In a remote corner of the ever-spreading Empire, a new settlement is to be built. One lucky (or perhaps not so lucky?) individual will be in charge of the entire project, from basic resource harvesting to expansion, trade routes, diplomatic relations with neighboring settlements, and the delicate balance of man and nature coexisting. And who is that fortunate one? Why, you of course – welcome to your brand-new settlement, and get ready for the leadership challenge of a lifetime!
Of Life and Land is a city building/management simulation game with a medieval and fantasy-inspired setting. You take on the role of the leader of a settlement designed to populate one of the most remote areas of the Empire, and are responsible for it from the ground up. When you start out, you’ll have just a few residents, humble shacks and logs to work with, relying entirely on the resources you can harvest from the world around you. As your settlement grows, you’ll expand – larger buildings, growing population, more complex resource gathering and crafting – but also have to deal with problems such as your not-always-friendly neighbors and the ever-present worries of pollution and overpopulation.
The primary thing that sets Of Life and Land apart from other similar games in the “city builder” and “settlement manager” genre is the extremely deep and reactive nature of the simulation. The world doesn’t simply bow down and let you command it. You may be the one responsible for keeping the settlement running, you may be the one behind the keyboard – but you’re not playing god. Your villagers have their own whims and desires. Weather and other natural phenomenon occur and can change the entire situation in a moment. Plants and animals, people and buildings, interact with each other in a variety of realistic-feeling ways. And pollution and overpopulation always threaten, preventing you from simply expanding willy-nilly without carefully thinking out your moves. It can get frustrating at times, absolutely, but it’s a frustration that I welcomed as it reflected the depth and elaborate nature of the simulation at the heart of Of Life and Land.
I also loved that solutions to problems are not linear. How I handled an overpopulation issue may be completely different from how another player handled it when they ran into the same problem. And because the individual residents of your settlement have their own wants and needs, you can’t just click a button to get rid of them. I mean, I guess you could let a bunch of them die, but this probably would not lead to good things for your settlement in the future (although I didn’t go that route so I can’t say for sure!).
Unfortunately, the fact that everything is so carefully and elaborately simulated, down to the individual needs and interactions of each plant and animal, does mean that things can be a little bit overwhelming. There were a few times when there was just so many things happening at once that I had to pause and step away from the game. That’s not a bad thing – and Of Life and Land definitely lets you do that, with the ability to slow down and pause simulated time – but it is definitely something I experienced more than once. It might be that I’m not the most experienced with city builders, though, and someone who is more adept with these kind of intense, detailed, many-layered simulations would not find things as overwhelming as I did.
The game is colorful and features a relatively simple art style that still reflects the beauty of nature, and conveys the depth and variety of the world around you while keeping things clear and easy to visually process. I especially loved the animals, which were given very cute, blocky designs and came in tons of different colors to add some variety to your settlement. My favorite were the cows – there was just something so friendly-looking about them! As your settlement expands, you also get a look at some of the many different biomes and environments available, and Of Life and Land does a great job of differentiating forest from desert from marshland and much more. And the night time skyline, especially as your settlement grows and you start to see houses with lit-up windows deep into the night, is downright gorgeous!
One issue is that the UI does become overly crowded at times. Most functions, from adding a new building to checking the stats of something, results in a new menu popping up, which can lead to the screen feeling cluttered and the need to pause and declutter for a moment. I do think that some menus could possibly be combined, or perhaps automatically minimize when too many are shown at once, but this is a small complaint. An unfortunately larger complaint is that the text size in this game is tiny. Even with a high resolution on the fairly large screen of my PC, I felt like I was constantly having to strain my eyes and squint to read things properly.
Aside from these small issues, however, Of Life and Land is a fun new addition into the city builder/settlement manager genre that I predict will quickly become a favorite among fans of such games. It’s fairly newbie-friendly as well, if a little bit chaotic at times, and sets itself apart from the genre due to the depth of simulation and the focus on nature needing to exist in balance with your settlement rather than you being able to simply do what you want and take as many resources as you want. The game is currently in Early Access, and I look forward to seeing what changes and updates are made in the future as it develops!
Kate played Of Life and Land in Early Access on PC using a review code.
