Build Lands Review

Cosy, stress-free videogames have always been my go-to when I need to unwind or take a break from action-packed or plot-heavy titles. With developer Yaw Studios’ latest game, Build Lands, its description included the words, “you will have fun and relax building cute islands”, which made me think that this would be a great game to jump into whenever I needed a bit of peace. But does that come at the cost of fun gameplay? Let’s find out.

In Build Lands, the objective for each stage is simple: recreate a grid-based island using the specific blocks given to you in each level. There’s no fail state, and any incorrect blocks placed can easily be removed, so the main aim is just to build each preset island piece by piece until you’ve matched the template shown at the beginning of the level. You’ve got different tools that’ll help you complete each stage: one for placing a block, one for covering any free spaces with the currently selected piece, one to remove blocks, one to remove everything on a layer, and one to quickly select a specific piece.

Early levels start out with three or four blocks to use, with later levels really ramping up the variety and amount of pieces you’ll need to reconstruct the island. Either way, you’re not forced to remember the exact layout of the island (which is a good thing really, or I’d still be stuck on the first level). You can cycle through each layer using the left and right shoulder buttons to see what still needs building, with a transparent block image showing you what needs to be placed in an empty space. Once the lowest layer is done, you’ll move on to the next one, and so on, until completion.

Build Lands is almost like painting by numbers and is very reminiscent of Diorama Builder, albeit much less complex. Whilst Diorama Builder feels more akin to a puzzle game, with the player trying to figure out where the pieces go, Build Lands has the entire layer mapped out for you to just place all the right blocks. That is, until you come across levels that have multiple types of blocks (such as bricks or lava cubes) that all look nearly identical, thus making it a guessing game where you’ll need to place one block, then undo it if it was the wrong choice. It also took me way too long to figure out how to rotate the pieces. At first, a roof of a house had all its pieces — corners included — facing one way, and whilst the game accepted it as a correct placement, it infuriated me how haphazard the final island ended up looking. With Build Lands not having a competent options menu, it was a wild guessing game until I figured out that rotating is done by holding either of the shoulder buttons. Remember how I said those buttons were used to swap layers? A relief for sure once I’d figured it out, but there were a few levels that I completed that looked an absolute mess thanks to not discovering this sooner.

Perhaps my favourite feature was the “Land Editor” mode, which gives you the option to choose an island size and create your very own one! With over 20 different block sets, with numerous blocks in each, there’s a good deal of creativity available in Build Lands. Once you’ve built something you’re happy with, you can upload it for others to rebuild, as you would with the islands in the main game's levels. The major issue here is that after saving my own creations, when I loaded certain ones up to build, I was unable to do anything. None of the pieces were available, and I was left with an empty grid to look at. I’m not sure why this only happened on some levels, but it was an additional frustration to what is touted as a relaxing experience.

The simple, cube-based graphics and tranquil audio, however, were perhaps the pinnacle of the chilled nature of the game. It’s a very vibrant-looking title, with some blocks — such as water — being animated to really bring your islands to life. There is certainly a lot of charm to the aesthetics, and it was rather calming during gameplay, but it still didn’t offset the tedium I felt after just a short time of playing.

I often found myself wondering what the point of Build Lands was. Now, that sounds incredibly harsh for such a low-cost title with such a simple gameplay loop, but there was genuinely zero challenge to be found. I wasn’t expecting to have my gaming abilities tested in this cosy building game; however, when each level is simply having the player fill in transparent blocks with ones of their own, it quickly becomes a mundane and rather fruitless affair.

There is some semblance of enjoyment to be had with Build Lands, especially for younger ones who are perhaps not quite ready for something like Minecraft. But, for everyone else, there are plenty of other titles with a bit more depth to them that are worth checking out before this one.