About the Game
From an uninhabited planet in space to an ecosystem full of life.
In Planetary Life you will be able to shape a planet in the purest Sandbox Simulation style, playing with its mountains, seas and even its climate, to create the perfect habitat to harbor life.
PLANETS
Control a planet with the multiple tools available. Let the tectonic plates shape the mountains and seas, modify the climate, the heat of the nucleus, the volcanic activity, the gases of the atmosphere, etc... until shaping the home of your creatures.
CREATURES AND EVOLUTION
Add creatures and evolve them from simple organisms to intelligent beings. Design and expand them looking for the balance of a perfect ecosystem.
Help them or let them fight for survival on their own.
CELL STAGE
Create new life forms combining different types of cells. From single cells and multicellular life, to macroscopic creatures and plants.
GEOSPHERE AND ATMOSPHERE
Change core heat and volcanic activity to shape your planet terrain through volcanoes.
Manipulate rainfalls, cloud and surface albedo to change the climate.
ECOSYSTEMS
Build ecosystems. Maintain the balance between fauna and flora. Do not let them break the harmony and avoid the extinction of species.
WALK YOUR PLANETS
You can walk around and see from a first-person point of view your planet and your creations.
CIVILIZATIONS
This feature is still not available in Early Access, it will come in a major update soon!
When your creatures reach sufficient intelligence they will organize themselves into tribes and later flourish into civilizations. Manage and help them in the battle for technology to conquer the planet.
Screenshots
11 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
- Fixed bug causing the game to crash, specially after loading game.
- Fixed bug not loading components help screen.
- Fixed bug causing the game to throw many errors when changing zoom in a situation with a lot of creatures.
- Increased a bit the camera horizontal rendering range, to reduce the pop-in effect of things when moving camera.
- Added DirectX rendering server option.
Changes
- Upgraded game engine. This will potentially fix issues related to black spots when using RTX 5000 series GPU.
Bug fixes
- Fixed visual bug in water caustics when using Nvidia cards.
- Added Steam Deck compatibility.
- Font size adjustments for small screens and Steam Deck.
- Added Plant editor in the main menu.
- Added Fungi editor in the main menu.
- Showing current player/game name when hovering on main menu’s Continue button.
Changes
- Removed unaffected color by light from creature’s outlines causing to be bright during the night time.
Bug fixes
Fixed potential crash when playing the game in a non-supported language (thanks to Svardmastaren for finding it!).
Fixed error causing to no recovery settings from the backup.
- Fixed visual glitch on plants.
- Fixed mouse cursor appearing under some controls.
- Added HOME button to return directly to your home star. This will avoid softlock when you run out of energy and you are in another star where you cannot claim a new planet. But, to travel back to your star home you will need to pay with all your energy as punishment!
- Added new rare colors for planets.
Changes
- Improved the area of shadow of the planet. This will fix an issue with poles not being cold anymore, and also improves the tidally locked planet’s hot/cold areas.
Improved tidally locked hot/cold areas:
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44249602/446e4235a03596688069516b16125003ec081f8a.png"]
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44249602/09aca4586c0f86e2a7990a59a9cc54822727028e.png"]
Improved tidally locked hot/cold areas:
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44249602/1ffeff326688cc0fd9f2e96ec2b1f8247ffb00ea.png"]
Changes
- Reduced the snow/underwater fog intensity.
- Showing virtual keyboard in all input fields when running the game in Steam Deck.
This patch contains some new small stuff and changes.
But there is one which is quite IMPORTANT:
After testing the game with an AMD Radeon GPU, I found there were some graphical issues I couldn't solve without breaking the game for Nvidia GPUs.
This is because I was using an old OpenGL version for rendering the game. This decision was make having in mind that the game should be compatible with very old computers also.
But, I didn't expect that because of this I was breaking compatibility for some modern PCs!
This is why I decided to replace the default rendering method from OpenGL to Vulkan, which fixed all issues (I think so) and also allows me to improve graphics futher.
I'm not leaving back those with old computers, so you will still be able to launch the game using the old rendering method.
I added two launch options in Steam where the one called "Compatibility" will use the old method.
I hope the game now runs much better in everyones computer, but in case you found anything regression let me now ASAP!
By the way, during these changes and after start using the new shiny Vulkan API, I decided to upgrade the graphics a bit, so you will see the game a bit different :)
New features
- Vulkan first as rendering method. The old OpenGL rendering method is still available as an optional launch method in Steam.
- Added a button to create basic fungi (you must create a fungi using the cell stage first to unlock this button).
- Added new zoom between galaxy view and star system view, allowing players to travel between stars.
- Added option to tidally lock a planet. This will have temperature consequences in both sides of the planet.
- Added Life Vault button in the main menu to get access to all exported lifeforms.
- Possibility to import lifeforms from the Life Vault anywhere in the planet (water is not a mandatory requirement anymore).
- Added a new tutorial tip to tell about the tile history logs.
Changes
- Small visual upgrade: atmosphere, lighting, grass, tree leaves, etc…
- Now tiles with water will calculate temperature based on its height including water (This will affect simulation, so maybe screw ups some old planet's balance).
- Temperature too high or too low notifications will trigger only when the temperate changes more than 25% from recent previous measurement.
- Increased the carnivores digestion time, so they get less hungry.
- Decreased shells and osteoderm skin defense by 1.
- Added “No tutorial” warning for Unlimited mode.
- Duplicated the total number of stars in the galaxy.
Bug fixes
- Fixed long insect legs flickering.
- Fixed temperature and other values not rendering well in the minimap image.
- Fixed skill menu showing in wrong zooms.
- Some minor fixes and changes in the UI.
Changes
- Decreased dead body size.
Bug fixes
- Fixed minimap not updating when paused.
- Fixed bug causing flying creatures not showing in terrain.
- Fixed bug causing bigger creatures to float over terrain.
- Fixed artifacts not showing after loading game.
Changes
- Huge performance improvement in rendering. The game should run better in all range of computers. This makes big planets more playable.
- Added simulation and rendering performance bars in the top left of the screen.
- Hide the current system's star when it visually crosses between the current planet and the player's camera.
Bug fixes
- Fixed creature dots not showing when the are is ice.
Changes
- Added priority to load plant models and creature sprites from the current planet.
- Added tiny loading bars in the top left of the game to know that plant models and creatures sprites are still loading.
Bug fixes
- Fixed bug causing the plants to not load in stars with a lot of planets full of life.
Current Release
19671482
Uploaded Sep 05, 2025
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System Requirements
How to Install
PlanetaryLife.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
102 MB
19671482
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Download Planetary Life for PC with a direct link or via torrent. Get the full version of Planetary Life for free. Planetary Life is a Indie released by Sotenbox.