Scorchlands

by Aethyna Sep 20, 2024 | 1 Votes | 66 Played | 0 Reviews

9 rate

Genres:

Strategy

Graphics:

Labels:

Building , Exploration

Platforms:

Scorchlands is a unique terraforming-based industry-builder set on remote planet where the goal isn’t just to exploit the many resources available, but also to funnel the required resources to the Nexus to unlock new biomes and unlock new resource type. Defeat enemies and return the scorched lands to their original state as well. Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Scorchlands is a unique terraforming-based industry-builder set on remote planet where the goal isn’t just to exploit the many resources available, but also to process them in the most efficient way, and convert the raw materials into advanced components, allowing you to further progress along the technology tree. Fuel the Nexus to unlock new biomes and uncover new resource types. You even get to recruit new units so you could take on tougher enemies that are protecting the red crystals, which are corrupting the ground around them. Will you be able to gather what you need to reach for the stars?

Gameplay

Scorchlands isn’t your typical fatory/industry builder where it’s all about conveyor belts and strategically placing your production facilities (and having enough of them) just so you could min-max the most efficient production of a specific material. Instead, the game opts to go an entirely different route, which gave the game its refreshingly fun and intriguing gameplay.

You see, in this game, buildings that you place are completely resource-free. You can place as many structures as you like within the build area of your outpost, the radius of which can be further upgraded once you have the specific tech unlocked. There are many different types of buildings too, ranging from the usual resource-production and processing facilities, to households which help boost nearby buildings (doesn’t increase the population of said colony but instead consumes it), to even logistical structures like Transfer Lasers and the Mirror Catapult. I should also point out that the game allows you to move your colonies as needed. You can create quite a lot of these outpost colonies too.

However, the main limiting factor is your population. Every new colony you create has a fixed number of manpower you can use to either produce the resources the outpost is intended for or to operate the many logistics-based structures to transfer raw materials to the location they are needed. Due to this, it’s usually good idea to only restrict each colony to producing a single resource, and hence, it’s probably a good idea to set up each new outpost in their respective resource-rich areas.

Moving resources about in this game can be a bit tricky. As opposed to using conveyor belts, the game will have you use Transfer Lasers to beam a single resource type to a receiving laser. Note that both lasers will need to be built within the vicinity of an outpost or it won’t work. The distance the lasers can cover is pretty wide, but there’s a catch - lasers only travel in a straight line. To divert the laser beam so it could bend to the side, you’ll need to use mirrors. Mirrors don’t have to be placed within the radius of a colony, but you do need to build a mirror catapult to lob the mirror to the desired location outside the colony.

Thankfully, the game does gradually ease you into its unique gameplay with its tutorial, but even if you opt to skip the tutorial, you should be able to generally follow what the game wants you to do by checking what building options are available and knowing what they do by reading the tooltips. To start, you don’t even need any logistics - you just need to set up everything needed to churn out stone tablets.

This actually brings me to another interesting point about the game - it doesn’t produce resources in the usual “X amount over time” kind of way. In fact, time is irrelevant here when it comes to resource production. Everything you place will produce a fixed amount of resource when placed… and that’s it. Not sure what kind of game logic applies here, but this is what it is, and frankly, it does make the game a lot more intriguing because now, you’ll need to figure out whether or not you need to set up a new colony to produce that exact same resource, or if you have enough to get all the technologies you need to comfortably progress to the next stage. This is even more tricky to decide when multiple raw materials come into play to produce a single advanced component.

Since building things don’t cost resources or currency here, you can probably guess by now that the resources you produce don’t go into your buildings. Instead, they are used in research, to unlock new technologies and upgrades on the pretty expansive, tiered technology tree. Each tier contains tech that requires a different kind of resource to unlock. These resources can only be obtained by unlocking a new biome. To do so, you’ll need to funnel the required resources to the Nexus so it could terraform your chosen area.

Aside from building, the game also puts heavy emphasis on exploration and combat. As per its namesake, most of the lands on this planet are “scorched” and rendered unuseable, no thanks to the many red crystals that are literally corrupting the ground around them. These crystals are also guarded by a bunch of hostile creatures which could make the task of destroying them quite difficult.

You see, unlike the usual RTS combat system you’d expect due to the gameplay experience provided, the game has a highly strategic and puzzle-driven combat system that is surprisingly easy enough to grasp. The trick here is to “overwhelm” the enemy with your own units, and this is made easier thanks to all the enemies being immobile. To do this, you’ll need to check the stats of the enemy in question. Some enemies are naturally tougher than others and will require a lot more units on your end to defeat. For the easiest mobs, you can easily take them out with two units, including your own playable character.

To defeat an enemy, you’ll also need to check the curved indicators at the base of the enemy. These indicators come in red and green colors. The goal here is to flip more than 50% of the greens to red to win. You can do that by surrounding the enemy with your own units. Each unit you place adjacent to the enemy will flip one green indicator to red, but of course, this is easier said than done. Some enemies have auras of some sort (shown as red outlines on the ground) that allows them to block out more tiles on the map, preventing your units from even getting close. You’ll need to carefully nad strategically move your units to slowly push back that aura so you can reach the enemy hidden within.

There are synergistic effects here too, where having two friendlies adjacent to one another greatly increases their “strength” so to speak. Unfortunately, this also applies to enemies. If you encounter two of the same enemies that you can previously defeat using only two units, you’ll quickly realize that this is no longer the case if they are side by side.

Thankfully, there’s no need to defeat every single enemy you encounter. The goal is to destroy the red crystals, after all. As long as you’ve slain enough enemies to tunnel your way to the red crystal at the center, you can destroy the crystal and eliminate all surrounding enemies that remained. When the red crystal is gone, the terrain will also return to its original, lush state, allowing you to finally set up colonies and build on it.

As interesting as the game is, I have a bone to pick with Scorchlands. Although your player character moves pretty fast, it’s still quite the pain to navigate around areas that it couldn’t cross, such as water or lava. Granted that your character needs to be on-site at each colony for you to build or destroy anything at said location, you can expect a whole lot of running between colonies which can be made even troublesome with the presence of large bodies of water or lava separating your colonies.

Graphics/ Sound

The graphics in Scorchlands are more functional than aesthetical. The visuals are all very clean-cut, clearly showing the differences between terrains, resources, buildings, and units. They aren’t anything to shout about, but they do make the game look good enough - hence, the availability of Photo Mode, which allows you to take some pretty scenic views of your colonies - and it’s great that the game doesn’t just use pixel art like many indie games tend to do.

In terms of sound, the game is designed with relaxation in mind. This is also apparent in the game’s lack of time-driven elements. The selection of tunes available here are chill enough to the point where you can probably meditate to them. This style of music is pretty common among city builders, but even in combat, you get to chillax to the music whiletrying to puzzle out the best way to defeat an enemy.

Conclusion

Scorchlands is one of the more refreshingly unique builders that I’ve encountered in a while, and considering that I’m an avid fan of builders (colony…city… factory… you name it), this is quite the high praise. It’s incredibly fun trying to optimize production at each outpost and making sure the resources are all sent to the places they need to be. The combat system feels more puzzly than actual combat as well, which fits the game’s chill gameplay. All in all, this is definitely a game that fans of builders should check out. You’ll be missing out if you don’t!