I want this game to be good, but right now it doesn't offer much.
The world generation and visuals are stunning! I'm a sucker for voxel-based stuff, and the general vibe wandering through meadows and forests is amazing!

However, the core gameplay loop is just missing something. Despite having so many structures, the world feels empty. The physics are a charming feature at first, but they can't carry the gameplay when the focus is on lacking exploration and awkward, clunky movement & combat.

I'm interested to see how the game progresses, and would be willing to try it again. But as it stands, playing Valheim or Terraria would offer the same core gameplay experience at higher quality.

Here is my review as a completionist:

The inventory is generous. Management is more about “how many different items you can carry” rather than “how much of each.” The hotbar could definitely use a couple more slots - 8 or 9 would feel ideal. Six works fine for combat, but building really benefits from the extra space.

Visually, the game is gorgeous. However, depending on the biome and the blocks you're looking at, identifying materials can be pretty tiring on the eyes. Unlike Minecraft, where you instantly recognize blocks by their pattern, here you often have to hunt for subtle color variations at the pixel level. The heavy use of yellow light sources doesn't help with that strain.

The level of control you get with building is very high, and the prefabs help a lot. Building materials are accessible early on and aren't locked behind progression (you might run into stronger monsters, but you can usually manage or avoid them). While you can build things you could never do in Minecraft, having so much freedom and control can sometimes feel a little overwhelming.

I think Minecraft got it right by intentionally limiting your scale - it forces your creativity to run at full capacity. Building in Lay of the Land is still fun, and it's nice to be free from those limitations for a change, but I don't see LOTL builders ever getting quite as dedicated as the Minecraft community.

Progression is very light. You naturally acquire side gear, and each ore tier takes very little mining to craft full sets of tools, armor, and weapons.

Combat feels solid against regular enemies, it is engaging without being overwhelming. Bosses, however, are far too easy. I deliberately stopped upgrading my gear (except for new spells) for the last three and still beat them deathless. Ranged combat makes most boss encounters trivial, since you can safely attack from behind cover and often bait the bosses into doing nothing. Even going melee against them isn't significantly harder.

Expect to beat everything the game has to offer - progression and all achievements included - in about 10 to 12 hours. Maybe 20 if you decide to build a big, luxurious, decorated house like I did (which was completely unnecessary, since a basic 30x30-pixel shed is more than enough storage).

With 15,000 hours in Minecraft (yes, really) and almost 400 in Valheim, I was expecting a sandbox game like this to have more than 20 hours of content, especially for the price. That said, I do expect this game to receive many updates in the future, and if it does, I'd be damn excited to jump back in and see what's new. I bought the game knowing full well that it could still feel "incomplete".

Now that I've beaten it, though? I don't think I'll come back until they drop a big update. A multiplayer mode would be revolutionary for me. The only real reason to keep playing after maxing progression is building, and in LOTL, building is purely for yourself. In Minecraft, I either build in multiplayer (often for others, in some way) or in singleplayer, I build huge prosperous cities for my "free-range", un-enslaved villagers. Lay of the Land has no friendly NPCs to be roommates or neighbors with.

I wouldn't leave a negative review, though. It has some disappointing aspects, sure, but overall it's a well-delivered game with real potential, and I am counting on said potential to be delivered. Most of my time with it was genuinely enjoyable - exploring, creating, and taking in the sights while reminiscing about my first hours in Minecraft some 15 years ago, trying to make sense of a brand new and unique world.

Lay of the Land will never surpass its predecessors, but I dare say it doesn't need to. It's its own thing, and I'm glad I got to experience it, incomplete as it may be.

7/10, for now.

I have completed the game, and got all achivements within 30 hours which is interesting but overall the game is amazing.
firstly, Lay of the land is stunning. a really pleasing vibe and cozy visuals and I feel rather emersed especially when it rains and I love that. The tutorial was was easy to follow and really set me up for the game play. there is a good mix of enemies though i feel they become a bit repetitive and predictable after a time, becoming more annoying then they are a challenge (especially those centipedes lol) the boss fights are extremely lack lustre but I think they are really good for a first game iteration. The first boss is a stone golem which is very easily defeated if you just circle around a tree, they cant get to you and he was dead within minutes and i took no damage. the second boss is sort of like the wither from minecraft and was also extremely easy to kill, i just spammed my iron sword and it was dead. the third was pretty cool but again very easy to kill especially as i had most spells for my wand at this time, the fourth however was a little harder and was the first time i died in the game, it shot snowball things at you which slowed you down a lot and got me me, but on my second go i just used the leap spell to get me to the top of the arena and then killed it with the fire beam spell, after killing the ice boss i immediately went and killed the volcano boss which took two blasts with the frost beam and it was dead. very basic and easy to cheese making it very unimersive but not bad just simple.
i saw a lot of comments on the building/crafting mechanics and i could not disagree more as i think both mechanics are easy to use, are a lot of fun and are very unique. i love being able to create practically whatever i want in as little or as much detail as possible. in terms of crafting though i feel as if being able to craft whole smelters on the ground is a little too easy and i think having some alternative way to craft things would making getting these later game items a bit more rewarding. making a wand with a stick and a crystal on the ground is a bit lazy and i think maybe having some sort of arcane crafter would be very cool and make these things harder to get.
onto the wand. i really like how it works and i like being able to find spells across the map however there is a spell called Levitate which i think is really overpowered. the second i realised what i did i no longer needed a hammer as i could just take chucks of ore, stone, wood and instantly collect them and i dont think thats the point in the spell so i think that needs to be rebalanced.
the world i load into was much smaller than i had thought it would be and i think the world size should be a lot bigger. there is no sense of discovery because its so small and there is no sense of being lost either which adds a lot to a fantasy emersion but im sure that will come with time. now ive completed the game there is literally nothing more to do which also sucks. all loot has been looted from all structures, underground it a waste of my time a little, purely for ore and thats about it and the world is so small i have nothing else to discover.
with that being said, i have really thoughally enjoyed every minute ive played, i do think it needs to be harder and there can be a lot more achievements to get too and better loot from some places. the final boss gave me a spell that i wont use because ive done everything.
i think the game would benifit from some better survival mechanics as at the moment you dont NEED to eat or drink, your stamina, mana and health regenerate quite quickly on its own and that forces you to just run around in circles around the enemies if youre low on health again removing emersion.
i think that being able to respawn the boss' would be cool as well, this would allow you to continue getting more health and mana but also hopefully allowing the boss' to get more difficult and unique. i think that enemy mobs should be able to scale difficulty depending on how many days you've played and i think they should be able to respawn at locations youve visited unless your home is set to that location of course. it would be cool as well if enemies spawned more frequently near locations you spend a lot of time at (your house) almost like mini raids and that will help to break up the monotony.
in the mushroom biome, the mycelium should be renamed to mushroom gills or something alike, as mycelium is what is underneath the mushroom typically like routs of a tree. i also think there should be more variety of mushrooms in said biome as you only have purple and red and it gets a little boring after a while. talking of biomes, the blending between is really jarring, its practically a straight line and could use a bit of work and i also think some of the rock formations arent very good and dont really look natural. on the volcano its super strange and wouldnt really look like that nor would it be made of strictly basalt - definetly room for expansion there.

on an unrelated note. i had no problems with loading or saving, the game was slightly laggy at times but that was to be expected. my PC specs should be around somewhere so you can see what i ran this game off of. hopefully this has all be usefull to the dev and to you, the player.

best bits: the building is amazing, the world looks great, lots of fun, interesting progression, comfortingly similar but uniquely different from other block/voxel games, interesting game mechanics

needs work: world is too small, too quick at advancing through things (if i wasnt building all the time i could have done this in 10 hours tops) smelting is too fast and simple and so is crafting, combat is a bit spammy and easy to cheese, caves are boring and need work, not enough building materials

overall, i think its a great game and well worth the money, but needs work to really polish it off. id highly recommend, if youre on the fence - buy it! you can always refund if you have less than 2 hours but i guarantee you wont want to.

i know this review is rather long and not the most positive but the good parts are amazing and the bads parts arent that bad - im really excited to see where this goes and i hope you find a way to expand the world size without having to create a new world. cheers for a lot of fun, on my way to go build something in Lay of the land.