A shock launch from final month actually is kind of enjoyable: Nova Lands is an informal base-building and exploration sport that blends the automation satisfaction of one thing like Passable with the delightfully unserious vibes and “however wait, there’s extra!” power of incremental crafting in Forager to create a pleasant little sci-fi journey that is simple to spend hours on.
Nova Lands is a type of video games the place you are at all times unlocking or upgrading a brand new system, subsystem, useful resource, or merchandise to play with. You are always determining tips on how to export and transport extra, larger, higher issues. None of it’s notably overcomplex, however that is a pleasant change of tempo in a style—automation—that most of the time makes you are feeling the necessity to get away the spreadsheets.
The sport begins you crashed down on a bit of hexagonal island the place you may want to assemble and craft uncooked supplies into the fundamentals of survival. From there, you begin unlocking tools and discovering new little hexagonal islands to jet over to, together with a solid of different area weirdos to hang around with and do quests for.
You ultimately unlock instruments to mass-produce supplies your self, alongside logistics robots that you simply get to instruct and improve. At first that is easy stuff like a robotic that can discover and harvest ore for you, or transfer issues to processors that want assets. Later there are arms that cross issues between islands, packaging machines for mass transport, and flying drones that transfer issues a number of islands at a soar.
It is all overlaid with a ton of bizarre little development mechanics to work on. You get expertise for doing issues and might spend it to unlock or improve your bots and your self, or get new recipes. You may also improve tools, and ultimately go to an area station, after which construct a home and embellish it for… much more automation bonuses. I have been enjoying it on the Steam Deck, and I believe it is excellent informal sofa playtime or small window beside your huge streaming video window fare.
You’ll find Nova Lands on Epic, GOG, Humble, Steam, and Home windows Retailer for $20, It is 10% off—$18—on Steam and Humble till July thirteenth. It is developed by Behemutt and printed by HypeTrain Digital.
