Nova Lands Review

Developed by BEHEMUTT and published by HypeTrain Digital, Nova Lands is a game that combines factory building, exploration, and island management. Have you ever wanted to play a game that felt simple and complex at the same time to pass the time as you practice what is essentially multi-tasking and planning? Then this is the game for you. It has an interesting pixel art style which is quite charming in places and a background track that is on the edge of catchy and irritating.

                 You play as an explorer who lands on a giant hexagonal island that has a lot of basic resources on it. Then through harvesting and bumping into other explorers and NPCs, you get tasks to build things and to research new technology and designs which in turn opens up more branches to create new things.  It does feel like a game of Age of Empires at times – without the threat of being wiped out. By that I mean you begin with quite basic tools and eventually, you will be creating cutting-edge technology and have robots and factories doing the work for you.

                That is the interesting feature of the game and that is programmable robots which is quite daunting and intimidating at first. But once you wrap your head around the features you understand how clever the setup is and how the game forces you to use strategy to best make use of your time. If you need a particular resource constantly then why not have a bot do that continuously and tell him where the place the resources? Then as a certain furnace or factory uses those resources to make something else you need, then why not use a bot to take those resources and put them into the furnace or factory so production keeps on flowing?

                As you progress through the story you unlock other islands around your starting island by paying the price of specific resources. These new islands contain fresh new resources to construct with and sometimes enemies you need to work around. There are some mysterious islands which contain a boss-like creature and you can either provide an offering to them or take them on in a dual to win some extra resources that you may need. The enemies in the game are not too tricky to fight should you need to but it may be better to create a bot on certain islands to keep these creatures at bay so you can focus on harvesting resources.

                There are other progressions to equip your gear, create devices that transport resources from one island to another and eventually a way to open up space travel so you can trade resources for a special currency which can be used to buy special factories and farms. Also, you can land on a space station to meet some more NPCs who have their tasks for you to help get you other resources or even some decorations for your island.

                Although the game sounds simple enough you have at least 10 hours of gameplay to enjoy and if you want to fully explore a bit more it can then easily double or triple that. Some people can see the end being building everything that can be built or others could see it as building a multi-island factory that almost runs itself to showcase your ability to plan and strategise.

Conclusion

Nova Lands is exactly what you need if you need a less stressful session of gaming. That is not to say it is not frustrating as at times you will feel like an underappreciated supervisor when the bots are not doing what you are expecting them to do. But you are the master of these bots and they are as only as good as your strategy. It is a neat little game but something you will only play through once.

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox Series X/S. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.