Prospector

About

Prospector is a single player open world role playing game. It was developed by Loonworks Games and was released on July 31, 2025. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

Land on an alien world with nothing but your wits, your tools, and your drive to thrive. Build, explore, and automate in this sci-fi resource management game. From humble beginnings to a sprawling space base! Construct your base from scratch using anything you can find - from primitive resources to unknown alien materials. Unlock blueprints, optimize your workflow with automation, and pu…

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75%

Audience ScoreBased on 77 reviews

graphics4 positive mentions

grinding7 negative mentions

The game offers a charming pixel art style and cozy atmosphere that appeals to fans of automation and base-building games like Astroneer and Forager.
Gameplay is enjoyable and relaxing with an addictive progression system involving resource gathering, base building, and fulfilling contracts.
Developer is very active and responsive, regularly addressing bugs and community feedback to improve the game experience.

The game suffers from a significant number of bugs and lacks polish, including stability issues, UI problems, and some game-breaking glitches.
Automation and gameplay mechanics feel limited and simplistic, with frustrating design choices such as finite resource nodes, awkward inventory, and clunky crafting systems.
Poor quality-of-life features like small UI text, absence of clear goals, manual saving, and inadequate tutorials make the game confusing and less accessible.

gameplay
24 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
13%
74%
13%
Gameplay offers a varied experience blending exploration, base-building, and automation with cozy pixel art, providing hours of engaging and replayable content. However, it is marred by awkward mechanics, inconsistent pacing, incomplete features, and technical issues that give it an unfinished, early-access feel. Despite flaws, ongoing fixes and updates are improving the core experience.
- “After a few hours of gameplay, I can easily say that I’ve had a lot of fun.”
- “A lot of the issues mentioned in early reviews (like ranching mechanics or item quality frustrations) have already been fixed or tweaked for a better gameplay experience.”
- “Start small and manual, get enough resources to start exploring, get more technology in order to build more crafters, start automating, etc. It has hours of gameplay on the first playthrough, and is replayable to optimize production or automation or speed up your progress.”
- “Elements that look like placeholders rather than mechanics implemented in a sound manner, several independently caused crashes, FPS drops, weird building rules that were left out because the developer was running out of time.”
- “The pacing is not thought-through; the core mechanics like the energy network lead to the base becoming a chaotic mess antithetical to an orderly factory game, and honestly the game feels like it came out in early access and is due for a significant overhaul.”
- “The similarities to games like Forager, Factorio, or Nova Lands are largely superficial, and the game feels like a mishmash of features and mechanics someone liked from other games where those were part of a cohesive set but stick out here like a tacked on sore thumb.”
story
15 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
20%
60%
20%
The story is generally praised for its engaging narrative, art, and sound design, providing a refreshing, straightforward, and story-driven sandbox experience. However, some players encounter frustrating bugs that block progression and find certain missions and objectives unclear or difficult to guess. Despite these issues, many appreciate the game's simple goals and enjoy the overall story and gameplay loop.
- “Great story, art and sound design.”
- “It's important to know this is a story-driven sandbox, where the narrative comes first.”
- “After completing the story: loved it, I would take more game please!”
- “It has bugs like any other but an hour and a half in I already noticed bugs that cause you to lose items and got hard locked by an infinite respawning boss who was fun to fight the first time but won't stay dead, preventing progress in the story.”
- “Spent 30 minutes to no avail trying to get past a bug to complete the quest mission.”
- “I got stuck in the takeaways, progressed a bit more in the story, and now the takeaways tell me to add things I don't have at the moment. Maybe I just need to explore more or watch some developer videos.”
graphics
13 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
31%
46%
23%
The graphics feature a charming pixel art style with a cozy, cartoon-like aesthetic that enhances the laid-back, exploratory gameplay. While some note the visuals aren't especially smooth given the development time, many players appreciate the unique 2D top-down perspective and how the art contributes to the game's engaging atmosphere. Overall, the visuals effectively support the game's cozy and immersive experience.
- “I have nothing against pixel graphics, in fact I find them charming, easy on the eyes and Steam Deck battery, and overall true to the 'cozy' vibe.”
- “If the unique art style and 2D top-down view are your thing, I highly recommend it.”
- “The pixel art visuals add a lot to the cozy atmosphere and perfectly support the laid-back but engaging gameplay.”
- “Clearly the reported 5 years the game was in development were not dedicated to making the graphics look smooth.”
- “Oh, and the graphical style?”
- “[*][b]the art style.”
grinding
7 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Grinding in the game is viewed as tedious and poorly explained, particularly in late stages where random item collection and manual crafting become clunky and time-consuming. The farming and ranching mechanics are criticized for being filler content that slows progression, with inefficient systems like storage filters and slow faction order completion adding to the frustration. Overall, the grinding elements detract from the experience due to lack of clarity, repetitiveness, and slow pacing.
- “Late game is grindy not because it requires a lot, but because it requires random items which the game doesn't explain how to get.”
- “Manual crafting becomes tedious and clunky due to lack of features like +5/10 crafting, half crafting, and inputting individual numbers.”
- “About 6 to 10 hours were just filler waiting on resources to get 100% completion, with long waits for faction-related orders due to lack of resources from ranching and farming.”
stability
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game currently suffers from bugs and unclear mechanics, causing issues like unstable controls and placement problems. However, despite its unfinished state, it shows potential for improvement.
- “It's unfinished, buggy, and unclear.”
- “Controller is kind of janky; I couldn't place a miner (might be because it was overlapping two different powered zones?). It seems buggy, but I think it has potential.”
replayability
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game offers strong replayability through its engaging base-building mechanics and progression from manual to automated gameplay. Players can enjoy hours initially and continue replaying to optimize production, automation, and improve speed.
- “My verdict: it’s a polished, cozy indie game that invites you to explore its world and offers great replay value thanks to its base-building mechanics.”
- “Start small and manual, get enough resources to start exploring, get more technology in order to build more crafters, start automating, etc. It has hours of gameplay on the first playthrough, and is replayable to optimize production or automation or speed up your progress.”
music
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The music in the game is unobtrusive and relaxing, making it a suitable background for playing while listening to podcasts or having conversations. It complements the gameplay without demanding full attention.
optimization
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game features smooth performance overall and offers well-optimized controls for gamepad users.
atmosphere
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The pixel art visuals significantly enhance the cozy atmosphere, complementing the game's relaxed yet engaging gameplay. This combination creates an inviting and immersive environment for players.
- “The pixel art visuals add a lot to the cozy atmosphere and perfectly support the laid-back but engaging gameplay.”