The early bird doesn’t catch the worm in this feathery sim - Scorchlands Quick First Impressions

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Skip it for now, unless you’re super into civilization-building sims. Scorchlands follows the tried-and-tested mechanics seen across most 4X strategy games but twists the formula by bringing it to the moon and by starring birds instead of humans. The results are challenging and aesthetically pleasing, but not without a few frustrating issues.

TIME PLAYED

I played Scorchlands for over three hours. The prologue took me around twenty to thirty minutes to complete, and the first part of the campaign took me over an hour. I had to repeat that hour-plus of gameplay, though, because of a bug that stopped me from terraforming areas.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Gameplay. Although I struggled a lot, I still really enjoyed the challenge of building and growing my own colony on the moon. I loved thinking strategically about resource usage and transport logistics, and figuring out the best way to expand my territory and terraform areas without running into problems.

• Exploration. I loved that I could explore the Scorchlands map and scout areas for resources that I might need later on. The map is so big that I could explore it almost endlessly and still feel eager to continue venturing on to look for more surprises and monsters to beat up.

• Expanding territory. Only a limited amount of territory was usable by me from the jump. To expand it, I needed to eliminate monsters, which wasn’t always easy. I loved this challenge and found it rewarding, especially when exploring far areas to scout for resources to grow my colony.

• Aesthetic. Scorchlands features cartoonish visuals and a ton of goofy-looking structures and environments that are pretty to look at. The music is pretty great too.

WHAT SUCKS

• Too much information. I had a rough time understanding the mechanics and objectives in Scorchlands. The game tries its best to explain the gist of things, but I struggled to get a handle on the full scope of things. I wish I had been introduced to various mechanics over time to gradually absorb information rather than being overloaded with it.

• Tutorial. Although the dialogue throughout Scorchlands was amusing, it made learning the game’s mechanics and objectives more difficult than it should have been. Instead of focusing on teaching me the basics, the tutorial introduced characters and a storyline that distracted me. I would have preferred a completely separate, story-free tutorial just to help keep me thinking about the important stuff.

• Bugs. After playing Scorchlands for around an hour or so, I saved the game right after terraforming a large area in the world. I returned to that save later only to find out that it had bugged out and I couldn’t use the terraforming function anymore. Bugs are inevitable in the best of games and expected in early-access titles, but I was tremendously frustrated by needing to replay such a big chunk of the game.

💬 Will you play Scorchlands or are you going to pass on it? Tell us down below!