Crashlands 2 has been worth the wait, especially for those who want a simple crafting and farming game that can be played on an iPhone or PC. Its tongue-in-cheek charm, dubstep silliness, and approachability make it worth playing for hours on end…so long as you get past its initial learning sluggishness.
If you thought you had seen the last of the planet of Woanope, think again. Developer Butterscotch Games has been hard at work making a sequel to their 2016 Crashlands which was enjoyed by millions of players across the globe, and it’s out…tomorrow! Get excited! Go play!
Just kidding. Read this review, first. I promise it’s worth it.
Crashlands 2 is an RPG that features crafting, monster slaying, resource gathering, and silly dialogue to keep you entertained in between exploring and side quests. After several weekends playing it, I just love its simplicity and charm.
Flux Dabes and Juicebox are the two stars of Crashlands 2. They’re quick to quip, silly beyond all get out, and charmingly naïve in their approach to get back to their feet after crash landing (heh, get it) on Woanope. As Flux, the intergalactic trucker, I made my way across a new part of Woanope that is chock full of danger and resources to use to my advantage. While I didn’t need much of a refresher to remind myself of the events of the original Crashlands, it was nice to see a handful of familiar faces.
For such a simple looking game, Crashlands 2 surprised me with its liveliness. Resources (like bulbous alien trees and shimmery rocks) quickly respawned after I harvested what I needed. Alien monsters had set routines where they interacted with each other and occasionally destroyed objects that would leave behind valuable resources. It was pleasant to come across new resources as enemies went about their business, almost as much as slaying the monsters with whatever I had on-hand.
The first few hours of Crashlands 2 were rough, but this is something that is common across most crafting/farm-life sims. Here, the initial farming for the early rudimentary resources (like sticks, rocks, and Raygrass Roots) felt boring. Getting obliterated by Sluggabuns and Sluggababies sucked, especially since I only had a frying pan and a simple weapon that barely scratched the monsters. The world felt so dangerous, so big, and overwhelming.
But that sluggish start did not persist. It lasted but a few hours, and then I was hooked to the point of losing an entire evening exploring Haarlipol and the surrounding areas. The bite-sized fetch quests (a farming sim staple) and fast-travel system made it easy for me to balance getting things done and explore new biomes based on what tools I had unlocked. I never felt lost thanks to the map clearly circling areas of interest and flagging me toward places I could, rather than should, go.
Crashlands 2 plays like your traditional farming/lifestyle sim, but with a greater degree of approachability. You start with nothing, but the world is (mostly) yours to modify, rebuild, and explore as you please. It features the traditional stables like farming, mining, and fishing, all of which involve simple button presses rather than tests of skill or patience.
It’s cozy – delightfully so. The laidback alien atmosphere was perfect for some mindless farming, building, mining, and fishing. In the grand scheme of Crashlands 2’s gameplay, the combat ended up being just as simple especially when I had acquired new armor and slightly more powerful weapons. Alien enemies clearly telegraph their attacks, and when/if I died, a wacky inflatable arm flailing man would emerge on my corpse and retain everything I had collected.
Unlocking new recipes, ingredients, pets, and other tools can feel like an idle mobile game instead of a traditional sim grindfest. When I took Flux and chatted up Graal or Oowee (two of the many NPCs), I could task them with researching new insights over a set period of time. In the early game, it would often feel like I was artificially gated by having to wait several minutes for an NPC to discover a recipe, this made the early game feel especially sluggish. Later in my run, however, I had no issue having my NPC friends work in the background to research new technologies – I always had something else to do, be it farming for resources, completing small quests or exploring new parts of the map.
Crashlands 2 is smart in how it utilizes real time to gradually unlock new crafting recipes and missions. When the player figures out that they don’t have to wait in a building and go about completing other small tasks, returning to the home base becomes rewarding on the quest completion front and the learning front.
The crafting system is simple, perfect for a mobile gamer or a younger PC player who hasn’t yet wrapped their head around complex building systems. Crashlands 2 leans into the idea of building a small abode with four pillars, some walls, and a door, all using the same handful of ingredients.
One of my biggest complaints with crafting in farming games is how convoluted the crafting process can become. This often emerges in the form of managing a gigantic list of resources, going out of my way to find a very specific ingredient that rarely spawns, and finicking with a user interface that is more confusing than Crashlands 2 sidesteps these issues with ease – if I wanted to replace my cabin’s simple walls with something more ornate – I could do so, most likely using ingredients that I had already come across.
For hardcore sandbox player who wants something with a deep and meaningful crafting system to build colorful buildings, unique objects, and interactable environments, you probably won’t be satisfied with Crashlands 2’s crafting gameplay loop. It’s too restrained and simple (at least for now), so don’t expect to create a working calculator. What you can create, though, is just enough to give you a taste of the best bits of a crafting sandbox that you can use as a jumping off point to explore other games in the crafting genre.
It sucked to not see what resources I had collected unless I visited a crafting table, but a casual player shouldn’t be poring over what they have in their inventories and attempting to plan out item after item. Crashlands 2’s approach to crafting keeps it casual, fun, and approachable for all kinds of players, but with a greater emphasis on those who want to build with whatever is on hand instead of a strict set of ingredients and complicated steps.
Crashlands 2 does not have co-op. I don’t hold it against Butterscotch Shenanigans for not having it at launch (or potentially at all). Where the original Crashlands was a test of how to create a charming sandbox with a hint of co-op, Crashlands 2 feels like a far more casual foray into a sandbox gameplay loop with easier quest tracking, more to build, pet collecting, and monster slaying. If co-op is indeed in the cards for Crashlands 2, that’s great – but I still think Crashlands 2 stands just fine as a single player game for the time being.
Crashlands 2 has been worth the wait, especially for those who want a simple crafting and farming game that can be played on an iPhone or PC. Its tongue-in-cheek charm, dubstep silliness, and approachability make it worth playing for hours on end…so long as you get past its initial learning sluggishness.
