Planetarium

Game: Planetarium

Developer: Daniel Linssen

Platform: PC

Download Link: https://managore.itch.io/planetarium

I love space! Space is super cool. Realizing you live in a universe where you are as insignificant as a speck of dust is both saddening yet intriguing to think about. Teams are always on the search for exoplanets, especially ones that could potentially be teeming with life. Now, I could always boot up Space Engine and explore the far reaches of a procedurally generated universe, or boot up Elite Dangerous and live life as a space trader or explorer in the Milky Way galaxy. However, sometimes, I just want to look at cool looking planets that could potentially host life on them. I could search for them in Space Engine, but that can be a bit of a hassle sometimes. Sometimes I don't wanna put in the work and just have planets be generated for me in a piece of software. That's where Daniel Linssen's Planetarium comes in.

Planetarium is a software which generates planets. It generates planets based on the lettered characters that are typed in, essentially acting as a seed for what planet gets generated. There are millions of combinations of letters you can put into the system to the point where it's futile to figure out just how many exactly you can generate. All planets that are generated are Earth-like planets that have the potential for life. You can also rotate the planets left and right, along with looking at their moon system when applicable. You can also take screenshots of planets you think are cool and save them in a folder.

If your goal is searching for Earth in Planetarium, you're going to be spending a lot of time with this software. It's not so easy as to type in "Earth" and you get a planet accurate to the proportions and geography of Earth. You're going to have to sort through a lot of planets before you find one that closely resembles Earth. It more than likely is one of 150 secret planets that you can discover in this software, which is one of the reasons to keep searching for planets to generate. They are elusive, so it'll take some creativity to find them.

I haven't fully uncovered Planetarium's secrets, but my love for astronomy does bring me back to software such as this. Planets are cool to look at, and if we ever get technology powerful enough to get a visible look at exoplanets, perhaps our fundamental understanding of how the universe works will continue to change. Until then, we can always imagine what Earth-like planets look like way out in the cosmos, with Planetarium giving us an albeit pixelated start.