Nested Lands

A survival game about outliving a plague

Nested Lands drops players onto an island overrun by bandits and a spreading plague, tasking them with scavenging, fighting, and slowly rebuilding a village while managing villagers' hunger, hygiene, and morale. The atmosphere is the thing reviewers reach for first, even when they have plenty of other complaints. "There's a lot survival crafting games out there, but only one could be classified as horror. Nested Lands has similar mechanics to the Minecrafts and Rusts out there, but the atmosphere is so pleasantly creepy throughout and the systems of degradation and slowly approaching doom give it a leg up in my opinion," wrote one reviewer. Another, who had been waiting for a plague-themed survival game since a different title's development ended, was won over by the same restraint in the game's presentation: "I really enjoy this lower end graphic setting they've developed. It further draws you in to the despair and grit. 10/10 nailed it with that. The fog overlay and particle effects also land really well."

A third reviewer defended the game's rough edges as simply what Early Access is supposed to look like: "it’s early access and it feels like what early access is supposed to be. A solid model giving you a glimpse into its future and they need some funds to help further develop it. Doesn't feel like a rip-off. Doesn't feel like a waste of time or money."

The loop can hook you, even through the jank

Several reviewers described losing hours to the game despite openly cataloguing its problems in the same breath. "18 hours in and i finished the early access because i couldn't stop playing. its ♥♥♥♥. the combat the graphics the voice lines and other sound effects... but it was an amazing experience. building upgrading and managing a village from scratch," wrote one, adding that "the janky aspect of everything made me laugh more often then not." A reviewer new to the genre's survival hooks put it more simply: "Loving this game so far! First time playing it captivated me fully for 7 hours straight." One recommending reviewer who logged nearly 500 hours still flagged the town management as more chore than system: "I very much enjoyed the game in its early state. But I found the town management to be tedious. The villagers are so unproductive, they would starve if you didn't return to the town at least a couple times each day to plant crops, cook food, and bring in general resources they should be collecting on their own." The same reviewer added that combat-capable guards were nearly useless: "Guards are worthless... They had access to plate armor and good weapons. They were just entirely incapable of fighting the raiders. You'll need to kill all raiders on your own."

Combat and the second island grind

Where recommending reviewers describe the core exploration loop as satisfying, a large share of negative reviews zero in on combat and travel logistics as the game's weakest systems. One detailed negative review described the fighting as trivially exploitable: "There needs to be a Block, Parry, Wind-Up Swings. To make the Combat actually engaging... enemies INSTANTLY swing. So you have to block before they even attack. BUT. You also out-range the enemies, even with shiv. So you don't need to block. Just Poke them outside their range. Brain dead easy." The developer responded directly to that complaint, noting a missing tutorial explanation rather than a missing feature: "We also do have shield blocking and the parries, but perhaps we didn't quite well explain that in the tutorial." Another reviewer described the game's structure once players have to work across both islands as tedious backtracking: "the constant travel back and forth is what makes this game utterly tedious and un-fun," pointing to limited backpack and warehouse storage as the root cause of repeated trips.

A separate, more skeptical reviewer argued the marketing oversells what's actually in the village: "Bustling village that you see on screenshots? nah. You get new people in sets of 3, you build three houses, a well and a toilet for them. All buildings have hard limits on how many you can have. There is nothing 'alive' about it," concluding that "the fact that they lied on screenshots leaves a bitter taste."

Multiplayer needs real work

Co-op is a headline feature, but it's also where some of the sharpest criticism lands. "Game is absolutely riddled with multiplayer bugs and missing features. Non host players have limited interaction with most features. LAN players aren't supported at all. There's no direct IP connections. Tons of desync and disconnect issues," wrote one reviewer, who added that "it needs at least a year of work on the multiplayer side." Another described a similar imbalance between host and guest players: "You're essentially a glorified village if you're not the host, you have no access to village management," while a third called it "EXTREMELY BORING if you're playing it co-op. If you're not the server you can't do anything in the game except run around searching boxes and collecting the same old stuff." The developer has acknowledged the gap directly in responses, pointing to a multiplayer update that lets client players interact with villagers, though several of the reviews describing the older, more restrictive behaviour remained unedited at time of writing.

Verdict

Nested Lands has a distinctive hook — a grim, plague-soaked setting and a scavenge-then-rebuild loop that a real slice of its review base found genuinely addictive, jank and all — but it's asking full-price-adjacent money for a village-survival game whose core systems are still visibly unfinished. Combat lacks the readability or challenge reviewers want, villager and guard AI barely function without hand-holding, and the multiplayer mode advertised on the store page is, by numerous accounts, badly broken for anyone who isn't hosting. The developer is clearly present and responsive in the reviews, which bodes well for where this goes, but right now it's a purchase for genre fans specifically drawn to its atmosphere who are willing to treat Early Access as exactly that.