Bizarre crafting-adventure Crashlands will come out next week

The “story-driven crafting adventure” Crashlands is the first PC release to come from Butterscotch Shenanigans, a previously mobile-exclusive studio whose past work includes Freeway Mutant, Extreme Burger Defense, and Towelfight 2: The Monocle of Destiny. It was greenlit on Steam back in June, and will soon go into full release: specifically, on January 21.

Crashlands follows the adventures of space-trucker Flux Dabes and her sidekick/robotic cargo palette Juicebox, who end up stranded on a remote, untamed world after their deliveryship is destroyed by a floating head whose name I can't pronounce. It takes place in a procedurally-generated open world, but there's an overarching story anUghd interlinked, plot-specific missions to keep things moving ahead.

I've been playing a pre-release version for awhile now, and I'm having quite a lot of fun with it. It took some time to get used to not having a conventional inventory—I can carry unlimited amounts of everything, and it's all immediately at hand when crafting time comes—but once I got a handle on that (and let go of my fear of being stomped to death by what is essentially a one-legged donkey) I really fell into it. I was also a bit surprised at just how big the thing is. I've got several hours into it and so far I've only seen a small fraction of the first of the game's three biomes.

To be clear, none of that qualifies as anything even remotely resembling a review, but I've seen enough to be optimistic, and I definitely want to play more. (In fact, I spent a good chunk of last night working on my revenge against the beast who trashed me in my first boss fight.) Crashlands is also being released for mobile devices (iOS and Android) and will offer cloud saves and “crossplatforminess,” so you can carry your game across all three platforms. Find out more at Crashlands.net.

Check out some screens below. They showcase a similar art style to Don't Starve, the latest DLC for which we also wrote about yesterday.

[Update: The article originally said Crashlands had been in Early Access, which it wasn't.]

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.