Farlanders LadiesGamers

Farlanders Review

Game: Farlanders
Genre: Indie, Strategy, Simulation
System: Steam (Windows, macOS)
Developers | Publishers: Andriy Bychkovski | Crytivo
Controller Support: No, Keyboard & Mouse
Price: US $14.99 | UK £11.39 | EU € 12,99
Release Date: January 17th, 2023

Review code used, with many thanks to Crytivo.

Farlanders is a turn-based non-combat survival simulation game where you build a thriving colony on Mars. It was initially campaigned on Kickstarter and raised $24,058, well over the $8,000 goal.

Build a Colony

Farlanders LadiesGamers
Chose campaign or free play

In Farlanders, you aim to do what you do in any city builder: build residential areas for your colonisers and collect resources. There are artefacts to discover on the planet’s surface and below. You’ll research new buildings and upgrade technologies to advance your society. You’ll construct resource-producing factories to become a self-sufficient society and endeavour to keep your citizens happy.

However, to build on the red planet, you must terraform the suface to place buildings. In addition, when terraforming the planet, you must wait for your turn to be able to terraform, as this is a turn-based simulation game. That little detail makes Farlanders play out like a cross between a puzzle and a simulation game.

Preset Terraforming Templates

farlanders LadiesGamers
Use the terraforming tools.

When it is your turn to terraform the planet, you are given a few preset templates to choose from to terraform. The template can be any shape the game decides to give you. But you can only use one preset template in each turn, though you can save a terraforming template to use later. Unfortunately, saving a template seemed to work for me only sometimes when I hit the save template button.

There are mountains to remove and water tiles to find to give your colony its water supply. Using terraforming, you can create fertile land, which helps you manage your food resources carefully. Similarly, you can use terraforming to raise the land into mountains to place wind turbines.

Randomly Generated Maps

Farlanders LadiesGamers
Build a base on Mars

Furthermore, the maps are random and start with incredibly cluttered terrain, so you are never sure how you will proceed, and it does take some strategic thinking to get your base up and running.

As you plan and develop your colony, you have to be ready to weather the brutal storms and temperature fluctuations of Mars. Sandstorms are a threat as they can plunge your colony into darkness by blocking out the sun for solar-powered generators. If you don’t prepare, you can find that the colonies’ energy consumption increases when cold weather arrives, and they will leave the colony.

Puzzle Elements

Farlanders LadiesGamers
Image courtesy of Crytivo

Farlanders plays well. The game’s turn-based nature sure adds a puzzle element to the gameplay. Sometimes I just wanted to terraform and not have to wait, but I soon got used to changing my plans to go with the terraforming preset the game gave me. On the other hand, progress can be slow due to the random terraforming sets, so Farlanders isn’t a game that will suit players who like to rush and advance quickly.

Visuals and Controls

Farlanders LadiesGamers
Tech tree to research

I like the retro look of the graphics, which drew me to the game when I first saw it. Also, it suits the atmosphere of being on the red planet Mars. There is a storyline to follow, with email, text messages and such to read to keep you up to speed. Though the storyline was good, it felt like it was added as an afterthought.

Controls are keyboard and mouse as they perform as expected. The music is great to listen to; however, it does repeat and can get a little repetitive eventually.

Farlanders LadiesGamers
Image courtesy of Crytivo

Conclusion

Farlanders is an exciting game with its terraforming puzzle elements and one to watch. In addition, it offers strategic planning for players of the strategy simulation genre. More updates are to be released, such as Daily Challenge, and a Sandbox game mode will be added after the game’s release. There is a free prologue available to download from Steam and a demo for the game if you want to try it out before you buy.

Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot  I like it a lot

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