Automation is one of the best things in video games, and this game does it well. Here’s our review of Nova Lands, a look at its gameplay and story.

This review will cover Nova Lands’  gameplay and story. The game came out on June 22, 2023, and is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store. If, after reading this review, you find yourself interested in Nova Lands, then head on over to the linked stores and grab yourself a copy. Now, without further ado, let’s dive into our review of Nova Lands’ gameplay and story.

Nova Lands Review

Nova Lands Background

For those who don’t know, Nova Lands is a top-down exploration, island management, and factory-building game. Although the game’s Steam listing puts those three characteristics in a different order, I feel like the order matters. The game is, first and foremost, an exploration game. Players can explore various islands to find resources, indigenous life, and more. They then manage these islands, gathering their materials, taming or subduing their inhabitants, and more. And finally, it is a factory-building game, with the end goal being that players will create the most seamless and efficient assembly line of materials.

Now that you know the game’s background, let’s dive into its gameplay.

Nova Lands Gameplay

The game does a great job of telling you how to start playing the game. There’s a tutorial that pops up, whenever you unlock or discover something new. Although I normally don’t like tutorials that make me read, Nova Lands does it nicely. It shows you step-by-step instructions on how to use your equipment, complemented with images. This makes it easier for me to grasp just what exactly I should be doing. Not only that, but it immediately gives me the opportunity to use what I learned. At the start of the game, for example, all I had on me was my gathering tool. I immediately got to work gathering sticks and stones.

I would like to say, however, that although the game does teach you how to start off, it eventually lets you figure things out on your own. For example, early in the game, I find out that I had to create something called a Modular Brick. This item is essential for a lot of the game’s buildings. It didn’t tell me how to create it, but I eventually discovered that if I smelt stone (the game taught me how to make the smelter, and nothing else after), I would get the Modular Brick. The game does this a lot with a lot of its features. It provides the player with the basic information they need before sending them into the unknown.

This is even more obvious with the game’s Technology Tree. Early on in the game, the player will unlock Research. This gives the player access to the game’s Technology Tree. This tree has various branches, each with its own focus. This includes Farming, Crafting, personal equipment, and more. The Technology Tree shows you what buildings or items you unlock, as well as what you need to unlock them. When I first unlocked the Tech Tree, I had fun tracing just what buildings I needed to unlock the next tier of technology.

For example, some of the technology required that I turn in Plastic. To find Plastic, I needed to unlock Advanced Smelting/Crafitng, which required me to turn in Steel Ingots. To craft Steel Ingots, I had to combine Copper and Iron Ingots. For Copper and Iron Ingots, I had to find Iron and Copper Ore, and you can see where I’m going with this. The game is very straightforward in telling the player just what they need to progress. You may have to look around for it a little, but you will eventually figure out just what you need to do.

Since we’re at that topic, let’s talk about the island exploration aspect of this game. The starting Island only had five kinds of resources: Stone, Sticks, Water, Berries, and Iron Ore. In case you didn’t notice, that means I was missing the Copper ore I needed to craft Steel down the line. How do I find the Copper ore, then? By exploring other islands. Players eventually unlock a building that, once you feed in particular materials, will let you unlock and explore new islands. These Islands will have brand new materials, new indigenous life, and more.

It’s after you unlock the immediate surrounding islands that the game shows its true colors. This is also where factory-building and optimization kick in. As a single player, it takes up so much time if you had to manually gather all the materials you needed, put them into the furnaces, transfer the products to other furnaces, and so on and so forth. This is where drones, the first step of optimization, kicks in. Players (with upgrades) can place up to five drones in each island. These drones can either gather supplies and drop them off at certain locations, or transfer materials to their rightful place.

This means that I can set some drones to gather rocks, ore, and sticks for me, and have other drones plop those into their respective furnaces. While this sounds confusing, it’s anything but. The game’s automation system is actually very easy to understand. Players can easily set and program drones using drop-down menus with images. Not only that, but you don’t even have to program the transport drone. They just do their own thing.

The second part of the optimization comes in the form of mechanical arms. These arms transfer items from one island to another, allowing you to create an assembly line of sorts. In my game, for example, I transport all Copper and Iron ores into one island to turn them into ingots. I then transfer them to another island where they get combined into Steel ingots. I then transfer them all to the central storage island. The game gives a lot of freedom in how you want to create your assembly line. They even implemented a nifty little feature that shows the player the net gain/loss of materials on an island. That way, you know if a certain island needs more inflow of an item, and fix it accordingly.

Automation is the end goal of this game. The goal is to free up as much of your time so that you can do the things that actually matter. The more you progress through the game, the less you have to do down the line. You won’t have to mine anymore, transfer items, and more. All you have to do is sit back, relax, and let your machines do all the work.

While this may sound boring for some, it’s actually something a lot of players love to do. Games like Factorio, Mindustry, and even Minecraft (to an extent) are all about the player automating so many processes that all they have to worry about are the important things. If that’s not your thing, the game even has a story progression system of sorts which we will discuss in the next part.

Nova Lands Story

To be perfectly honest, the game doesn’t really have an intensive story. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t have any. For starters, you arrive on the island after your escape pod crash lands on the island. As you make some progress in the game, other pods start arriving, each with a different NPC. These NPCs function as another progression tracker, as well as a source of some bits of the story. They don’t explicitly tell you their story (with some exceptions), but you can figure things out about their life from the way they dress, and act, as well as the services they offer.

One of the NPCs, for example, is in charge of the game’s museum. The player finds him inside the stomach of a giant worm, which you have to rescue him from. You can gather from the conversations you have with him just what kind of person he is. This goes for all of the NPCs you meet.

One thing I appreciate is that the introduction of the NPCs seamlessly introduces new features to the game. The crash landing pods introduce the shops, the worm NPC unlocks the museum, and down the line, a stranded alien introduces the game’s delivery system. Although the game doesn’t have much of a story, what little it does have melds well into the gameplay feature introductions. As to what those gameplay features are, you will have to try the game to find out.

Nova Lands Review Summary

I recommend this game to others like me who enjoy the process of automating things. Nova Lands’ gameplay is a very specific one, as such not everyone might like the game. If you’re looking for a game with a story, Nova Lands isn’t the game for you. However, if you do meet the criteria, that is, players who enjoy automation, exploration, and finding ways to optimize things, then this game is definitely for you.

Score: 8/10

Editor’s Note: ClutchPoints received a PC review copy of Nova Lands to allow us to cover the game. This copy did not, in any way, affect this Nova Lands review’s verdict.

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