Lay of the Land Review — Bit by Bit

Minecraft is credited with creating and popularizing a brand-new genre: voxel-based survival crafting, where players are tasked with building and crafting in a world where every piece of the terrain can be destroyed, harvested, and used to make something else. It’s a very appealing kind of game, one that rewards players with a level of freedom few other genres can hope to match. Though it has taken a while, we are finally seeing some real competitors entering the genre, with titles like Vintage Story, Hytale, and now, Lay of the Land, giving players some variety in a genre long dominated by one game.

What Lay of the Land does to separate itself from the others is its use of true voxel terrain. Where in other titles the world is made up of a series of blocks, Lay of the Land uses actual voxels—pixel-sized miniature cubes that come together to create incredibly detailed environments and structures—while still being made completely out of these same building elements. This gives players more freedom to construct and destroy, with everything still being collectible and placeable, just at a much smaller level, allowing for much more detail overall.

If I did not do a good job of explaining how voxels in Lay of the Land work, all you really need to do is look at the provided screenshots to understand what I am saying. Every small piece you see can be removed or placed, allowing for intricately designed terrain or structures that simply cannot be made in other games in the genre, especially at this level of precision.

This building freedom is further expanded by the advanced building tools of Lay of the Land. Unlike other games, where you can place blocks down against the invisible grid of the game, Lay of the Land has tools for assembling voxels into unique shapes, resizing structures, and even a blueprinting mode that allows you to save specific shapes and structures to use later in your world.

What you can accomplish with these tools really depends on your familiarity and patience, as learning them can be a bit of a hassle, and they do not function perfectly. Trying to create straight lines with the building tools is particularly difficult, with your mouse controlling size on both axes with the same directional input. For example, if you pull the mouse too far to the left, the line you are building might get taller, and trying to increase the height might shift you another block away from the area you are trying to build on. It is tricky, and some players will really love the system and go on to build impressive megastructures, while others might avoid it entirely due to the learning curve.

Lay of the Land also separates itself from others in the genre due to its immaculate vibes and setting, putting you into a sort of high-fantasy world full of dangerous creatures and enticing fauna alike. The desert hills sparkle with crystal-clear rivers, and the forests are littered with giant glowing mushrooms, with skeleton warriors and fantastical creatures scattered throughout. It is an absolutely gorgeous game, with cleverly designed environments and incredible lighting that really make every discovery feel all the more memorable and rewarding.

The cost of that beauty, of course, is some lower frame rates and longer load times, but higher-end machines probably won’t face these problems, or at least won’t notice them as much.

Another way in which the game separates itself from titles like Minecraft and Vintage Story is in its length. Lay of the Land will not take you incredibly long to beat, with all of the bosses of the game defeated and crafting recipes completed within the 10-hour mark. The overall scale of the game is much smaller, with it playing more like a condensed adventure rather than a massive sandbox you could lose thousands of hours in over time.

To many fans of the genre, this aspect of the game might be rather disappointing. It is no Terraria, and choosing not to engage with the building mechanics of the game further reduces the amount of time it takes to find everything and conquer what the game has to offer. In my personal opinion, the limited scope of the game is a disappointment: there just were not as many decorations to craft or discover as I thought there would be, not nearly as many enemies or unlockable recipes, and overall I left feeling like the game was something more akin to an Early Access experience rather than a full launch.

While the game is not in Early Access, there is no reason to assume that what Lay of the Land has to offer now is the full extent of the creative vision of its developers. To make the Minecraft comparison once again, there is always plenty of room for the game to be further updated, adding content and potentially doubling or even tripling its current scale over time.

That being said, what the game has to offer now is far from nothing. There is still plenty to do in that short timeframe, but I do not expect players to be particularly compelled to start new worlds after their first completion, given the game’s very limited inherent replayability in its current state. For the price, I might argue that Lay of the Land could offer more, but I would be surprised if someone told me that the first six to ten hours of gameplay were not enjoyable. If you are not sold on the game as it is now, I would give it a few months and see how the development cycle plays out. Who knows, they might just wow you with what is to come.

Lay of the Land was reviewed on the PC. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Lay of the Land is available on Steam.