Planet Explorers vs Verdant Skies
Planet Explorers
Planet Explorers is an exploration-driven, sci-fi-themed sandbox RPG where you play as one of the several pioneers who made it to the new planet, Maria… well, barely since you crashed landed on the planet. Here, you’ll need to work with your fellow pioneers to build a life and a colony for yourselves.This game is nothing short of amazing for a completely free-to-play title. Its crafting system is incredibly convenient for the player and despite the grind, gathering resources from the environment can be quite a relaxing endeavor, all thanks to the beautiful music and the immersive ambiance. Besides crafting and gathering materials like wood, rubber, and minerals, you can also hunt the local fauna for animal-based items like meat and animal fat which are needed to craft certain items. You can even tame these creatures and turn them into mounts!
Planet Explorers also comes with a rather nice storyline, an MMO-like questing system, sandbox features which allow you to build magnificent structures similar, in some ways, to Minecraft; and even build your own custom vehicles from scratch and take it out for a spin by driving around the massive map in this game.
Although the game seems to fall short of its potential of being a pretty darn great MMO game because the developers done messed up the codes, Planet Explorers still manages to offer a rather decent single-player experience. Plus, the game's completely free to play now and it doesn't contain any of those annoying ads or micro-transactions since the game was not built that way. Definitely worth a try!
Verdant Skies
Verdant Skies is an indie farm simulation/RPG combined with a pretty unique art style and visual novel-like dialogue choices. In this game, you play as the latest pioneer who was sent from Earth to a habitable alien planet whose main job is to set up and manage the farms at the colony, but of course, you are often asked to help out other characters with their tasks. You can also interact with the characters to increase your relationship level and eventually unlock new options such as being able to date them and start a family.Verdant Skies also features a straightforward gathering and crafting where every almost every action you take in this game will cost you time and/or energy. There's no need to restore the time you lost, but energy can be easily restored by consuming food. As a game that's very similar to Harvest Moon in essence, the game's farming aspect can be impressively in-depth, allowing you to splice the genes of your crops and your livestock to produce much more superior versions.
Verdant Skies is definitely the sort of game you'd want to check out if you've loved playing games like Harvest Moon, Staxel and even My Time at Portia. The game isn't too expensive either, considering the hours you can get out of it.