Smalland: Survive the Wilds Review – A Beautiful Survival World with Some Rough Edges

Smalland: Survive the Wilds takes a familiar survival-crafting formula and places it in a world where grass towers above the player, puddles become major obstacles, and even an ordinary ant can be dangerous. Its strongest ideas are tied to this sense of scale: riding insects, building homes in enormous trees, and finding routes through a forest that feels much larger than it is.

Developed by Max Ent Games Ltd, Smalland entered Early Access on March 29, 2023, and reached its full 1.0 release on February 15, 2024. It is available on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2.

The game has several worthwhile features for survival fans, particularly its creature mounts, flexible base building, and varied environments. Combat and resource gathering are less consistently satisfying, however, and the story rarely matches the appeal of the setting.

Smalland: Survive the Wilds at a Glance

Smalland shares some obvious similarities with Grounded, particularly its miniature perspective and dangerous insect population. The difference lies in its fantasy setting, emphasis on creature mounts, and more elaborate equipment progression. It also gives players considerable freedom over where and how to establish a home.

What Is Smalland: Survive the Wilds About?

Players control a member of the Smallfolk, a tiny civilization that has spent generations living beneath the surface. With the giants who once dominated the world now gone, the Smallfolk begin returning to the Overland. The player takes the role of a Vanguard sent into the wilderness on an important mission.

The setting turns familiar outdoor environments into difficult terrain. Forest paths are interrupted by roots and fallen branches, abandoned human structures become enormous landmarks, and insects occupy the role of dangerous wildlife. Ants, beetles, wasps, cockroaches, and spiders are among the creatures encountered across the map.

The world is not simply an open sandbox. NPCs provide quests, information, and access to new equipment, while exploration reveals more of the Smallfolk’s history. Progression involves travelling into increasingly dangerous regions, improving gear, and defeating stronger enemies.

The narrative gives these activities a purpose, although it is not the game’s main attraction. The characters and quests provide direction without delivering the same depth as the exploration and crafting systems. Players primarily interested in an elaborate story may find the repeated travel and material gathering less engaging than the world itself.

Gameplay and Survival Mechanics

Smalland follows a progression-based survival structure. Players gather materials, craft tools and weapons, establish shelters, improve their equipment, and travel farther from safety. New regions introduce tougher creatures and resources needed for more advanced recipes.

Preparation matters more than simply collecting large quantities of supplies. The player’s equipment, available healing items, stamina, and resistance to environmental conditions all influence how far an expedition can go.

Gathering Resources and Crafting Equipment

The early game begins with basic materials such as wood, fiber, and plant resources. As players reach new locations, they gain access to components used for stronger equipment and more advanced structures.

Crafting develops through workstations, recipes, and materials collected from the environment or defeated enemies. Better tools open access to more valuable resources, creating a progression system in which combat and exploration support one another.

The system gives players clear reasons to visit new areas. Better armor and weapons have practical value, rather than functioning only as cosmetic rewards.

Its weakness is the amount of repeated gathering required for certain upgrades. Valuable materials can demand additional trips through familiar territory, and replacing equipment or expanding a large base increases the workload. Players who enjoy methodical preparation may appreciate this structure; those looking for faster exploration can find the repetition tiring.

Hunger, Stamina, and Environmental Hazards

Food is part of Smalland’s survival system, but the game does not use a separate thirst meter. Rather than requiring constant water collection, survival depends on maintaining food supplies, managing stamina, and preparing for hostile conditions.

The day-night cycle changes the risks of travelling. Some creatures become more aggressive after dark, while storms and changing temperatures can make poorly planned expeditions dangerous.

Equipment provides protection against different threats, giving armor selection more importance than raw defense alone.

These mechanics are demanding enough to influence exploration without turning the game into a detailed simulation of hunger and thirst. They work best when environmental danger forces a meaningful decision, such as returning to camp before a storm or postponing a fight until better equipment is available.

Combat: Variety in Equipment, Less Variety in Encounters

Smalland offers several weapon categories, including swords, spears, maces, and scythes. Different creatures have strengths and weaknesses, so selecting suitable equipment can make a noticeable difference.

Stamina management, positioning, and attack timing are important, especially against larger insects and bosses. Strong armor improves survivability, but preparation remains essential when entering an unfamiliar area.

The weapon selection provides more variety than the basic combat encounters consistently deliver. Enemy movement and attack patterns can become predictable, while some fights feel stiff or repetitive. Several published reviews have identified combat responsiveness as one of Smalland’s weaker features.

The problem becomes more apparent when an area contains numerous hostile creatures. Encounters that initially feel threatening can become interruptions during repeated resource-gathering trips.

Combat serves the survival progression adequately, but players looking for particularly precise action mechanics may find it less rewarding than building, exploration, and mounted travel.

Base Building and Great Trees

Base building is one of Smalland’s more distinctive systems. Players can construct shelters on the ground or establish settlements high above the forest floor in Great Trees.

Construction uses materials ranging from leaves and twigs to stronger building components, including stone. Players can create practical workshops and storage areas or spend more time designing multi-level settlements.

Great Trees make this system particularly useful. A claimed tree provides an elevated location for a settlement, while the ability to relocate a Great Tree encampment reduces the need to rebuild everything when moving through the world or changing servers.

This addresses a common inconvenience in survival games: the distance between a permanent home and newly accessible regions. A substantial base remains useful even as exploration pushes the player toward more difficult areas.

Building still requires careful management of materials and available space. Large projects involve considerable gathering, and construction controls can take some practice, especially with a controller.

Despite these limitations, the freedom to build among enormous branches gives Smalland a stronger identity than a conventional ground-level shelter system.

Creature Taming and Mounts

Creature taming is central to Smalland’s exploration. Instead of relying exclusively on walking, players can acquire companions that change how they move around the environment.

The available mounts have different strengths, making some better suited to crossing uneven terrain and others useful for covering large distances or reaching elevated locations.

Notable Mounts in Smalland

Taming is not simply a matter of feeding every creature and waiting for it to become friendly. The game’s companion systems include specific taming requirements, traps, and egg incubation, depending on the creature and the progression stage.

Mounts make long journeys more manageable and give the player another reason to seek out particular species. They also make the game’s scale more meaningful: a route that requires navigating roots and insects on foot can become much easier with the right companion.

There are limitations. Creature behaviour and pathfinding have attracted criticism, and relying on a companion during dangerous fights is not always ideal. Some mounts are more valuable as transport than as reliable combat partners.

Even so, the variety of rideable creatures remains one of Smalland’s best features. It affects how players interact with the map rather than simply adding collectible animals.

Exploration, Biomes, and World Design

The miniature environment is Smalland’s strongest visual and mechanical idea. Ordinary natural objects become major landmarks, and vegetation creates paths, hiding places, and barriers.

Exploration extends through forests, swamps, ruins, and underground areas, with environmental changes introducing different resources and hostile creatures.

The world benefits from vertical movement. Winged armor allows players to glide, while the grappling hook provides additional ways to travel between elevated locations. Combined with creature mounts, these tools gradually reduce the difficulties of moving through the terrain.

That progression is important. Early exploration can feel dangerous and slow, whereas better equipment opens more direct routes and makes distant areas easier to reach.

The scenery also helps Smalland stand apart from survival games built around conventional wilderness settings. Giant trees, thick vegetation, ruined structures, and hostile insect habitats establish a recognizable visual identity.

However, returning through familiar areas to gather materials can weaken the initial excitement. The landscape remains attractive, but repeated travel does not always introduce meaningful new challenges.

The Underlands and Later Content Updates

Smalland’s world has expanded considerably since its initial release.

The Underlands update, released in August 2025, introduced a substantial underground environment stretching beneath existing regions. It added new quests, enemies, boss encounters, materials, structures, equipment, and progression options.

The update also introduced the Wyrd stat and expanded the use of crystals and related equipment.

Further additions followed in 2026. The Wyrdweaver update introduced another major enemy, equipment rewards, and spell-related abilities.

These releases give returning players more areas and systems to explore beyond the original Overland progression. They also make the current game meaningfully different from its Early Access version.

Multiplayer and Co-op: Better with Friends?

Smalland supports online multiplayer sessions for up to 10 players, allowing groups to explore, fight, gather resources, and build settlements together.

Cooperative play fits the structure of the game. Building large settlements becomes easier when several players contribute materials, and groups can coordinate equipment and combat roles when tackling dangerous regions.

Creature mounts also add variety to group exploration. Different movement options can change how a team approaches long journeys or difficult terrain.

The multiplayer mode does not fundamentally transform Smalland into a different game, however. Its central activities remain gathering, crafting, travelling, and fighting. Players who find the single-player progression repetitive are unlikely to see every issue disappear in co-op.

The greatest advantage is shared preparation. Dividing construction and resource-gathering tasks reduces some of the workload and makes larger building projects more practical.

For groups that already enjoy survival-crafting games, Smalland provides a solid cooperative environment. Solo players still have access to the main exploration and progression systems without needing a permanent group.

Graphics, Atmosphere, and Performance

Smalland’s environments are more memorable than its character animations or combat effects. Vegetation, lighting, weather, and the size difference between characters and surroundings carry much of the visual presentation.

The forest setting is especially effective at ground level, where grass and roots dominate the player’s view. Climbing higher changes that perspective and reveals how the different parts of the map connect.

Weather conditions help prevent the landscape from feeling static. Changes in daylight and visibility can alter the atmosphere of familiar areas, while the sound and movement of nearby creatures reinforce the dangers of travelling through the undergrowth.

The game’s visual strengths do not automatically translate into consistently smooth performance. Technical criticisms have included inconsistent frame rates, interface issues, and rough animations. Several of these problems have been addressed in post-release updates, but the experience still depends on platform, hardware, and game version.

On PC, the official recommended specification targets 1080p at 60 FPS using Ultra settings. This is a published hardware target, not an independent benchmark, and it should not be interpreted as a guarantee for every location or multiplayer scenario.

Smalland is visually appealing because of its environment and scale, not because it offers exceptionally polished animation or combat presentation.

Smalland: Survive the Wilds System Requirements

The official PC requirements are considerably higher than those listed for some older survival games. The minimum specification calls for 8 GB of RAM and a GTX 1650-class graphics card, while the recommended configuration uses 16 GB of RAM and an RTX 2070-class GPU.

Although Windows 7 SP1 remains in the published minimum specification, the Steam client itself requires Windows 10 or later.

Online multiplayer on PC also requires a connection to Epic Online Services.

PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch 2 users do not need to compare CPU and GPU specifications against PC requirements. Performance characteristics and available settings differ by console version.

Price, Editions, and Available Content

Smalland is a premium survival game rather than a free-to-play title. Its standard PC list price on Steam is $34.99 in the US, although regional pricing and promotional discounts change the amount paid.

The Steam store also sells the game’s soundtrack separately and offers a bundle containing the game and soundtrack. The soundtrack is additional audio content, not a gameplay expansion.

Smalland has received substantial post-launch additions through game updates, including the Underlands expansion and later combat-related content.

The original game’s published PC store catalogue does not support the previously circulated descriptions of Deluxe Editions with exclusive mounts, seasonal battle passes, or purchasable progression boosts.

The value of the standard edition depends primarily on whether the player enjoys gathering resources, building settlements, improving equipment, and exploring at a deliberate pace. Buyers who want a combat-focused adventure with minimal crafting should consider these requirements before purchasing.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The contrast between the strengths and weaknesses is fairly clear. Smalland is at its best when the player is moving through unfamiliar territory, acquiring new mounts, or creating a base among the trees. It is less convincing when progress depends on repeating combat encounters or revisiting the same locations for materials.

Is Smalland: Survive the Wilds Worth Playing in 2026?

Smalland is a worthwhile option for players who enjoy exploration-driven survival games and are comfortable spending time on crafting, equipment upgrades, and construction.

Its miniature environments and rideable creatures provide a distinctive setting, while Great Tree bases offer practical benefits that make long-term building more attractive. Updates such as The Underlands and Wyrdweaver have also expanded the amount of content available beyond the original release.

The main reservations concern combat polish, repetitive material collection, and a story that rarely becomes as interesting as the setting. These are meaningful weaknesses because combat and crafting occupy a substantial portion of the experience.

Players looking for a relaxed exploration game with minimal fighting may find Smalland more demanding than expected. Those seeking a highly refined action game are likely to be disappointed by some of its encounters.

For survival fans who value world design, creature mounts, construction, and cooperative play over fast-paced combat, however, Smalland offers enough distinctive ideas to justify consideration.

Verdict: Smalland: Survive the Wilds is an appealing but uneven survival adventure. Its environments, mounts, and tree-based settlements give it a recognizable identity, while repetitive gathering and inconsistent combat prevent the overall experience from feeling equally polished. It is best suited to players who enjoy gradual progression and building a home in a hostile world.

FAQ

Is Smalland: Survive the Wilds still in Early Access?

No. Smalland entered Early Access on March 29, 2023, and reached its full 1.0 release on February 15, 2024. The game has continued receiving content updates since then.

Is Smalland a single-player or multiplayer game?

Smalland supports both. Players can explore and progress alone or join online multiplayer sessions with up to 10 players.

Can you tame and ride creatures in Smalland?

Yes. Rideable creatures include grasshoppers, damselflies, and spiders. Different mounts provide different ways to travel, while other companions can assist with activities such as carrying resources.

Can you build a permanent base in Smalland?

Yes. Players can construct settlements using different building materials, including elevated bases in Great Trees. Great Tree encampments can also be moved between eligible tree locations, making them particularly useful during extended exploration.

Is Smalland similar to Grounded?

Both games use miniature characters and survival-crafting systems in environments filled with insects. Smalland places greater emphasis on fantasy adventure, rideable creatures, equipment progression, and Great Tree settlements.

Does Smalland have co-op?

Yes. Online multiplayer supports up to 10 players, with cooperative exploration, combat, gathering, and construction.

Is Smalland available on Nintendo Switch?

Smalland was released for Nintendo Switch 2 on May 14, 2026. It is also available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.