Flux Dabes and Juicebox walking through the alien  planet forest

Laughing back and forth at what the weird aliens had  to say

Killing all the alien flora and fauna and having  such a good time

Oo-de-lally, oo-de-lally, golly, what a day

Game Title:  Crashlands 2

Developer & Publisher: Butterscotch Shenanigans

Release date: April 10, 2025

OS: Windows 10, 11

Platform: Steam

Price: $24.99

What Is It 

Live out your fantasies of playing Flux Dabes (we’ve all been there), an intergalactic trucker and disgruntled corporate employee with a robotic juice box named Juicebox as your constant in this whimsical and irreverent open world cozy RPG.

Crashlands 2, like its predecessor, is a cozy open world crafting/survival RPG set on an alien planet that you and your bot (or floating talking juice box), crash land on, hence the name. Do you need a license to fly a spaceship? I think a spaceship license should be mandatory. This is the second game in the series and I think Flux needs to take his spaceship license test again.

The Mostly Good

Crafting 

The crafting in Crashlands 2 is simplistic and that is a good thing. This is not a hardcore survival game and instead lends itself to a cozy and relaxing experience, which I found delightful. I never was confused or unsure how to proceed. It was refreshing after trying unsuccessfully for hours in another simulation game where you crash on an alien planet and need to survive, to only end up with my little people cannibalizing each other. I am not saying the game rhymes with grimworld but I am not not saying it either.

NPCs 

The NPCs are interesting to say the least and they provide many quests that lead the player back and forth across the map. Fortunately, they all speak my language. Who knew English was so popular across the galaxy? However, they all seem to have a fondness for double vowels. There were times though when I thought the NPCs were too chatty and just wanted to get on with the game. While I generally love an immersive and compelling story, this is not one of those times. I wanted to be doing and not yapping.

Visuals 

Crashlands 2 employs a cartoony style of graphics and while they are not state of art, they are cutesy and go well with the coziness and simplicity of the game. While I feel they can be overly bright, I think they match the theme and silliness of the game. The brightness is not so obnoxious that it blinds the player, however, and actually helps to create an alien like atmosphere. Or what I guess what an alien planet would look like. Imagine if all alien planets were all grey? Who wants to be probed in a place with such drabness? I sure do not…wait, what?  

 Not All Is Well

Grindy

Crashlands 2 is humorous and offers hours of gameplay, but be aware that it is very grindy. There are various resources to gather, recipes to learn and research, structures and items to build, and many fetch quests that require the player to run back and forth over the map. Research takes a bit of time. Fortunately, you can gather resources while waiting to finish researching an item. Unfortunately, there are often multiple items that need to be researched one after the other so you will spend a lot of time wandering around looking for materials and running back to your workbench.  In fact, I spent a good amount of time killing Sluggaballs just to get enough Sluggacisors just to craft a toothpick. Granted, this toothpick breaks rocks but obtaining enough Sluggacisors took far more time than it should have, especially considering I was in exploration mode.

Controls

I recommend using a mouse and keyboard to play Crashlands 2. I tested the game on a desktop and a Rog Ally and while I expected to prefer it on the Ally, the controls were just not intuitive and it was difficult to maneuver around the menus (please note that Ally employs an Xbox layout). It was difficult to change tools/weapons and actions felt slightly delayed. However, when utilizing a mouse and keyboard setup, movements were fluid, responsive, and much more manageable.

Conclusion

Crashlands is fun. I had a very enjoyable time playing and I will continue to do so. Considering the devs intimate that it will take over forty hours to complete the main quest, I have barely scratched the surface and am eager to find out the answers to all the questions I have. Will Flux and Juicebox make it off the planet? Is somebody else going to drive? How many local fauna does one have to murder to impress the locals? And on and on.

Though I am enjoying the game, there is only so much I can take at a time due to the grind. It does become tedious and I can only listen to the cute sound effects the Aliens make when speaking for so long. If I crashed on their planet, does that make me the alien?

Yay Or Nay

Yay, but only if you do not mind a lot of resource hunting because much of what you will be doing is gathering materials for crafting. Honestly, there is a kind of satisfaction to cutting down plants and murdering cute little slug things. Quite relaxing if you ask me. Do not play Crashlands 2 if you want a meaningful story that will touch your heart and bring a tear to your eye. Do play if you want to zone out and have a laugh or two. Or if you just like depleting the resources of an alien planet, which I kind of do.

B

Crashlands 2 is a fun little romp. The one thing I appreciate about it, is it does not take itself seriously and it does not require the player to use all their brainpower (some of us have very little as it is) to understand how to play and what to do next. It is just fun and relaxing and sometimes that is all a game needs to be. Also, there is fishing so I guess it is still a nice day for fishing, ain’t it?

*Credit kind of goes to Roger Miller for my take on the song OO-De-Lally.