Land of Screens Review for Steam

Land of Screens, by developer Serenity Forge and publisher Way Down Deep, is a short story game about ditching the world of social media to focus on more real world connections. You play as Holland, a girl who lives in a world dominated by the screens of social media, a world that is not unlike our own. Holland’s social media has recently blown up following a bad break up making her hesitant to look at her phone for fear of backlash. She goes on a few expeditions away from her screen to hopefully avoid and take her mind off of her fears of social media.

When you start Land of Screens, Holland is pacing around her room thinking about how to break the news of her recent break up to her social media. She fears that if she says the wrong things, everyone will hate her. While being so concerned with that, her ex, Brian, beats her to it, writing his own post on the matter. After this, she decides to call an old friend to hopefully put her worrying mind at ease. Her friend, Cody, seems to think she should take a break from her phone and visit her friends. Thus Holland embarks on a mission to avoid social media, along the way she finds that she has lost sight of what is really important and that is her real life connections with her friends and family.

The game itself is a pretty short and sweet one that is very much about the overall experience of the story. It took me about 3 hours to play through fully. During most of the game, it’s about trying to get others to also put down their phones and actually talk with the real people around them. The controls are the standard WASD to move and E to interact. The depth perception has been a little difficult at times as it looked a lot like a 2D game, but turned out to be otherwise. The style of the game is simple, but nice to look at and the music is timely to what is happening in the scene as it creates a very nice flow. One thing that I really liked was that at times when Holland is getting distracted by her phone the screen gets distorted like she is getting sucked into her social media. It gives a sense of tension that I enjoy since Land of Screens itself is about ditching screens.

There is not much I can find as an issue with this game. In fact, the only real problem I had was small. While playing Land of Screens, there are moments where you have to figure out how to get people to put down their screens and interact; the pieces fall together quite nicely and it is almost too easy. I would have liked to see a bit more difficulty on the later adventures, but like I said, the game is about the story and does not have much gameplay outside of the interactions. I find Land of Screens interesting and fun and rate it 10/10.

The Land of Screens is available for PC via Steam. For more information, visit: https://www.landofscreens.com/