Crashlands [Xbox]
Developed and published by Butterscotch Shenanigans, Crashlands is an action-adventure exploration game that sees you take on the role of Flux Dabes, a galactic delivery driver on her way to deliver packages with her trusty sidekick Juicebox, when all of a sudden the Space Truck grinds to a halt. Hewgodooko needs a favour, an electrodongle, and he thought you might be of assistance. Your ship just so happens to have one, so he blows it up. Once you crash land on Woanope, you’ll need to build your own base while you wait for a rescue, and forage for supplies to expand and survive.
Via the main menu you can create a Rumpus account to keep track of Achievements, enable Cloud Saving to play across multiple devices, and you can also use this account to access the official ‘Coffee with Butterscotch’ weekly podcast on their website. As you begin, you can see three game modes (with two being locked at present), giving you Story Mode to start off. The other two modes consist of Creative Mode, which is a relaxing mode that will enable you to create the base of your dreams (and is unlocked upon reaching the second biome in Story Mode); and Hardcore Mode, a permadeath mode unlocked by completing any other mode.
Art style is vibrant, with a wide variety of enemies with unique designs and their own individual attack patterns. You can gain eggs by defeating enemies, and these will grow up to be your own little pets that will help you on your travels. Bosses are super interestingly designed, too - with a variety of almost horrifyingly creepy looks, and challenging attack styles. You’ve also got the freedom to design how you want your base to look (providing you can find the supplies to do so), placing them wherever you please. Frustratingly, walls take up a full floor square, and don’t look particularly wall-like, so this is our one gripe about the visuals of building your base. The soundtrack, composed by Fat Bard, has a fantastic variety of tunes that range from pleasantly peaceful to exciting and intense. There’s tonnes of humour injected into Crashlands, from dialogue between Flux and Juicebox, to other NPCs and even items (including armour and decorations for your base) you can find and/or craft, and this all melds really well into an enjoyable, entertaining time.
Flux has a very bouncy run, that makes the slow-ish movement speed a little less frustrating. A dodge roll would have been hugely appreciated here, as enemies have a range of attack that is sometimes a little tricky to get out of the way of on time. It would also probably be a great help in traversing the vast world of Woanope. Thankfully you’ll find Teleporters scattered across the map to allow Fast Travel, which is a life-saver considering just how insanely huge the world is. There are three Biomes for you to explore: Savanna, Bawg and Tundra; each of which with their own creatures, characters to interact with and resources to gather. There are also Treasure Chests that you can come across, both Quest-related and not.
Quests can be triggered by speaking to NPCs you meet throughout the world, instructing you to go fetch things, or defeat specific enemies for them, in return for rewards such as Creature Catalysts, that will improve your pet(s); schematics, to craft new items; and even unlock new Quest lines. You can look over your existing Quests at any time, keeping track of all of the details through a text-style system which is super useful for when you inevitably wander off to collect things before realising you’ve forgotten everything! The crafting system is robust, with tonnes of stuff available for you to make - with different stats for weapons and armour to keep things interesting. Plus, with an infinite storage capacity for anything you pick up on your travels, you really have the freedom to do things however you want. There’s also a Data section in your Compendium that allows you to look over everything you have come across, such as creatures and their attack styles (as well as possible item drops); and resources and what they gain you, in HP or in item drops.
At £12.49 on the Xbox Store, it’s a great price for the amount of content you get and the hours upon hours of gameplay you can sink into it. The world is huge, so you’ll have a hard time exploring absolutely everywhere, but it’s fun to just pick a direction to go in and see how far you can go - although admittedly it can sometimes seem a little sparse and repetitive at times, doing so. You can even take some time to go fishing, and everything is kinda up to you as to how laidback of an experience you want. The developers appear to be working on a follow up (alongside regular updates for this!), so we can’t wait to get stuck into that too.
In the end, we decided to give Crashlands the Collecting Asylum rating of 8.5/10.
Have you played Crashlands yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Butterscotch Shenanigans for the Crashlands Xbox review code!
