I did not expect to like this game. I found the visuals ugly and usually find “topical” humor to be juvenile and an excuse to not write real jokes. At first the world felt open and empty, and I worried it was yet another survival crafter with no thought given to plot or gameplay.
Slowly but surely, Crashlands won me over. It visual design was consistent and thoughtful, clearly purposeful and tone-consistent. The writing was good and often quite entertaining, with a self-aware tongue-in-cheekiness. The scale of the plot slowly ramps up in a way that feels natural and engaging. And more than anything else, the attention and care it put into its worldbuilding and characters was above and beyond any game I’ve played in a while.
In Crashlands, you play as Flux Dabes, a deliveryperson who unexpected crashes on an alien planet alongside her robot secretary Juicebox. Flux must recover the cargo scattered in the crash or risk being abandoned on the planet by the corporation she works for; in attempting to recover the packages she ends up wrapped up in the politics of the locals and finds herself having to defeat an alien trying to destroy a world she begrudgingly becomes fond of.
Crashlands has perhaps the most original and well-fleshed-out alien societies I’ve ever encountered. The world was just so clearly thought about and planned out even beyond the scope of what we see, and it comes through in spades. At first I was underwhelmed by the Tendraam — okay, nature sprites, except these are SOUTHERN, so lulzy, how original — but slowly but surely it became obvious there was more to them than that. The way the game took the Tendraam seriously instead of, as I feared, making “stupid Appalachians” jokes, forced me to take them seriously, too, and to become invested in their worldview and the complexities it posed for Flux. The the large cast of characters — this cast in this games must number in the multiple dozens, and each is meaningfully distinct — was seriously impressive; the world was so huge. And just when I thought I’d gotten a handle on things, the game flings you over to the Brubus, my favorite species. The Brubus are a strictly mercenary and hierarchical birdlike species who live on the back of a landmass-sized creature called the Bawg. The Bawg controls the environment on its back, and selects certain Brubus for eminence or outcasthood. Navigating the cutthroat politics of the Brubus, from the self-satisfied leaders to the outcasts trying to survive — was the most engrossing part of the story. This contrasts with the strictly communal Polari, aquatic creatures who live at the world’s icy pole, who survival in their hostile environment is tightly tied to their willingness to work for the greater good of their towns.
There’s just SO MUCH there and I loved it. Trying to convince all these peoples that they have to work together or the planet will end is both complicated and interesting, frustrating for Flux and Juicebox, who just want to get home, but not for the player — I wanted to see them interact forever. And that’s not even getting into the lore of the Veeru, the hostile race whose representative, Hewgo, is trying to destroy the planet.
I love the basic gameplay loop of survival crafts, and I enjoy the grind, so that I really liked the gameplay doesn’t mean much to people who don’t like the basics of the genre. But I really don’t like when the gameplay in sims and crafting games is pointless. There’s a time and a place for the ARKs of the world, but when I sit down to play a game on my own, I want it to make me want to spend time in the world, and in the era of the ~~~~cozy game~~~~ and AI games, not many bother to do that, so finding one this dedicated to making the player interested was such a treat. I thought the gameplay here was well-balanced and satisfying — it’s always great to get trounced by enemies and then come back later and plow through them. I also liked the weapon upgrade system, particularly in the late-game, where you could reroll specific attributes in ways that meant you didn’t have to craft items over and over to get “good” ones. I liked the boss fights. I likes strafing down enemies I was underlevelled for. I liked the pet system, though I wish the pets were better balanced — the AOE pets were clearly the best ones.
But the real innovation here is in the world itself, and it’s just so worth seeing, even if the genre isn’t your usual cup of tea.
Also Flux’s design is so awesome. The best women character designs are the ones that make me confront my own preconceptions. Love love love it.
By pure coincidence, Crashlands 2 came out just as I was finishing this game, and I can’t wait to play it. Unlike most developers they seem to have made the mobile-to-full-game jump seamlessly, and I look forward to experiencing both the sequel and the sidequel platformer, LevelHead.