Crashlands 2 is the long-awaited follow-up to Butterscotch Shenanigans’ whimsical, stress-free “thrival” game that dropped players into a colorful world filled with bizarre and occasionally hilarious alien creatures. While the sequel’s premise is largely the same, it’s abundantly clear that the indie team took pains to ensure that the title looked, felt, and played like a true sequel. From massively updated visuals to overhauled combat and a bespoke world design, virtually every aspect of Crashlands has received the love and care of a passionate indie studio.
Game Rant recently sat down with Butterscotch Shenanigans creative director and co-founder Sam Coster to discuss the team’s approach to a Crashlands sequel and some of its most standout additions. In particular, he pointed to the world’s newly hand-crafted level design and how it enables meaningful exploration, along with a revamped combat and gear system that promotes build variety and experimentation.
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Crashlands 2’s World Is Handcrafted
Crashlands featured a procedurally generated world with handcrafted points of interest, and Coster notes that this approach could make exploration feel less rewarding. It’s a problem many games have faced lately: Starfield‘s procedural planets and No Man’s Sky‘s nearly infinite universe have a lot of content on paper, but it can be challenging to make that content feel consistently meaningful. To address this problem—and to bring numerous other benefits—Crashlands 2‘s world is entirely hand-crafted. Coster explains:
“I think the most interesting change at a fundamental level is how the world is built. In the original, we used procedural generation to create the world, and then we had these custom areas—what we called outposts—where all the quest content was placed on top of that procedural base. In Crashlands 2, the entire world is hand-built.
That shift makes a huge difference. Internally, we used to joke that the original game was designed to favor wandering. You couldn’t purposefully find a specific thing or reach a certain location in a structured way. Even filling out the fog of war on the map lacked a sense of discovery because there weren’t really any true nooks and crannies—it was all procedural.”
Thanks to the intentional design of a handcrafted world, Butterscotch Shenanigans can create impactful discovery moments for players. Everything’s placement now has a purpose—to lead players down a new path, show them a beautiful vista, or make them feel clever for discovering a shortcut. There’s little doubt that exploration in Crashlands 2 will be a highlight, rather than a weak point.
Crashlands 2’s Combat and Gear Is A Serious Upgrade
Individual moments throughout that exploration should also be more engaging thanks to major improvements to combat in Crashlands 2. Players can now dodge, aim ranged weapons, and use a more diverse arsenal of equipment that enables wildly differing build possibilities. Coster reveals:
“Combat is another big one. In the original, we wanted players to have different play styles, which is why we had three weapon types—axes, swords, and maces. However, since the input scheme was so limited—just a simple one-touch system for moving and interacting—there wasn’t much room for depth. Players couldn’t really evolve their playstyles or specialize in a way that felt meaningful.
One of the big lessons we learned was that if we wanted deeper combat, we had to loosen some of those restrictions. In Crashlands 2, we added more functionality—more buttons, and more control. Now, if you’re playing with a controller or any other input method, it’s not just about pointing in a direction and going. You have an aiming reticle, different telegraph sizes, and all kinds of funky stuff we did with abilities.
That shift really makes playstyles feel distinct. All three of us brothers ended up gravitating toward completely different builds in our playthroughs.”
Crashlands 2 has an action RPG-inspired approach to gear, with an array of gear sets that promote distinct playstyles. One playstyle involves intentionally taking damage only to unleash it back on enemies, while another has players rapid-firing spears “like a spear machine gun.” Based on what Butterscotch Shenanigans has revealed so far, Crashlands 2 is shaping up to be a considerable upgrade to an already well-regarded game.
Crashlands 2 is set to release on April 10 on PC.
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