Jack of all trades master of none
The scope of the game is quite large when compared to something like Minecraft, which means there are quite a few mechanics in the game that just do not feel that fleshed out. While there is much one can do in the game, when closely looking at how these things work one can see their failings easily.
Con Development progress is slow
Often many devs that do Early Access bite off more than they can chew which tends to slow down development when they inevitably need to switch engines or do rewrite large portions of the game from scratch.