Review anarchistica 2/5 · Jul 18, 2026
Clunky and boring
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Playtime: 3,5 hours
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Played: 2026
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Context: I saw the words "exploration" and "island management" and my interest was peaked.
Intro
In Nova Lands ('nova' means 'new' in many languages) you start on a hexagonal island, build up a basic production facility and then use your jetpack to visit the nearby hexagonal islands that all form a perfect grid. There will …
-
Playtime: 3,5 hours
-
Played: 2026
-
Context: I saw the words "exploration" and "island management" and my interest was peaked.
Intro
In Nova Lands ('nova' means 'new' in many languages) you start on a hexagonal island, build up a basic production facility and then use your jetpack to visit the nearby hexagonal islands that all form a perfect grid. There will generally be one or two new resources and maybe a few lines of dialogue. To keep expanding you have to process more resources in more involved ways.
Review
Obviously, this whole "new buildings to make new items" thing has been done a million times so you have to stand out in a way. Nova Lands does have some mildly interesting aspects like exporting goods to space aliens but other than that it stands out in bad ways.
You always auto-loot stuff if you have free space, so you're constantly trying to drop resources in places you don't walk through. You can build store spaces, but these are really clunky to use, especially considering a core aspect of the game are bots auto-gathering resources which they drop in the open. The world looks incredibly fake and all the islands are the same tiny spaces with a handful of differences. There's also almost nothing to do other than grind resources. You can shoot creatures, but that won't get you anything so what's the point?
