[b]Minecraft[/b] meets [b]Terraria[/b] meets Top-Down perspective meets Furries (if you consider Kemonomimi to be basically the same). The result is [b]LandTraveller[/b]: A top down RPG, where you mine, craft, fight monsters, build and everything in-between.
Considering that this is a struggling early access game, it’s a bit rough around edges. For instance, I found an easy way to crash the game pretty consistently. Load your game, then exit to the title screen, then load the game again, then try and bring up the map, and the game will likely crash. However, outside of that, the game is pretty stable in that regard – I can only recall one crash during the gameplay, right after I beat Frostbite boss, got an achievement, and the game crashed. And since the cutscene didn’t get the chance to finish, I had to fight the boss again, which was a bit frustrating. Aside from that, there aren’t really any major issues I noticed, mostly minor jank, like how dialogue options don’t properly wrap-around (when visually it should be at end, it shows something else). I did notice that the performance isn’t that great. I like to think that my laptop is… pretty good. Not the best, but it can play games like [b]Doom 2016[/b] or [b]Slime Rancher[/b] at max settings with little to no issues. Mind you, I was playing with light quality at medium, setting it to high tanks the performance further, which is kind of shocking, at a glance this doesn’t appear to be that complex a game from the technical standpoint.
The controls are also a bit unwieldy at first. The game recommends either controller only or keyboard only (so, no mouse), and I think keyboard-only works fine enough, try remapping the keys to find the ideal control scheme.
If you can get past those hurdles, the game is actually pretty fun. The mechanics are what you’d expect. You’re able to craft tools to extract resources, like dig dirt with a shovel, chop wood with an axe or mine ore or stone with pickaxe. There are also enemies to contend with, try poking them with a spear, or bash them with a hammer or mace, or go standard hero route and try out a sword. Or use the power of GUN. Or everything, why limit yourself to one weapon? The RPG mechanics are quite solid – first, the animal choice you make at the beginning is going to affect your starting attributes. Do you want to be a quick and nimble mouseman, or a tough bear? Are you going to enchant your sword to be of ice element, and axe of flux? Same for the abilities. As you hone your skills, you’ll be able to unlock various abilities. There are five basic ones but you can choose only 3. A choice between power, agility, endurance, will or skill, which give you different benefits. And so on. There’s great potential for how you can build your own character.
The enemy variety is decent, like how there are electric ones that will stun you if you try to attack them at close range, you’ll either need a weapon with an upgrade that allows you to strike electrified enemies, or try to deal with them at the distance, or enemies that use ballistic type of attacks, which you can protect yourself from with special armor. And of course, a staple of any good RPG, status effects. There are typical ones like burn/poison/corrosion, which deal damage over time, or you can get a little too frosty, which slows you down, but there are also a few creative ones. For example, fog. There are certain areas which slowly increases fog meter. However, these areas also spawn ghost-type enemies. Defeating them decreases said fog meter, or you can use a special consumable to manually decrease it. If it reaches maximum, you’ll receive fear status effect, which basically makes you lose control of your character and run from enemies. If you’re smart enough, you may think to yourself that you can negate its effect with one of the game’s abilities, Brave, which, well, makes you brave and negates fear. Well, you’re not out of the woods yet, as this effect also significantly decreases your minimum damage output, so the damage you deal can be largely inconsistent. Even though your character no longer runs around coping and seething, it’s still a good idea to maintain the fog level so you can always deal the most damage.
The game features story mode, which is what the game recommends for new players – it makes it easier to get used to the gameplay mechanics with the safety of NPC settlements and other safe structures, and, well… it has story to follow through. To be honest, I didn’t find it all too impressive until mid-ish point, [spoiler]where you become a hybrid, mixing your starting animal breed with a different one. I went with an obvious mouse-cat dynamic. The hybrid is an overall improvement, but there are tradeoffs depending on the breed[/spoiler]. I like how the game also portrays the generational progression. You basically start as a caveman reading ancient tablets to unlock lost knowledge, before you learn how to process iron, build complex stuff like steam engines, and so on. Explore mode is just a sandbox type of thing. It allows you to build your own settlement for NPCs to move in, and you’re just free to do whatever you please with little restriction.
The game has modding support. Heck, I made a mod myself! It’s always a nice extra to have, and can add more replayability. Unfortunately, as of writing this, the modding API is very limited. Basically, all you can do is display text, affect damage calculation, and modify/place existing props/blocks. You can’t do stuff like adding new weapons, new enemies, new gameplay mechanics, or changing existing items or other game systems. So basically, you can’t make anything impressive… I mean, maybe you can do something impressive with text display, but that’s a bit of a stretch.
Now, I did start this review with pointing out a few issues, but there are a few more I can list. These are basically exploits. Returning to title screen is kind of OP. What I mean is that after you reload the save, you’ll be placed at the last checkpoint, which can be used to avoid death or just return back to the base after you’ve done enough exploration and want a quick way to get back (that’s also how I discovered that easy crash method). Your inventory will be saved as well. This one exploit basically makes Egress item, which “allows you to return to the last place you rested at” pointless. You can also attack enemies through a one-block wall (or several if you use e.g. Spark Orb special attack), which is pretty cheesy. I also noticed that the last boss of the story mode, Piezo, is kind of broken. A couple of times I fought it, it basically just ran into a corner and just sat there (or bounced up and down), while the rotating crystals would shoot at me when I was in their line of fire. Taking it out with a ranged weapon like a crossbow was trivial. The top-down perspective can be a confusing at times, it seems it’s hard to nail it down in terms of readability. There’s also some repetition to be had when you explore cave or fortress dungeons, because they’re basically the same. They’re completely optional, but also an easy source of EXP I think there could’ve been more variety for these structures? I dunno.
Despite having some rough edges, I consider [b]LandTraveller[/b] to be a surprisingly fun experience. If you can get past certain flaws, I would recommend checking it out as a decent alternative to the games I mentioned at the very beginning. And it became free since earlier this year. I admit I had this game on my wishlist for a while, it was kind of surprising when it became free to play. If the dev ever considers an optional support pack DLC, I would probably pay for it. I wish the dev all the luck with this project, as I said it seems to struggle quite a bit, seeing as it’s been early access for almost 7 years at this point. It has potential to be a pretty solid experience. It's engaging and has good ideas. A good, if flawed, sandbox RPG.
