Smalland: Survive the Wilds

Steam Reviews

Read all reviews on Steam

• Not recommended Posted May 11, 2026 on Steam Used to enjoy the game even with all the quirks, my favorite part was having a decent grapple system, but now, your grapple breaks after like 20 grapples and you have to stop and repair it. I just wish devs would STOP MAKING YOUR GEAR AS DURABLE AS PAPER. It's not fun, it's just a massive pain in the ass, when you make everything break after a few minutes of playing it's miserable, make the game fun to play not burdensome.
• Recommended Posted August 4, 2025 on Steam At almost 400 hours in, i think i should give a review. The game is extremely charming and has a lot to offer, I love the base building, creature collecting, and the world is gorgeous with beautiful views and lots of places to find and explore. I love this game, but it's not without its issues. The game could have better onboarding to help the player get started, right now the current method is a series of owl totems with tips that give you hints, I actually blew past a bunch of them and didn't find them again until they were no longer relevant. Having an npc give a series of simple quests to get the player started would probably help. A lot of things in this game are pretty unclear, with poor descriptions. Things like the Intelligence stat are listed as "affects crafting" with no further explanation, creature leveling makes no sense, things that are level 1 can be stronger than things that are level 70 and it seems like the levels don't actually matter as much as just creature type, which is a shame. Early game can be brutal, but that's fine by me honestly, it really motivates you to get things like the gliders and better armors, mid-game feels great, once you have a decent set of armor and your first good mount, it really feels like an adventure, but then end game, the end game really flattens out. Once you hit max level (100) and stop gaining experience it starts feeling very shallow, your fully upgraded weapons and armor end up with identical stats, there are lots of places to explore but not many things to find, looting is not really a thing in this game. You'll explore and find an npc chest or work station but won't be able to interact with it, a lot of your time end game is spent gathering resources to build, but once you build your epic end-game base, there's very little furniture to put in it. All that said, the game has been continuing to push out updates that improve the game overall, the latest addition of the paintbrush and pet stables were a great update. The game has a lot of room to grow, and a ton of potential, but even a year after official launch, the game still has a very early-access feel to it. All said, I can safely highly recommend this game, it's much more fun with a friend.
• Recommended Posted May 10, 2026 on Steam I really wanted to love Smallands and sometimes I did. The problem is, those moments were usually followed immediately by okay but why is it like this though. The biggest standout here is the perspective. You’re tiny, humans are long gone, and the world feels massive, overgrown, and hostile in a way that actually works. It leans more gritty than something like Grounded, with skeletons and ruins reminding you things didn’t end great for the giants. It’s genuinely cool, and exploring it, especially vertically, is where the game shines. Building up in trees is not just a gimmick, it’s actually fun and gives you a lot of creative freedom. Taming bugs is another highlight. Running around with your little army of creatures is both useful and kind of adorable in a weird survivalcore way. But you’re limited in how many you can actively use, and in multiplayer it turns into a management headache real fast. What should feel like a fun system ends up feeling weirdly restrictive. Combat sits somewhere in that dodge, block, punish style you’d expect from games like Valheim. When it works, it feels great. When it doesn’t, it feels clunky. The early game especially can be rough. You’re underpowered, everything wants you dead, and your starting gear feels like it’s made of wet paper. Customization is another mixed bag. There are some really cute outfits, but it quickly becomes obvious there’s basically one correct set to wear if you care about stats. Fashion loses to survival efficiency, and not in a satisfying way. The world itself is beautiful, no notes there. Weather, seasons, and environmental effects add a lot to the atmosphere. But then you realize the NPCs are sparse, the story barely sticks, and you’re not really driven by anything other than I guess I need more materials again. It starts to feel a little hollow despite how good everything looks. And yeah, the grind. It’s there. Resource gathering and farming can drag, and some systems feel either overcomplicated or weirdly shallow at the same time. It’s a strange combo that makes progression feel slower than it should. Multiplayer should’ve been a huge win here, but it ended up being one of the more frustrating parts of my experience. Between clunky systems and general weirdness, it sometimes felt harder to enjoy the game together than it should have been. Overall, this is one of those games that keeps almost being amazing. It has great ideas, a really cool world, and moments where everything clicks. But it struggles with polish, balance, and making its systems feel consistently rewarding. Hit and miss, usually at the exact same time.
• Not recommended Posted May 13, 2026 on Steam honestly if you played grounded you would not enjoy this the items decay so fast the story is hard to understand and where things are is even worse its not very welcoming
• Not recommended Posted October 5, 2025 on Steam As with others, I really wanted to like this game. The aesthetic is lovely. The gameplay isn't. I'm a fan of open world survival craft games - my library's full of them - and while I appreciate the iterative nature of such games, the best ones achieve a balance. This one just... doesn't. The farther into the game you get, the more of a grind it becomes, and the return on that grind just isn't there, especially if you play solo. It's just too gated, everywhere, and with diminishing returns as you progress. I've about 125 hours in at this point. I'm looking at the endgame and realizing that, quite simply, I don't want to take the time to get there. I'll come back to it in a while, I think, but not now.
• Recommended Posted November 25, 2025 on Steam I played Smalland with friends, which is easily the best way to experience it. Solo is fine, sure, but running around as a bug-sized adventurer with a party of tiny idiots makes the whole thing feel like a chaotic backyard D&D campaign, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. The survival system is simple (borderline chill, even). You still have to eat and craft and not get murdered by things normally stepped on by toddlers, but nothing feels punishing or grindy. It's survival-lite: enough friction to make the game loop meaningful without making me consider a career change. One thing I didn't expect to enjoy was the pet system. Think ARK, but with fewer spreadsheets and significantly less chance of your favourite creature clipping through a wall and dying while you're asleep. Pets are easy to manage, flexible, and the party system lets you swap them around depending on what's about to try to kill you next. Want a tanky beetle? Go for it. Want a fast mount? Easy. Want something that exists purely to look cool while you pretend you're a tiny warlord? Done. The world is the real star here. It's gorgeous... lush, oversized, and full of "oh damn, that's huge... oh wait, that's just a flower" moments. Being small makes everything feel massive, but the game never punishes you with tedious travel. They solved that beautifully with multiple traversal systems: grappling hooks, gliders, running mounts, jumping mounts, flying mounts... at some point I felt like a bug-sized Batman with a zoo. And then there's the "teleporting" base, which is honestly kind of brilliant. Instead of abandoning 12 half-built outposts across the map like I do in every other survival game, we actually committed to one big, cozy home. And because the game lets you bring that home with you, we could decorate it without feeling like we were painting the walls of a doomed rental. The building system is packed with decorations too; lots of fun cosmetic fluff that makes base-building feel rewarding instead of "I built a box because I had to." Overall, Smalland is a genuinely fun survival game that doesn't waste your time. It's chill with friends, rich in atmosphere, and just complex enough to keep you invested without drowning you in busywork. It's not perfect (nothing with giant spiders ever is) but it's one of the few survival games where being tiny actually feels big. Verdict: A surprisingly delightful backyard adventure. 7.5/10, would ride a stag beetle again.