Revenge of the Savage Planet is the kind of sequel that understands exactly what its predecessor did well and doubles down on it, even if some of the new additions don’t quite land. This follow-up to 2020’s Journey to the Savage Planet delivers a vibrant, satirical, and often hilarious sci-fi adventure that packs a surprising amount of personality into a relatively compact runtime. But for all its charm and wit, the game struggles with uneven mechanics, an overwhelming glut of collectibles, and a confusing endgame structure that may leave players scratching their heads before they reach the credits. The result is an experience that is thoroughly entertaining while it lasts, but one that also feels like it could have benefited from a bit more polish and restraint.
Satire and Slapstick from the First Frame
The game wastes no time establishing its comedic identity. Before players even set foot on an alien world, they are treated to an onboarding video from Alta InterGlobal, the megacorporation that serves as the game’s primary antagonist. The sequence is a pitch-perfect parody of 1980s corporate training videos, complete with exploding simulation cats and the casually delivered news that the protagonist has been drifting through space for a century. It is absurd, unapologetically silly, and sets the tone for everything that follows. The corporate satire that pervades Revenge of the Savage Planet is sharp without being heavy-handed, poking fun at workplace culture, productivity culture, and the soulless optimism of corporate communications. It is the kind of humor that lands because it feels rooted in a real understanding of how ridiculous these institutions can be.
Once on the ground on Stellaris Prime, players are introduced to EKO, a flying computer companion who serves as both a narrative guide and a constant source of sarcastically upbeat commentary. EKO treats every disaster as a productivity opportunity, offering cheerful observations about catastrophic failures as if they were minor inconveniences to be optimized away. The dynamic between the player character and EKO drives much of the game’s comedic energy, and the writing is consistently clever enough to keep the jokes from wearing thin over the course of a playthrough. The dialogue is peppered with sharp observations about corporate culture, exploration, and the absurdity of the situations the player finds themselves in, and it gives the game a distinct voice that sets it apart from more straightforward action-adventure titles.
Movement That Matches the Mood, for Better and Worse
The exaggerated movement mechanics are clearly designed to complement the game’s cartoonish aesthetic. The player character runs with a bouncy, almost looney gait, wades through water with high knees, and slips and slides across gooey surfaces with all the grace of a character in a classic animated short. It is playful, expressive, and perfectly in keeping with the game’s overall visual and comedic style. In the opening minutes, this movement feels fresh and novel, a welcome departure from the more grounded locomotion of many contemporary action games. But the novelty wears off relatively quickly, and what initially feels charming can start to feel imprecise as the game introduces more demanding platforming sections.
The grappling mechanic, in particular, feels awkward in a way that creates genuine friction during platforming sequences. There were moments where the camera had to be spun rapidly just to ensure a jump would connect, and the margin for error can feel arbitrary. These issues are most pronounced in the mid-game, before players have accumulated enough abilities to bypass more challenging traversal sections. By the endgame, when players have unlocked a robust suite of movement tools, the platforming becomes almost trivial. It is a strange progression: the game is at its most mechanically frustrating during the stretch where it should be building confidence, and it becomes smoothest just as the credits come into view.
A Galaxy of Familiar Biomes
The game features five planets, though one functions primarily as a boss arena rather than a full exploration zone. The remaining four worlds cover familiar territory for anyone who has played an adventure game: desert, forest, tundra, and plains, with a robotic playground thrown in for variety. These are well-established biome archetypes, and the game does not reinvent the wheel. What it does do is render each environment with a vibrant, colorful palette that makes even the most familiar settings feel fresh. The art direction leans heavily into saturated colors and whimsical creature designs, and the result is a series of worlds that are genuinely pleasant to spend time in.
The true strength of these planets lies in their density. Each world is packed with flora and fauna to scan, resources to collect, and secrets to uncover. The ability-gated exploration system means that players will frequently encounter areas they cannot access on their first visit, only to return later with new skills and discover hidden caches of goodies. This loop of unlocking, returning, and collecting is satisfying in theory, and for the first few hours, it provides a compelling incentive to keep exploring. But the sheer volume of collectibles eventually becomes overwhelming. There is simply too much stuff to gather, and much of it feels superfluous to the core experience. Only a small fraction of the collectibles are necessary to complete the game comfortably, and the rest exist primarily to pad the playtime for completionists. The traversal, while enjoyable at first, does not provide enough mechanical satisfaction to justify hours of post-game cleanup.
Combat That Expands Without Fully Evolving
One of the most common criticisms of Journey to the Savage Planet was its reliance on a single gun for combat. Revenge of the Savage Planet attempts to address this by introducing a range of consumable items that add variety to encounters. Players can now deploy flame shots, bombs, goo globs of various elemental properties, and a water hose, each of which can be combined with the environment to take down enemies in creative ways. The combat challenges that unlock new skills often require players to use these tools in specific configurations, effectively serving as tutorials for the expanded arsenal. This is a smart design choice that ensures players understand the full range of options available to them.
However, despite these additions, the primary weapon remains a single gun. The consumables add depth to combat encounters, but they do not fundamentally change the loop of aiming, shooting, and dodging. The aim assist is generous, which is welcome given that Revenge of the Savage Planet is not a precision shooter, and it makes dealing with flying and mobile enemies far more manageable than manual targeting would allow. But the combat never quite reaches the level of depth or variety that the expanded toolkit seems to promise. It is functional, occasionally creative, but rarely thrilling.
Abilities That Shine and Abilities That Fade
The skill tree offers some genuinely satisfying upgrades. The ground stomp and whip rock abilities, in particular, are fun to use and add a kinetic energy to traversal and combat that the base movement lacks. There is something undeniably enjoyable about launching oneself hundreds of feet into the air and then slamming down onto unsuspecting creatures below. But other abilities feel underutilized or introduced too late to matter. The projectile counter, for example, is useful against exactly one boss and then never appears again. The gliding mechanic unlocked via EKO arrives so late in the game that it barely has time to make an impression, serving more as a theoretical addition to the movement vocabulary than a practical tool. And the home customization system, while cute, is entirely superfluous to the core gameplay loop. These elements add flavor, but they do not add substance.
A Confusing Path to the Credits
The game features multiple endings, and the path to each one is less clear than it should be. The missions that lead to the main ending feel strangely optional, buried among a glut of late-game objectives that make it difficult to discern which ones are critical and which are side content. It is possible to complete the game without finishing the missions that lead to the true ending, and doing so results in a conclusion that feels abrupt and incomplete. The first ending I encountered left me feeling as though I had missed something, and in a sense, I had. Reaching the true ending requires returning to every planet and collecting far more resources than the game ever indicates are necessary.
This is a structural flaw that undermines the pacing of the final hours. Instead of building toward a satisfying climax, the game forces players to engage in a scavenger hunt that feels disconnected from the narrative momentum. When the true ending finally arrives, it is satisfying in its own right. There is genuine catharsis in finally sticking it to the corporate overlords who abandoned the protagonist in space for a century. But the journey to get there is frustrating in a way that the game’s lighthearted tone cannot fully smooth over.
The Verdict: A Fun Experience While It Lasts
Revenge of the Savage Planet is a game that knows what it wants to be: a quirky, satirical, exploration-focused adventure with a cartoonish sensibility and a sharp sense of humor. In many respects, it succeeds. The vibrant worlds, the clever writing, the witty naming conventions, and the abundant puzzle-solving all come together to create an experience that is engaging and often genuinely funny. The ten-plus hours it takes to beat the game feel about right for the scope of the content, especially if players engage with a reasonable amount of side content. Beyond that, however, repetition begins to set in, and the game’s flaws become harder to ignore.
The repetitive action, the superfluous collectibles, the awkward physics, and the unclear objectives all detract from what is otherwise a very enjoyable experience. For sci-fi lovers, adventure game enthusiasts, and players who enjoy exploration for its own sake, this is an easy recommendation. For those seeking a polished, serious adventure, a cautious approach is warranted. And for players who have no patience for ability-gated exploration, quirky movement, or satirical humor, this is probably a game to skip.
Revenge of the Savage Planet is a fun sequel that delivers on its comedic promises and offers a colorful world worth exploring. It is just a shame that some of its most interesting ideas are buried under an avalanche of collectibles and obscured by an endgame that asks too much of the player’s patience.
