Smalland: Survive the Wilds was released in Early Access on Steam on the 29th of March, 2023. It’s reminiscent of yet another survival game, Grounded, where you play as a tiny human in a world full of giant bugs and creatures. While the premise sounds awfully similar, there are a lot of crucial differences between the two that ultimately make Smalland unique in its own way.
In Smalland, your goal is, as the title suggests: you have to survive the wilds. In the wild, you’ll be facing giant creatures such as grasshoppers, ants, bugs, and other insects. At the same time, you have to build your own base and do your best to survive in a harsh, unforgiving world.
That sounds like enough of a challenge, but is it worth buying for a title that’s still in Early Access? Let this review be the deciding factor for you.
Tiny Folk in a World Full of Giants
Smalland lets you play as a Smallfolk, which is a tiny race of people with bug-like features such as an antenna, elongated ears, and sharp nails on their fingers. Your objective will be to survive in a dangerous world full of giant creatures that will attempt to devour you at first glance.
Thankfully, not all creatures are out there to devour you. A good number of them are neutral and won’t mind you passing by, provided that you don’t aggro them, of course.
As a Smallfolk, you will have a massive world to explore. You can even get to meet other Smallfolks in village-sized settlements who you can interact with to give you quests, craft items for you, and a whole lot more.
Interestingly, even if you play the game solo, the world won’t fill empty as there are lots of stuff to discover and NPCs to interact with. It’s really cool considering it’s still an Early Access title.
Challenging Enough to Keep You On the Edge
Source: ItemLevel
Make no mistake! Despite the game’s cute and cartoony art style, Smalland is actually quite challenging. This is a breath of fresh air considering how a lot of survival games these days suffer from a complete lack of challenge.
Most games in the genre start out somewhat challenging, but as you make enough progress, things will start to become dull and boring. That’s not the case with Smalland, however.
Whenever you venture into the wild, you will come across hostile creatures that will be out to eat you. This alone makes the game much more difficult, as you’ll end up not fighting just one but a small group of them.
However, even if you don’t encounter a hostile creature, the game’s environment will be out to get you. We’re talking about streams that will drown you if you’re not careful or even puddles of water that seem deceptively harmless at first glance.
Every encounter you have with any body of water prompts you to plan ahead so you can cross it without drowning and dying. This means looking for different routes that are easier to cross or even building over them.
But even if you manage to get your way around bodies of water, there’s another major problem you have to face – the weather. At some point in your journey, the game will notify you that a storm is fast approaching.
During this crucial moment, you have to make your way to a shelter or build one, unless you want to get caught up in the storm. You’ll notice the wind starts howling and the ground starts shaking. Your camera will even start shaking to make the event even more immersive.
Useful Tutorial System
The game’s tutorial system is arguably quite useful. This makes it a lot easier for players to survive in the harsh and difficult world of Smalland.
What’s unique about Smalland’s tutorial system, however, is that you can choose whether or not you want to engage with them. You will come across these owl effigies along the way which, when interacted with, will show you hints and tips to play the game.
You can choose not to interact with them if you want to skip the tutorial altogether. However, if you’re playing the game for the first time, I strongly recommend checking them out anyway. There will be a bunch of useful tips that you won’t be able to find in a typical survival game.
Conveniently, you can access the information you obtained from these owl effigies within your Compendium. This allows you to access specific hints and tips that you might have forgotten.
Apart from owl effigies, various NPCs will also provide you with useful information that you can use throughout your playthrough. Some will offer you bits of information about the game’s world, how you can craft certain stuff, and a whole lot more.
Fun Gameplay with Standard Survival Mechanics
Source: Steam
Smalland’s survival mechanics follow that of a standard survival game. You collect resources, craft tools to make resource gathering easier, collect even more resources, build a base, and more.
Fortunately, most of the basic resources can be found near the starting area of the game. However, as you progress, you will need even rarer resources that you can only obtain from dangerous areas with hostile creatures.
One of the gripes I had when playing the game is that resource is not automatically gathered upon interacting with them. For example, if I’m harvesting wood, I have to manually pick up wood that falls to the ground.
While this can be a minor annoyance at the start of the game, it can start to get tedious as you start building a base or crafting a lot of items.
As for the combat, Smalland has a somewhat Souls-like style of combat where you attack your enemy and dodge out of harm’s way whenever possible. Every action you make also consumes stamina, so stamina management plays a key role during enemy encounters.
This might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I find it personally engaging as you can’t just hack and slash your way to victory. Also, there are bosses in this game, and suffice it to say, they’re tough as heck if you’re not prepared!
Smooth Performance Overall
For an Early Access title, Smalland surprisingly runs smoothly with no major performance issues whatsoever. The game isn’t even that demanding specs-wise, except for a few occasional frame drops now and then.
Final Verdict
Since it’s still in Early Access, Smalland: Survive the Worlds is not bug-free (pun intended). However, the amount of bugs I’ve experienced during my playthrough is quite minimal. Think of it as Valheim’s Early Access!
Unfortunately, the game is not perfect by any means. There are still a lot of improvements that the developers, Merge Games, can still work on before they fully release the game.
For one, the world kind of feels empty. Sure, there are things to discover along the way, but there are just a lot of uninteresting spaces in between that it feels like it’s more of a walking simulator than a game.
Apart from that, combat feels clunky. The animations are somehow slow with a bit of delay between them. While its Souls-like style of combat makes things challenging, the clunkiness can make it a bit annoying when you’re up against a group of enemies.
Lastly, durability in this game leaves a lot to be desired. You’ll find yourself repairing your armor and weapons often as they tend to break quite easily after taking a few hits.
Despite all its flaws, Smalland: Survive in the Wilds is a good game with a gorgeous art style, amazing atmosphere, simple but engaging building mechanics, and overall smooth performance. Since it’s still in Early Access, we can only hope it gets better with future updates leading to its release.
For a price of $22.49, I’d personally say it’s worth buying while we’re still waiting for the release of the next big survival game. I’m looking at you, ARK II.
