PAX West 2018: ‘Driftland’ Is Already A Hit In Early Access!

I have sunk more time than I would like to admit into turned based and real time strategy games. There was a dark time (or two) when all I would do after I woke up was eat, play Civilization… and go back to sleep. There are also those countless hours I’ve spent playing various RTS mobile games on my phone when I couldn’t sleep. So, when I saw Driftland from Star Drifters, I was intrigued to see just how it measured up against the other RTS style games I’ve played.

In Driftland you play as a mage, trying to rebuild your kingdom after a magical apocalypse, cobbling a new land together from floating islands. There are four playable races (humans, dwarves, wild elves, and dark elves), each with different strengths and weaknesses that affect gameplay. For example, dwarves are really good at geomancy, engineering, and resource use, but aren’t able to use dragons when they appear later in the game.

All races have basic skills that help you expand and explore the islands hidden around the map. You can lift the fog of war by using floating eyeball minions, move islands closer to build bridges, or setup a temporary portal to send out scouts to explore the islands and find resources.

Driftland draws a lot of parallels to Civilization in the best ways – scout, claim, build, mine resource, build armies, fight against other expanding kingdoms. Unlike Civilization and many other games I’ve played, you don’t have to worry about micromanaging your workers or ending your turn, which makes the game feel much more fast-paced, and allows you to focus on the bigger picture. Players have different avenues for achieving victory, either by conquering the world, or expanding and defending your kingdom faster than the other rival kingdoms on the map. The game features three different map sizes, with a small map consisting of 30 islands and a large map at 65.

It took me a few minutes to get used to the controls (okay, so like 10-15 but remember I’m bad), and I was only able to play for 30 or 40 minutes, but I could easily fall back into my hobbit hole days of just sitting and playing nothing but this game for hours. I was thoroughly impressed with this game, and its small (15 people!) team of developers. This game allows for so much variation in experience, between the race choice, map size, and random competing factions (of other races even), I simply don’t see this game growing stale.

Driftland is currently in early access on Steam for $20… which is totally reasonable, and totally worth it.

The full game should be released in the first quarter of 2019, with multiplayer (up to 6 players) and 4 campaigns available in addition to the single player option. Hopefully they will be able to expand to other platforms as well, as I could see this being a huge hit on the Switch.