Building Up The Town | Into the Emberlands Review

Do you want a game that has zero combat and is focused on resource management with a tiny bit of puzzle-solving? How about going on adventures into the wilderness to bring back goodies and help a town overtaken by evil? Into the Emberlands has you becoming the savor of a growing town that has been overrun by the fog. Armed with an ember flame and a mission, explore vast layouts and a handful of unique biomes with new materials.

The town is now small, and everyone fears leaving the grounds. You only have a lantern and 30 paces to use and this makes the early game incredibly difficult. The ground is broken into large squares, and each one counts as one ember flame. Being limited to 15 steps outside your town means that you will need to rely on the resources scattered around the world. You can collect axes to break stones and chop trees that are blocking your path. And the most important resource is the ember flames you can pick up. This means that you can explore a bit longer and go a bit farther.

The gameplay is looping missions to complete and this leads to you exploring more and gaining more inventory space. The most important upgrade, in my opinion, is the increase of ember flames for your lantern. These upgrades are decently achievable by chopping trees and exchanging goods with the forest creatures. Upgrades of this kind can also be rewards for completing missions. The mission is to collect materials and bring them back to the town to build up and expand the little civilization. And to make sure you have enough residents, you will be finding and rehousing lost villagers who have been trapped in the fog.

The most satisfying thing about this game is seeing the town grow with each successful mission set completion. An adorable animation plays before giving you a view of the upgraded town with new buildings (the best of which allows you to buy axes for more exploration). You can also get free items such as a starting set of axes and even gifts from the local chicken. Each new level also brings another forest layout and resets all the resources, so you will never run out of anything you need.

I love the multiple biomes. The basic forest makes up a lot of the immediate surrounding areas, but there are purple swamps, pink science-y areas, and even an orange desert to find. Each area has unique materials that you will need to collect, trade, and craft in order to build up the town. Since you have a limited amount of movement and biomes can be a long trek away, there are subway stations scattered among the trees that you can activate to immediately return to your town. The one thing to consider is that you can only connect the home subway to a single stop out in the wild, so whichever one you used last will be the one you go back to.

Since there is zero combat and only resource management, this was my go-to game for late nights. I loved collecting all the little guys I found around the maps, and the thrill of pushing my remaining flames to their limits made each safe return that much more exciting. But, it also made all the times I precisely used my flames only to get lost in the fog mere inches from home that much more frustrating. Whenever you get lost in the fog, you lose some of your progress. Your completed missions stay safe, but your inventory is gone. Luckily, if you drop any goodies on the town tiles, they will stay. The main downside to getting lost in the fog is that you lose some of your inventory. Your ember flame max, and coin and gem max will be reduced back down. If you have say over 100 ember flames as your max, you won’t go back down to 30, which is great, but you might drop down to around 50 the first time.

My first couple of hours were rough, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy the game, but once I figured out how to get more flames and could be out for longer, I really started to love the game. I think this game is a perfect relaxation game. There is zero combat or enemies to worry about,t and it is focused on gathering things to build up a little town with cute little villagers. I highly recommend this game to anyone who will listen!