Build Lands is a casual building game from Brazilian-based Yaw Studios and after a 2022 PC release, it’s now out on console. Now, “casual building game” doesn’t tell you much and we’ll get onto that in a bit but this is genuinely a hard game to classify as it’s not really like anything else.
There are two sides to this game. An option on the main menu lets you build you own ‘lands’ while the main campaign mode, if you can call it that, asks you to recreate 44 pre-set ones. We’ll start with the latter as that serves as a good introduction to the gameplay mechanics that Build Lands has.
The process of building applies to both modes. Essentially you’re given a small area to work in that you fill will Minecraft-esque blocks. These can be water, sand, stone, lava, greenery, roof parts and so on. You place the blocks down in a grid formation and then when you’ve finished that layer, the game moves you up to the next layer to do the same. Complete all the layers and you get to move onto the next level.
This is all made a lot easier by the fact that the game gives you a transparent view of what blocks you need to place. That essentially turns the game into a polygonal colouring book where you’re just copying what you see. And that’s basically it. Sure, the grids get bigger and the number of layers increase but this is pretty much just painting by numbers. And while that might not sound very interesting, it could have some utility by serving as a bit of a relax-’em-up. One of those games that you chill out with while listening to a podcast or whatever.
Unfortunately, Build Lands misses the mark there thanks to a bunch of poor decisions when it comes to the game’s interface. Good Lord, this is about as poorly designed and optimised a UI as we’ve ever seen, and we review a LOT of shabby PC ports. The signs aren’t good right away. The game’s 44 levels are split into three types (Cute Lands, Lava Lands and Village Lands) and the way that the game tells you that you’re on one of these options is to make the image of it very slightly bigger. We’re playing on a console here, there’s no mouse pointer. Playtest this stuff, man.
It gets so much worse though. In gameplay, you have a line of blocks that you pick from in any given level. You select the one you want by pressing left or right on the d-pad but the whole process is wrecked by a few boneheaded decisions. Firstly, highlight that shows you what block you’re on is a barely-visible yellow glow and even then you can only see it as it transitions from one block type to another. It’s brutal.
But it gets worse, somehow. The row of blocks isn’t a fixed screen item, it can be scrolled and rotated off the screen as you look that land you’re trying to recreate. That means that when you’re moving around the grid trying to place blocks, you have to leave that area to look at the block row. Sure, there’s a little window that shows the one block you have selected (albeit seen in not very useful side-on fixed view). Why not just have a window for the whole row of blocks?
And this matters because, as the game progresses, you’ll have a dozen or so blocks that you need to use to recreate that stage. And here’s where things go from annoying to maddening. A level might use three almost identical looking blocks. To the game they may as well be chalk and cheese but to your human eyes, they’re impossible to discern. And so you end up doing a trial and error thing where you’re trying to figure out which one of three stone wall blocks is the one the game wants there. And it’s not consistent of course. No, you’ll have an area of one block type but with like one or two blocks randomly placed in there that are a different one. And, OF COURSE, they don’t put these blocks next to each other in the selection row. Oh no, they just mix it all up so these very similar looking blocks aren’t even placed near each other meaning you have to keep scrolling down to the selection row.
Honestly, I don’t know if any of that will make sense in this review but when you’re playing it’s just unbelievably shoddy. Just one playtester should have reported back with ‘hey, this interface is a constant, miserable chore.’
And even if they had nailed all this, which should have been easy, the core mechanic of simply copying Minecraft-esque layouts isn’t particularly interesting, engaging or fun. It’s just a task. One that is made harder for no good reason. But once you’ve had enough of that you can start creating your own designs which would be fine if Minecraft hadn’t done that infinitely better back in 2009.
So, ultimately we’re not sure what this was all about. We played through the whole thing and it did at least hold together but it was telling that every time a simpler layer showed up in a design that we felt a little bit of relief. Like the chore was going to be lesser for at least the next couple of minutes. Make of that what you will.
Summary
Build Lands could have worked as a relaxing building game but instead aggravates with fussy level designs and an interface that fights you every step of the way.
