First Impressions & Review! ~ Smalland: Survive the Wilds

foreign [Music] everybody and welcome to small land survive the Wilds I embrace falkrum and today it is my pleasure to bring to you my first impressions of this awesome looking Indie Survival game set to release in March 29th 2023 full disclosure this is a press release copy of the game that I received from the developers that said let's get started after selecting a character name you're given the opportunity to use their character creator now you can choose from the body type head ears eyebrows beard antenna hair eyes all kinds of fun stuff including different color variations for each of these things after you've created a character you get the opportunity to choose how you would like to play you can join others or you can create a new world as you can see they do have an online mode in which you can have players join your newly created world you can even set up a password to make sure that only the people who you wish to join your game can do so they have a peaceful mode where you can just have a fun time exploring the world they do give you the option to turn on Friendly Fire as well which if you like to have little skirmishes with your friends that's always a positive once your game loads you're entered into a hallway filled with a bunch of bioluminescent lights absolutely love that we're just now leaving the boroughs where our kind live and heading into the Overworld the first NPC we're going to interact with here is Virgil who tells us well the captain is waiting for us as well as telling us to keep an eye out for the owl Effigies now the owl is considered sacred in this game and as such you'll find plenty of owl statues scattered throughout as for the Effigies they act as your tutorial teaching you about food tools and all kinds of interesting stuff one of my favorite things is being able to have your antenna sense that gives you a quick look at all of the different resources scattered throughout the world and even their names it kind of reminds me of The Witcher of it as you progress through the tunnels be sure to pick up all the resources that are laying around the food that's on the tables and all that fun stuff as the captain is going to have some pretty interesting stuff to talk to us about as we leave the tunnels we get introduced to this beautiful scenery right here in the Overworld looks really good now graphically I haven't had any lag spikes I haven't had any frame skips or anything like that the game is really well optimized now with that said my settings are currently on Ultra although I do have an RTX 3070 and I9 with 64 gigs of RAM your experience May differ from mine after taking some time to admire the scenery we come down here to the captain who will teach us how to craft our first two sets of armor now there's a padded set which protects us from the cold which you'll need if it decides to storm and a light set which increases our movement speed pretty nice I would take the opportunity to gather up all the fiber you can craft these sets as soon as possible after speaking with the captain you should go and speak with the Elder who gives us our main quest the Elder basically states that there are some creatures who have been getting rather aggressive lately and he wants us to go and speak with the other Vanguard about the situation looking on the map you can see the other Vanguard that are scattered throughout each of these NPCs will teach you a new set of armor you should also stop by the large owl statue as there are food items that you can collect and a couple more little owl statues that will teach you some basic mechanics and after you've gotten the basics out the way the next thing you're probably going to want to do is build yourself a base nope faces work pretty much anywhere on the map except for quest locations AKA anywhere where there's an NPC or a boss you're probably not going to be able to build now looking at this map here it looks really small however because of your size there's a lot of space for you to build and a lot of vertical structures for you to explore the building system is very simple there are other pieces that you can unlock as you go through the game for the time being we're just going to use the basics as that's what you're going to have to work with first and bam real easy they just snap together without too much issue but there is the ability to also kind of do your own thing you don't really have to snap them you can put them however you'd like bam just stack them on top of each other if you want and do all kinds of crazy stuff so that does give you a little bit of creativity whenever you're building your base one thing to note however if you do decide to build on the ground there are a number of creatures that can and will damage your base now having your base damaged isn't necessarily a bad thing you can easily just repair any structures that have been hurt during the process and it's free there's no item requirement very similar to valheim so I like that the other way to build a base is to find one of these large trees that have the mushrooms on it these are safe zones in which you can claim a tree to be your primary base now you have to reach the top before you can claim it so let's get to it the jump puzzle that you're going to need to do is pretty simplistic you just climb these vines that are on the side of a tree go from mushroom to mushroom there is a vaulting system so even if you think that you can't reach a place usually you'll pull yourself up to them with relatively no issues and you're going to do this all the way to the top after reaching the top there will be a gnome statue standing right here on the very top mushroom after speaking to them you just say you would like to claim your great tree and then you're given the opportunity to begin building once you've claimed your tree however you will not need to do the jump puzzle ever again there is this hot air balloon here which you can take up and down the tree at will now if the balloon is at the bottom of the tree for whatever reason you simply talk to The Gnome again and you can call your hot air balloon back up to the top and get down fairly easily after you've completed building your structure like I have here if you go to another tree and there are multiple of these great trees around the map if you claim a new home any structure that you have built will be torn down at your old tree and rebuilt automatically for you over in the new location meaning making it very easy to move your bases around and you can use this to your advantage to have a respawn Point close to resources that you really want to gather next let's talk about progression so as you can see there's a number of benches here there are plenty more that I haven't gotten to yet however looking at each of these benches will show you a number of different items including clubs hatchets bows arrows torches Spears all kinds of goodies and your main progression is tied to your gear and weapon types so you're going to need to get higher and higher tier resources which will allow you to make higher tier benches higher tier weapons upon doing so you'll probably be fighting bosses and then unlocking more benches one of the more exciting benches is that you're going to unlock is The Cauldron now with the cauldron you can make yourself a ton of really good foods that block nourishment loss and will fill you up quite well the best thing about The Cauldron however is the treats now these treats are used to tame different creatures throughout the wilds and the first one you're going to have access to is the grasshopper Tree in order to tame your grasshopper you're first gonna need to have a pretty rough engagement with it bam after smacking it a few times it gives you a prompt to tame the creature and there you go you've got your first mount so let's talk about benefits the grasshopper's not very fast even while sprinting however you do get a very nice hopping animation that will allow you to get around rather quickly bam it takes no fall damage you can jump from the top of a great tree and have nothing happen to the creature they do not carry any items however the AI on these things is really really good in my opinion as it follows you around it will not get stuck on things they have a pretty good padding system if you get too far away from your creature it will use its hop to get closer if a smaller creature like an ant attacks it will fight the ants however if larger beetles tend to attack the grasshopper will hop away at a very fast pace returning to you only if you've lost aggro or killed the creature and they can be fed very easily all you do is chop down some mushrooms or something the grasshopper will run over and fill its Health back up the next thing you're going to want to pay attention to with creatures in mind is right next to the creature's name you can see different symbols indicating what they are strong against and what they are weak against on the left as you can see they are the grasshopper specifically is weak to blunt now on the right it would have a picture of a shield if they were strong at defending against something you will have to discover each of these as you go alone next I'm sure you're excited to find out about the flight system in the game so the flight system isn't so much flight as it is gliding it acts more like a wing suit your character does not start with wings you will need to visit certain NPCs in order to build these items so how does it work well pressing any direction will allow you to fly in that direction if you do not have a direction pressed you will slowly float down towards the ground like a parachute as you can see the stamina bar is depleting once your stamina is gone you will begin to fall from the sky a lot more rapidly although as long as your wings are deployed you will not take fall damage however if you were to bump into a branch and fall from this guy you will take ball damage next we'll go ahead and go over the types of creatures you will run into first off we have our friendly lizard Mount here you can see some bees off in the distance doing their thing as well as some wasps here you can see some dragonflies these are non-aggressive creatures however if you do attack them they will defend themselves over here we can see a bunch of ants these are just purely aggressive although they're not very strong there are also these Sawyer beetles that will attack you on site they seem to attack you from really far away as well see type and aggressiveness of creatures do change from daytime to night time here you can see a bunch of moths these moths will change into butterflies during the day and respawn as moths during the night time there are some types of beetles that will simply sit there and hiss at you as long as you leave them alone they won't bother you too much however getting too close we'll see you attacked next let's take a look at some of the biomes within the map now we're starting off with some of the more pretty ones there are some really cool looking Fields filled with poppies and other flowers there's even a large Sandy Rocky Beach there's a lot of really valuable resources down there that you're gonna want to get fairly early on the last biome we're going to take a look at is the swamp look at this place very very creepy tons and tons of evil spiders down there so be very careful on your first journey out this list is definitely not the entirety of the biomes but I'm not gonna spoil them all for you here you're just gonna have to go and explore for yourself all right with the basics out of the way let's go ahead and talk about the pros and cons of the game as well as giving you the opportunity to make an informed purchasing decision now the visuals of the game first off look really really good I do like that they have a weather system in place as well as a seasonal system as you can see right now the leaves are very green but as the seasons pass you will notice the leaves changing colors and eventually it will begin to snow on the negative side of the weather system is the massive amount a screen shake that you're going to have to deal with during larger storms you're freezing it's a strong storm whoa it shakes everything that's pretty cool oh we're gonna freeze the death we're gonna freeze to death all freeze to death now this screen Shake is also present when you jump and when you're riding creatures that can jump which has an even higher amount of screen Shake I would love to see there be an option to turn this screen shake off as I know that some players do have issues with motion sickness other options that I would like to see as part of the game would probably be a colorblind mode I have a few friends that I play with on a regular basis that do have issues with color blindness and I would really love to see this option become available to players with this same issue moving on to creatures there are a ton of different creature types including this lizard here and a ton of mounts that you can acquire it seems like you can only gather one at a time which kind of sucks I'd like to gather one of each and just have them lulling around the base however on the con side there seems to be no real controls or way to prevent the creature from following you I've had to build a garage in order to keep my creatures in just to make sure that it's not walking into my face and standing on top of my workbenches while I'm trying to get something accomplished it seems rather cruel and they do teleport to you eventually if you get too far away and they can't reach you next let's talk about inventory so this game does not use a weight system none of the items in my inventory have a weight value to them your inventory carrying capacity is completely based on the number of slots you have available and the stack size for each item which is great I prefer this over a weight system on the negative side of the inventory management system as you can see I have all of my weapons and tools down the bottom of my inventory quickly switching through these items on my bar will move your items around inside your inventory I hope that this is something that they eventually changed as I like to sort my inventory in very specific ways and that would definitely resolve some having to search for specific items that you need also a part of the inventory management system is deaths as you can see when you do dye everything that was on this right hand side bar here remains in your inventory including armor and any weapons you would have been carrying at the moment of your death the real negative side to this system is once you've picked up all of your items none of the items that you had slotted up here on your hot bar will go back into their proper place the reason that this is a negative is if you were in a dangerous situation surrounded by enemies you want to be able to run up quickly grab your stuff and get it out of the situation as quickly as possible or defend yourself if you have creatures attacking you you don't have time to sit here and grab all these items and put them back into place you could just right click the item and begin your fighting process although depending on the strength of the creatures you're fighting you could be easily re-killed instead of able to take care of the situation and return to safety all right everybody and that's going to do it for us here today thank you so much for checking out my review of small land survive the Wilds remember that this game does release into Early Access on March 29th 2023 so what did I think of the game well I had a ton of fun and as for would I recommend the game Yes actually I think I would now remember that because this is an early access game a lot of what is in this review could have easily changed in the time since recording but with that also said Early Access does give players the opportunity to give feedback for the game and let the developers know the kind of features that you would love to see within the game I myself will be picking it up and taking the opportunity to do a playthrough on my channel also be sure to get down there in the comments and let me know if there's something that I missed or if you have any questions be sure to ask but there's also the opportunity to go and check out the description as there are still giveaways going on be sure to check out the other media links likes follows and all that fun stuff and then take care of yourself take care of your loved ones stay healthy out there and I'll see you on the next one bye everybody [Music]

Channel: Blazze Valkurm

Views: 1,209

Keywords: giveaway, Between, The Streams, BTS, Blazze, Valkurm, New, Survival, PvE, Solo, Singleplayer, Playthrough, Lets Play, RPG, NPC, Companion, Friend, Dark, Cave, fight, attack, Water, ship, Human, fire, Dig, Grave, Attack, Dead, Die, Day 1, patch, start, fresh, beginning, Noob, Meat, Stew, Food, DIY, Eat, Eating, Spear, Bow, Arrow, How to, Help, Review, Guide, Bug, Ladybug, Beetle, Moth, Lamp, Owl, Fly, Grasshopper, Gecko, Lizard, Bee, Wasp, Hornet, Ant, Smalland, Survive the Wilds, Grounded, ARK, First, Impressions, Press, Pre-release, Early, Access

Id: nqWbD6_D_tc

Length: 22min 7sec (1327 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 27 2023