Smalland: Survive the Wilds

I really wanted to love this game... I had it on my wish list for so long and bought this over another game. Really wish I had not. the game is not awful by any means and it plays ok, but the world feels very dead. all the NPCs feel souless and like they are just pasted onto the game. the game looks alright, but sort of has the textured feel of Morrowind. The game does have its merits though, it successfully makes you feel very tiny.

The visuals and creatures are incredible, the exploration is hand-crafted and excellent, the range of difficulty settings are ace, and the gameplay is decent. Probably my favorite environment of any game ever. I absolutely love that there are giant [spoiler]mice and birds, and that they are ridable. The detail is amazing too, down to the hairs on the mouse's tail.[/spoiler] They also do a great job of keeping things fresh instead of relying on a single "you are tiny" gimmick, by unlocking new, very unique areas and varied objectives. Bravo. It still feels kinda early access in terms of length and depth, so hopefully there is more to come. I am really looking forward to any region and story updates. (A lot of my playtime was just fiddling with decorative base builds or not closing the game while idle; you can complete it much faster.) ------ Some negatives, which I'll detail for the devs: * Some of the animations killed my framerate to about 1 fps every time companions would teleport to me, and similar effects. But that one was the worst, because if you're going fast enough, it's happening constantly. * Building is jank. They need to increase the rotation angle possibilities, finish the end-game building set so you don't need to use earlier substitutes, improve painting (difficult to make substitutes match because the colors end up nowhere near true to the picker, presumably due to aggressive environmental effects being applied, but I can't seem to make light or bright colors), fix some "cannot build here" issues even though the area is free to build, and the size changer is buggy. * Needs at least one more spawn option in midgame before you get easier travel options (which I did not discover until almost everything else was complete) * Some issues communicating next moves. For example, without forum threads, I would have never known that I had to return to the remains after completing other objectives. A better message would be something that imparts "you cannot read this yet." I also completed the final boss's location long before I could access the final boss, and had an object I couldn't interact with, and then got totally stuck on the boss floor where my companions couldn't teleport to for some reason, and couldn't find a way to platform up. [spoiler]I also didn't have a flying companion prior to the stinkbug potion, so I never saw the effect and only pieced it together from vague forum comments.[/spoiler] Many of these things should be better progress-gated or communicated * Skipped the faction stuff because point accrual was so slow. Also the intelligence stat mechanics need work. * Stuff like armor and weapon progression isn't very clear. Some threads say go off the cold stat, but that doesn't seem reliable. I guess I'd like more armor progression to work towards, period, instead of "pick your favorite and upgrade." I like the active armor + cosmetic armor system other games have, and think it would work well here. Some fantastic looking sets. * [spoiler]The enemy mice spawned inside my house(!) when I tried to incubate one.[/spoiler] * I don't know if it's Unreal Engine or what, but saves on most games these days are so annoying. Why can't we make named milestone saves? It makes building and long travel distances really tedious. I manually made a lot of my own backups because even the game's backups are useless, and don't backup the world state. * I still don't know what the 1/70/140 grid option does in building, except I can't place items on floors on the higher setting. * Seems like building materials are not always returned reliably during relocation (yes, I checked different elevations, under floors etc). Are they supposed to be? I'm missing mats from my oven and loom. * Needs more hotkeys for stuff like "wait here" and "pet," and its annoying how companions move just as you're trying to interact. Yet at other times I'd wish they'd keep more distance instead of, for example, being where I'm trying to mine, or pushing me off branches into the abyss as they teleport to me!! I really do not like the companion interaction menu/procedure at all.

My group and I played grounded when it came and are just getting to small lands now and I gotta say after hearing how it was not "worse" than grounded just different I have to wholeheartedly disagree. The entire game feels like a discount B movie version ripoff of grounded. What is ok: The combat is fairly good following the same general resistance/weakness setup as grounded. The tools are nearly indentical. Resource gathering - same pretty much with far less interesting things (nothing like grounded's teeth or candies, just overall less well thought out it feels like. But sufficient. Base building is ok, tiles don't snap together well and you can build tiles right ontop of on another instead of having the snap properly. Can be a bit frustration. Like Grounded it has similar (but slightly worse) chest storage abilities but can craft from chests. Still a small step down (can't put everything away with one key. Cons: The Text based interactions Rather than voice acting the entire story is told with poorly written text based interactions that exceedingly simply and generally annoying. From having to go three lines deep to teleport up to your treebase (or down) to generally cheesy dialogue options it's just really disappointing and atmosphere breaking in may cases. Just reads as low effort and a bit cheesy. Multiplayer. Pretty decent connections, some disconnects over long sessions but nothing game breaking. If you play in multiplayer even if you join a guild, every player has to interact and go through all the same text conversations to get all the quests and such. Every player has to pick up every resource to unlock the ability to craft what that resource might unlock as a blueprint. Every player must craft every work station in order to obtain the crafting recipes that workstation unlocks. What group keeps track of every item they pick up? Then you have to drop it to your 3 friends if it unlocked a new recipe. If you miss that your buds could be missing a food recipe you know about for a while until it comes in discussion. (I had no idea my buds didn't know how to make jam because I was the base builder and placed the cauldron). When we finally figured this out everyone had to destroy and replace all the workstations in the base to make sure they had everything. Map Icons Your group isn't on your map. You have to manually put them there each game (click on them on the map to put them on your compass). Map icons are large and obscure what is beneath them. If you put down a bed in the field to spawn at, then die, your friend's Icons can obscure your spawn point so you can't click on it untill they move out of the way. Imagine combat when you die and can't spawn on your nearby bed because your buddies are still alive and fighting and can't leave the area to free up your spawn point Gravestone placement. When you die, stuff is stored in your gravestone but gravestones can spawn in some wonky places, some impossible to reach even though it says last stable ground you were on (especially for water or falling). Mixed Bag: Taming Haven't tamed a ton so far but right off tamed animals can be mounts or fight alongside you (like Conan Exiles) and like Exiles they took the worst aspects in that your tames seem to hit harder than you - so with 4 tames they are outclassing you damage wise by a lot, at least in early game. You start to feel like an observer, especially in MP when you all have tames. As mounts they are fun. They should have been mounts only fight mounted or get off and fight. All in all as we are playing the game the thought running through all our heads is : "We played Grounded a few years ago, it would be more fun to play through it again then play Smalllands". So I can't really recommend the game. It's ok if you need something different and it's a a super sale, but Grounded a 2nd 3rd time through is still more fun.

Very catchy and entertaining game. Looking forward to the upcoming small land 2 prequel.

Игра не плохая, но есть минусы. Нет нормальной информации по действиям, при установке стойла нельзя его использовать на дереве друга если ты не в гильдии, но дерево должно быть захвачено гильдией, при этом если на нем были постройки и сундуки и вы захотите сменить его владельца, все пропадет.

No começo parecia um jogo de baitola, chato, matando joaninhas com orelhas pontudas. Mas depois de umas horas de game, ele se tornou um dos melhores jogos que já joguei na vida. O jogo tem diversos níveis e camadas, pode pular da copa das arvores e ir plainando por todo um grande mapa, tem diferentes insetos, chefes e materiais, construções, jogo maravilhoso . 10/10

frogs are so scary