Smalland: Survive The Wilds brings a whole new meaning to a big adventure in a tiny world.
Smalland: Survive The Wilds is a challenging but incredibly captivating survival game where you must be careful as you travel the various landscapes. Smalland: Survive The Wilds was developed and published by Merge Games. Merge Games is an indie developer and publisher that has published other games such as Spirit of the North and Bramble: The Mountain King.
When you start up Smalland: Survive The Wilds, creating your character is pretty easy but fun. Some of the customization options are limited in what you can do, such as the face types and the female body just looking like a downsized version of the male body. Once you have completed that, it’s just deciding if you are going to create a world just for yourself or join a friend to survive the harsh world ahead of you.
Littered around Smalland: Survive The Wilds are little owl statuettes, these statuettes give helpful information and tips that are useful for survival or about certain game mechanics. These are heavily encountered around the starting area and become scarcer as your travel further out from The Burrows. The map is large and offers much to explore and investigate, but having a stationary base is a godsend when you need to offload materials, upgrade, and repair as well as make a good home-cooked meal for your character.
If building a base near rivers or anywhere in the fields isn’t something you wish to do, all you have to do is to find a Great Tree. These massive trees have a jumping puzzle for you to get to the top. Once you have climbed to the top and claimed it, you’ll have access to a large area where you can create a large base of operations with no insects, arachnids, or lizards nearby, making it a safe zone. You won’t have to face the puzzle again to get up and down the tree, as you have access to the Tree Butler, this being operates a small hot air balloon that you can use to ascend and descend quickly.
There isn’t much in terms of following the storyline and oftentimes, it feels as if there is no direction to go ahead with the storyline. The game does focus on having a non-linear story, so it’s not as easy as tracking a quest marker down, e.g., 7 Days to Die with its easily discernable quest markers on the minimap. You have to explore and find the NPCs with the correct quest to continue the storyline and to get hold of stronger armour since you cannot make them yourself. Finding the correct NPCs are made easier by checking your quests in the compendium, and you can easily see which NPCs you need to travel to.
As you travel around in Smalland: Survive The Wilds, you’ll come across different beasts. These are mostly insects and maybe a lizard or two. Each enemy you encounter will also have its strengths and weakness corresponding to the different weapon damages. For example, a gecko can be easily dealt with when you have a weapon with slash damage. However, you will struggle to kill a sawyer beetle as their weakness is pierce damage. Because of this, it is easier to have at least one weapon of each damage type on you. You can easily check out what they are weak to by activating the Antenna Vision, allowing you to not only see what the insect is called but also what resources are around you.
Smalland: Survive The Wilds also allows you to play the game in either third-person view or first-person view, giving you the challenge of being able to easily see the different resources and insects around you or being focused on just what’s in front of you in first-person. The world looks a lot bigger when in first-person, making navigating a little harder since every turn may look the same, but at the same time, it is just a little bit more fun. While gathering resources and getting some good bases up and running is always a good idea, you also have to keep an eye on the weather, as storms can freeze you to death. Even more so as the seasons change.
Smalland: Survive The Wilds has an amazingly detailed weather system in place. Whether it’s thunderstorms or just a shower of rain you’ll experience, it makes it harder to survive as it gets colder if you don’t have armour with decent cold resistance. Not only do you have to keep an eye out for storms, but certain resources also become scarcer as the seasons change. Stockpiling becomes a necessity in this highly immersive survival game, even if it is harder to do so if you are playing solo.
In Smalland: Survive The Wilds, being able to tame the beasts that attack you makes it more worthwhile when playing through different areas as they can be used as extra storage in the case of the ladybugs or as a companion during most of the fights you end up in with other beasts, just don’t forget to feed them. While the ladybugs are unmountable, there are lots of other insects and arachnids you can ride. For those with arachnophobia, you can easily turn off anything to do with spiders in the game settings.
When traveling around Smalland: Survive The Wilds the background music can make it feel like a relaxing journey, as if you don’t need to rush and hurry when gathering any food and building materials you need. This all changes, however, when you enter a state of combat or get caught in a storm as the music becomes chaotic and rushed, making you feel as if that peaceful walk just took a turn for the worst. Although the ambient isn’t the only thing soundwise that catches the attention as all the sound effects have been done well. You truly feel as if you have been turned into a fey-like being to explore Smalland: Survive The Wilds and eventually complete your quests.
The animations are smooth in Smalland: Survive The Wilds, from landing a hit with a bow and arrow, to just running along the tree roots. Mounting animations are instant so you don’t have the appearance of mounting a gecko-like you would a horse in Skyrim, a little disappointing but understandable. Building animations are instant as usual in a survival game and when you start building, the floors snap into place, so placing them is easy. You also have the option to turn the snap placement off and try out other settings for the building aspect.
Smalland: Survive The Wilds has no voice acting but the written narrative is well done and informative. It does mean it’s easier for players if they wish to skip through any dialogue and get to the good part, such as gaining information and maybe retrieving their well-earned rewards. The storyline is interesting and unique, it also does capture the sense of urgency your character has as they go through the quests. Whether it’s hunting down the Rhino Beetle on the beach or exploring the swamp, it is easy to find something to do.
Naturally, as with all the great things Smalland: Survive The Wilds has to offer, there are some downsides. When you have crafted new armour and weapons, you will still have your older equipment on you. If you get caught in a death spiral having backup weapons is great since you only respawn with your armour and whatever weapon you had equipped at the time, you still have to worry about inventory space when it comes to your old armour as you can neither deconstruct nor display the older equipment. This will hopefully be added by the developers as Smalland: Survive The Wilds is still in Early Access.
Overall, Smalland: Survive The Wilds is a highly immersive non-linear PC survival game that is easier with friends. However, you can easily spend hours gaming by yourself as you explore the various landscapes on display. Smalland: Survive The Wilds brings a whole new challenge to the survival-craft genre of gaming that is well worth the pain, sweat, and tears your character sheds as they fight hordes of bugs and make it through each storm unscathed.
