Journey to the Savage Planet is a cheeky sci-fi romp packed with secrets

Alex Hutchinson is terrified of any game that asks him to spend hundreds of hours on it. So instead of making a time-sucking, open-world role-playing game or hopping on the live-service trend, the cofounder and creative director at Typhoon Studios opted to make something he considers a bit old-fashioned.

The result is Journey to the Savage Planet, a sci-fi exploration game coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in early 2020 from Typhoon and publisher 505 Games. You play as a scientist working for the dubious Kindred Aerospace — its CEO likes to boast that it’s the “fourth-best interstellar exploration company” in the galaxy — and you have to find out if your assigned planet is safe and hospitable for humans. This involves cataloging bizarre wildlife, solving environmental puzzles, and discovering the purpose of a peculiar tower off in the distance.