Winner of the misfortune lottery, and they hit the jackpot...
Planet Centauri is a game that is very reminiscent of Terraria, as it was also the main inspiration for the game. After all, Planet Centauri has been in development since 2016, but has been in the early access phase for most of that time.
Similar to Terraria, you can explore to your heart's content, but Planet Centauri also offers a wide range of skills, monsters, alchemy, magic, and much more.
In December 2024, the game finally got its official release. After 8 years in early access, the game has not only sold over 100,000 copies, but has also been added to 140,000 players' wish lists.
However, the developers, Permadeath, were bitterly disappointed with the release of the full version as sales figures were not nearly as high as expected. They commented on the issue in a Reddit Post:
Version 1.0 was released in December 2024... we sold... 581 units in 5 days. The game didn't even appear on page 2; we were invisible; the release was a total flop. And we never understood why, until today.
This is how Steam can ruin more than 10 years of your work by u/PlanetCentauri in gamedev
Steam Admits Bug
The development studio later received an email from Steam in which the well-known platform admitted to an error. Planet Centauri has been affected by a rare bug, and this bug is so rare that it can only be described as incredibly bad luck.
It's incredible to win the lottery like that: 100 out of 86,000 games on Steam were affected in 10 years.
Normally, you are contacted by email as soon as a game on your wish list becomes available. However, the bug prevents this from happening. This means that when the game was released, not enough people had it on their radar, so it wasn't featured in “New & Trending” on Steam.
Steam offered the developer the opportunity to feature the game as a “Daily Deal.” This means that games are displayed on the homepage at a discount, ensuring greater visibility. The developer continues to express frustration on Reddit and is certain that the damage has already been done.
Many comments under the Reddit post urged the developer to accept the Daily Deal, which they ultimately did. The game is currently available on Steam at a 25% discount until September 16.
"Mostly Negative"
Another problem that seems to plague the game is the recent reviews. The game appears to have issues and bugs and is not fully optimized. Nevertheless, players seem to enjoy it enough that it passes as “mostly positive” with a 76% rating.
However, recent reviews (11 out of a total of 1,861) rated the game negatively due to its lack of optimization. When you look at a game on Steam, and it says “mostly negative,” don't you automatically become skeptical and averse to it?
The developer admits to their own mistakes in development and is certain that they should have approached the game's development differently. Instead of “developing a small, clean game” and then building on it, they built their own engine in which they wanted to include “a little bit of everything” and optimize it. This inevitably led to many bugs.
Permadeath is currently working on another project, as it is not financially viable for them to keep patching this game.
It's frustrating to leave Centauri in this state for now, but I really hope we can come back.
Apparently, the developer still has a few monsters, bosses, and biomes “that were created and animated but never integrated.”
Did a Steam bug nip this spiritual successor to Terraria in the bud, or was the developer too ambitious, resulting in a lack of optimization and little gameplay fun? Have you heard of this game?