Crashlands 2, like its predecessor, is a game where players are dropped into an alien wilderness and tasked with gathering materials to construct a shelter, craft equipment, and contend with increasingly dangerous and bizarre alien wildlife. On the surface, this description seems to place the game firmly within the ubiquitous survival crafting genre alongside titles like Valheim, The Forest, and Don’t Starve. However, Crashlands 2‘s mechanics reject many survival game tropes, only borrowing elements from the genre that empower players rather than hinder them.
In an interview with Game Rant, Butterscotch Shenanigans CEO and co-founder Adam Coster weighed in on Crashlands 2‘s relationship with the broader survival genre. He outlined how the team is largely uninterested in many features central to survival games, leading to Crashlands 2‘s internal classification as a “thrival” game rather than a survival game.
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Crashlands 2 Is About Thriving, Not Surviving
Survival games often pressure players through systems that can strain resources or demand thoughtful, sometimes painful inventory management. Weapons degrading necessitate bringing a backup, limited inventory calls for prioritizing what to grab, and the threat of starvation can add urgency to exploration. Coster and the team dislike many of these stressful mechanics, and instead pull inspiration from survival games in other ways:
“None of those traditional survival mechanics really made sense for Crashlands. Instead, we pulled inspiration from other places. For example, when Valheim first came out, we played a lot of it. The way you drop all your stuff when you die is obviously annoying, but it also turns recovering your items into its own adventure. That idea stuck with us, and we asked ourselves: “Is there a way we can bring that kind of tension into Crashlands while still keeping its soft, approachable design?”
Internally, we actually refer to Crashlands as a “thrival” game instead of a survival game. It’s not about struggling to stay alive—it’s about showing up and being awesome. You’re not scraping by in space; you’re thriving in it. We never officially called it that because, well, thrival is a weird word to write out, but that’s exactly how we think about it. It’s a game that asks you to build on strengths rather than manage weaknesses.”
As Coster says, Crashlands 2 aims to empower players. This is also apparent in its robust combat system which takes inspiration from action RPGs like Diablo 4. With various combinations of gear pulled from the game’s extensive arsenal, players can devise game-breaking and devastating builds that would be out of place in a strictly survival-oriented game.
Crashlands 2 Adapts Survival Mechanics to Be Less Frustrating
Losing all of one’s items in a survival game like Valheim can be devastating, especially in a dangerous area that makes recovery challenging. Crashlands 2 found what appears to be a balanced middle-ground: losing only half of one’s inventory could be relatively painless, but great enough of a loss might encourage players to embark on a new adventure for recovery. There is also no inventory management in Crashlands 2, so players are free to grab everything they find on the way back. Coster says this death penalty is one idea the team adapted from survival games:
“That said, we do borrow certain survival mechanics in targeted ways to create those moments of tension and excitement. For example, when you die in normal mode, you drop half your inventory. But since Crashlands has infinite inventory, this can lead to some ridiculous situations—if you’ve been playing for two hours and die, you might drop 4,000 items. It’s hilarious. But you can always go back and pick them up.”
Like its predecessor, Crashlands 2 appeals to gamers who enjoy the flow of progression in survival games—gathering resources and crafting equipment to gather more resources—but are put off by the frustrations and pressures inherent to typical survival game systems. Gamers looking for a change of pace might finally find it when Crashlands 2 releases on April 10.
Action-Adventure
Survival
- Released
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January 21, 2016
- ESRB
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T For Teen: Blood, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Butterscotch Shenanigans
- Publisher(s)
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Butterscotch Shenanigans