Stranded on an alien planet, you find yourself exploring, fighting, crafting, automating and eventually making this new place fully yours. Nova Lands takes what makes Forager “good” and turns it into something completely new and incredibly fun!
Developer: BEHEMUTT
Publisher: HypeTrain Digital
Genre: Indie, Sandbox, Adventure, Base Building
Release Date: June 22nd, 2023
Reviewed on: PC
Available on: PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, XB1
Copy was provided by StridePR.
Nova Lands works in a lot of ways like a mix of Satisfactory, Factorio and Forager. You’re on an island and you gather stones, plants and ores. You use these resources to create coal, then ingots, later getting into more advanced resources like plastic, fuel, microchips and power. You know the drill.
These resources respawn sporadically, like in Forager, and you earn experience to level up and unlock new skills in a skill tree. At the same time, you have the satisfaction of automating processes, building robots and creating supply chains – and it’s really, really fun, albeit not too complicated.
Initially, you’re just left on this island. By constructing specific utilities, you can discover new islands with more resources but also new dangers on them.
It’s an incredibly cute game that starts off really slow but picks up on steam quickly!
On a nearby island, other crashlanded survivors are creating a village of sorts. Meanwhile, you’re inhabiting the other places while creating a big factory of sorts. The goal is… well… to prosper and uncover the secrets of the islands, I guess? I’m honestly not sure but it’s fine. There’s a lot to do.
At first, I found myself resupplying resources non-stop but ultimately, after researching them, I got to build robots that take care of the more mundane tasks for me. Nova Lands features three kinds of robots: Basic, Combat and Logistics Bots.
The former is able to mine and pick up resources while combat bots will either hunt beasts or guard the island. The latter is there to resupply resources and move them from stockpile to stockpile.
And then, as time goes on, you just snowball from there, replacing old haphazard chains of machines for better-organized machines. I found myself using one island for farms, creating this complex system where some bots picked up water, other bots picked up seeds and delivered fruits, and then the logistics bots would essentially supply farms with everything they need.
Even this process can later be automated even more efficiently, giving me much more space in the end.
Suddenly, I had islands that produced specific resources while other logistics buildings couldn’t keep up with the supply and storage. It was time for yet another upgrade: Drones! But Drones are also a bit more complicated to set up.
As you can see, it just builds on top of another and I find it very satisfying to go around and improve previous supply chains, work on them and see if I can balance out things or speed things up. Add to that overclocks and rare resources, the introduction of ranching and farming, and just generally cool stuff.
Apart from the construction and automation, Nova Lands also features some combat. You’re equipped with a tool that can mine everything as well as a gun that feels reliable, albeit weak. There are bosses, as well, that you’ll have to fight at times… but combat isn’t Nova Lands strength, at all.
The game says that if you’re “up for a fight”, just go there and beat up the guardians… and otherwise if you’re not into that, you place a specific item into a shrine. Personally, though, I found these guardians to be health sponges that just won’t go down and are too hard to fight, especially as you’re non-stop in need of oxygen. It takes lots of preparation. It’s a drag.
So, I’m glad that you can just use specific items to skip the boss fights… but I also wonder why you’d put combat into the game if you’re not gonna balance it properly.
Another thing, I noticed is the islands being hexagonal makes them a bit wonky in terms of being as space efficient as possible. At the same time, I also wish that you could decorate stuff or build more things that aren’t automation-based just to pretty-fy stuff. Would be nice.
Overall, I feel like Nova Lands has a lot to offer. I at one point found it a bit slow, entering a lull kind of, but then I researched a new tech and holy shit, it’s a blast again and there are so many more things to do… and oh my, is that a space station that you can advance and develop with more shops? Oh, and there’s a community centre with rewards? And Quests? And Skins? Oh my.
There is just a ton to do and I’d love it if I could organize stuff better and add decorations. The option to just “move” buildings is unlocked at one point, right when I started to get annoyed by deconstructing and building stuff again. When I got annoyed at having to destroy resources to be able to place stuff, I unlocked the ability that fixes that annoyance.
And well, I feel like Nova Lands, as inspired by Forager as it is, doesn’t really feel like a “clone” or whatever. It very much took what makes Forager “good” and makes it better.
In Forager, you’re just swamped with resources and stuff “automates” itself on its own which is alright but it does not scratch that same itch, really. Hence, I love that Nova Lands really capitalizes on what Forager is missing and that it builds on that. It’s a lot of fun which is why I recommend checking it out!
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
If you see this article anywhere other than Indiecator.org then this article has been scraped. Please let me know about this via E-Mail.
Indiecator 