The world of settlement management games welcomes a new addition – Of Life and Land. This colony simulation game recently made its early access debut and brings cozier vibes to the genre. In this review, we’ll delve into the first impressions of the game, provide a comprehensive overview of its current state, and discuss what future updates might hold.
Story
Like most colony sims, “Of Life and Land” doesn’t focus heavily on story. The narrative follows your task of settling a new area as the existing city is becoming overpopulated, leading to widespread misery. However, don’t expect a rich overarching storyline. The main narrative soon fades to the background, giving way to smaller stories about your settlers, primarily conveyed through quests. These quests also drive the gameplay, providing a variety of goals and tasks to complete. The game has the potential for a great story, and we hope to see it further developed in the full game.
Gameplay
In terms of gameplay, “Of Life and Land” offers familiar mechanics. Players start with a handful of settlers and resources, tasked with building a new settlement from scratch. The game provides a wide variety of resources to source, such as wood, stone, grass, and grain, some of which are dependent on the area’s health. The map’s overlay modes are handy, showing soil health, mining ores locations, and other details. Crafting is a significant part of the game, with different buildings crafting various items. As the game progresses, your settlement levels up, unlocking more advanced buildings and crafting options.
But the game doesn’t stop at building one settlement. After constructing your community center, you can explore other areas, some populated and others not. You’ll need to negotiate deals with populated areas for trading or building on their land. Unpopulated areas, on the other hand, are ripe for sending resources to establish new settlements. Why do you need additional settlements? Certain resources, particularly mining ores, are only located in other maps, making these new settlements crucial for progression.
Design
The game’s design is charming with a cute voxel art style and a wide variety of well-designed animals. As your settlement develops, your buildings evolve to resemble proper town structures, contributing to the sense of progress. The sound design is equally impressive, creating a relaxing atmosphere for building and enhancing the gameplay with useful sound effects for notifications.
Roadmap and Upcoming Features
As for the roadmap and upcoming features, there isn’t an official roadmap yet. However, the developer is actively sharing updates in the Discord channel and has already released one patch. I’d definitely recommend joining the discord if you want all the details on what’s coming next for the game.
The Final Brew
In conclusion, “Of Life and Land” is a solid and enjoyable game. It could benefit from a bit more balancing as it currently feels like it takes quite a long time to build things or craft basic items like planks. The integration of different maps and the necessity for building or trading with other settlements could also be better explained. We look forward to new maps with different scenarios and resource distributions. So, would I recommend “Of Life and Land”? Absolutely, yes!
You can purchase “Of Life and Land” on Steam here: https://bit.ly/3vOXm9e
Have you played “Of Life and Land” yet? Let me know what you think.
Until next time, stay caffeinated!
