Smalland: Survive the Wilds Review (Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 & PC)

To feel the weight of the world on your shoulders is one thing, but to feel the pressure of having to conquer it, and as a winged humanoid no larger than a honey bee to boot, is another thing altogether. This, in short, is what Smalland: Survive the Wilds is all about: arising from the deepest depths of the soil, and going to war with the creatures and bugs that flesh out the surface and its foliage-imbued biomes.

In a similar vein as Grounded, yet another open-world survival-crafting game, Survive the Wilds tasks its fledgling explorers with venturing up to the surface, and reclaiming a world that was once under the thumb of the Giants—a colossal force of nature that forced the small folk to retreat and burrow themselves into the darkest corners of the dirt. Generations have since passed, and in light of the Giants’ disappearance, the fiendish creatures are once again given the opportunity to return to the earth, and with a pocketful of tools to guide them, breathe new life into its every crag and crevice in order to find new meaning and prosper.

Smalland: Survive the Wilds has, after a good year of ironing out the creases in its Early Access model, arrived on consoles and PC as a fully-fledged product. The question is, is it worth plunging into, or should you opt to keep it on the back burner? Let’s talk about Merge Games’ latest creation.

It’s a Small World

The Giants have passed over to another world, and the remnants of the past have all since become the foundations for a new generation—an era that will see countless species battling it out for a secure place on the food chain. This is where you, a microscopic creature, will begin your journey — bound for the surface, and with a single mission hovering over your shoulder: find a home, and provide your ancestors with the peace of mind that the surface, as hostile as it may seem, is the rightful destination for your kind to plant roots and flourish.

Like a lot of survival-crafting games, Survive the Wilds starts out with a minimal series of jobs to do: craft a weapon, and build a small settlement to work out of as you make gradual steps to venture farther inland and unravel its many secrets and forgotten relics. In addition to the usual tropes of a generic sandbox simulation game, Survive the Wilds also offers the possibility to create and develop worlds with up to nine additional players. But as for whether or not it’s a better experience, generating a snowball with a wider squad, however, all boils down to the player’s preference, as the lion’s share of the co-op features can very easily be found in the bog-standard single-player mode.

At its core, Survive the Wilds is a first-person crafting sandbox sim, with the added option of allowing players to switch between a third-person mode, too. For the most part, though, it’s a bread and butter survival game, and one that pulls on all the same seasonal ingredients as Ark, Grounded, and Valheim. There’s combat, crafting, base-building, and of course,  open-world exploration — four signature trimmings that you’ve no doubt caught wind of a dozen or so times before.

Survival is Paramount

Like most games of its kind, Survive the Wilds begins with a fairly tricky learning curve—a series of obstacles, if you will, that players must learn to navigate in order to obtain better weapons, loot, and materials to fortify their settlements. It’s one of those games—a journey that provides a summit for you to climb, but with only the bare essentials to keep you from plummeting to the bottom. This isn’t to say that it’s a difficult game, mind you, but, in order to actually survive said wilds, you must first learn to master a series of trials, few of which involve having to keep a lid on your hunger, thirst, and comfort.

The first dozen or so hours in Survive the Wilds are probably the toughest, as they churn up countless pathways for you to take, but ultimately prevent you from making a huge amount of progress until you’ve established your presence and acquired a foothold on the food chain. It comes as no major surprise, what with it being a survival-sandbox game and what have you, but there is a lot of grinding to be done—a relatively repetitive and slightly mundane process that mostly consists of foraging for materials, and eliminating small fry in order to earn small snacks and bite-sized components for a much larger, more ambitious project.

There’s a lot to do in Survive the Wilds. Aside from the overarching storyline, which involves exploring the world and locating a cure for your ill-fated Queen, there are also a whole bunch of side quests, scavenging assignments, and sandbox puzzles to sift through. Suffice it to say, it’s a big game, and one that will take players anywhere from thirty or more hours to scrub clean. And even then, that’s only scratching the surface.

A Walk on the Wild Side

While it’s certainly no marvel, Survive the Wilds does have a great vibrancy to it, and not to mention a colorful palette of original garden-like biomes and an entire litter of unique characters and creatures, to boot. Its world, whilst mostly comprised of foliage-encrusted regions, is also home to an enormous variety of enchanting structures and secrets — landmarks and relics that I, for one, always felt compelled to explore and unlock, if not for the sake of removing a bit more smoke from the map, then for a chance of finding exciting new rarities to mold into better equipment and components.

Mechanically speaking, Smalland: Survive the Wilds is, at least from what I caught, all up to scratch, with little to no technical faults or game-breaking issues. In my experience, it was all rather free-flowing, which meant I was able to daisy chain from one anchor point to the next without having to overcome any unwanted molehills or speed bumps. And honestly, that’s a major relief, given that this is, of course, a 1.0, and a product that has yet to have so, so many more patches sewn into the framework.

As of this moment, I’m not even the slightest bit concerned about the future of Survive the Wilds, as its creators have clearly carried out their homework prior to starting their work on the IP. And sure, while nothing is written in stone just yet, I’m morally inclined to give credit where it’s due and say that Smalland: Survive the Wilds, in its current state, is a real sight for sore eyes, and dare I say, a worthy adversary to the likes of Grounded and other pint-sized survival-crafting IPs.

Verdict

Smalland: Survive the Wilds is a great step in the right direction for the survival-crafting genre, even if, for the most part, it does bleed from the same orifices of most, if not every other game of its breed. Needless to say, though, that as far as well-oiled survival sims go, this is indeed a fantastic representative for the ever-evolving blueprint. Sure, it could do with a few minor tweaks here or there in future patches, but all in all, it’s mechanically sound, and a real delight to work through, even at the expense of having to mull over a lot of the same search-and-find goals that we’ve seen hundreds of times before.

The fact that there is a storyline to follow here does make the overall experience a bit more compelling — and understandably so. Whereas most sandbox games drop you into the thick of the woods without so much as two stick to rub together and little to no context, Survive the Wilds does at least make an effort to entice you into venturing deeper into the world and unlocking its myriad of hidden secrets. For this reason alone, it’s almost too easy to get absorbed and swallowed whole by the lore and the undying urge to progress.

The future is evidently bright for Survive the Wilds, that much is true. As for what comes next for the IP is still something of a mystery, but for what it’s worth, what the game does have stored in its cabinet of curiosities at present is, all things considered, definitely worth combing over — especially if you’re looking to cement over that post-Grounded gap.