I tend to play a lot of games involving exploding spaceships and the good luck of a local escape pod to give me safe passage out of an imploding metal crypt. Luckily, Nova Lands, by developer Behemutt is here to continue that trend for me!
Nova Lands is another great entry in the currently very popular exploration and survival genre. Taking place on an undisclosed planet, its unique feature is how the “islands” on the planet interact, and almost mesh together as you start automating more and more things.
Nova Lands controls very well on the Nintendo Switch. The menus are mapped to the directional pad and your main method of extracting materials and resources from the world is the two-pronged diving rod-like tool that you see in the cover art picture. It is really fun to use too! I enjoy just ripping apart the surrounding environments like I have a neutrona wand and proton pack right out of Ghostbusters. You will be able to create weapons as you go along, which is a lot of fun, but the game really puts its might onto resource management and eventually automation for most if not all of the processes, such smelting or crafting items in the furnaces and using them at your workbench to create new technologies, or, new technologies that allow you to create new technologies. Alternatively, you can also craft new technologies to help craft new technologies that allow you to then craft robots to automate your supply gathering so that you can, you guessed it, crate more new technologies. While I write this in humor, and it may sound repetitive, that is the nature of games such as Nova Lands, and I think it is a prime example of what might not sound fun on paper is very xen-like and continues to give you a sense of continuance and accomplishment as you progress. In simple terms, a game like Nova Lands excels at goal-oriented gameplay, and you will get that in spades here.
The art style is 16-bit as popular in many titles these days and does its job well. Everything looks animated with life and charm and creates a lot of personality in the world around you and the music does its job well to reflect the sometimes peaceful, sometimes hectic areas. It does its job well and helps to bring the world of Nova Lands a mystique and life all its own.
Overall, Nova Lands is yet another solid entry into the genre, and truly gives you bang for buck in terms of what it has to offer. You will slowly build the world into a satisfying end game, and its focus on automation more so than other titles in the genre right now allow it to carve out its own unique niche to allow it to stand out on its own. A great title to play across the summer if ever there was one!
Score: 8.5/10
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Related: Reviews by Matt O’Toole
Your local neighborhood nutjob, gamer, and teacher! I'm an avid fan of many genres such as platformers, shooters, horror, etc. I am also an avid tabletop gamer - hugely into the worlds of Warhammer and all of their spinoffs. I'm a big believer in being objective - even if something is not my cup of tea, I want to talk about it on the objective level - is it well made, crafted with love, and with care for the fans? If so, that's a good game in my book for someone and well worth their hard earned dollarydoos!
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