Nested Lands

概要

Developed by the ambitious team at 1M Bits Horde and published by META Publishing, Nested Lands is an unforgiving, atmospheric multiplayer survival RPG that seamlessly melds visceral action-adventure mechanics with incredibly deep settlement building and large-scale social management. From the very moment you step into its plague-ravaged, fictional dark Middle Ages setting, the game makes one thing abundantly clear: this world wants you dead, and it will use every tool at its disposal to make that happen. Stepping away from the overly romanticized depictions of medieval fantasy, Nested Lands plunges players into an apocalyptic wasteland where society has entirely collapsed. Your first impressions will be defined by a desperate scramble for the absolute bare necessities. You begin with nothing but the clothes on your back and an indomitable will to survive, forced to scavenge through the mangled remnants of civilization while actively avoiding the terrifying, morbid madmen twisted by the disease that destroyed the world. It is a grueling, intense introduction that perfectly sets the tone for an Early Access title that refuses to hold your hand, demanding strategic foresight, sharp reflexes, and a ruthless pragmatism. The core gameplay loop of Nested Lands is a masterful balancing act between micro-level personal survival and macro-level societal management, creating an addictive rhythm that makes it nearly impossible to put the controller down. Initially, your loop consists of carefully exploring the highly interactive environment, gathering basic materials like wood and stone, and frantically searching for incredibly scarce medical supplies—because in this game, a lack of medicine will wipe out your progress significantly faster than the vicious blade of a roaming bandit. However, as you stabilize your immediate needs, the loop expands exponentially. You transition from a desperate lone scavenger to a visionary leader, rescuing embittered peasants and bringing them back to a fledgling camp. Suddenly, your loop involves assigning these NPCs specific jobs, managing their unique needs, fortifying your borders against bloodthirsty raiding parties, and stockpiling vast amounts of food to prepare for the devastating, dynamic weather systems. This constant escalation of responsibility—from feeding yourself to ensuring the survival of an entire community during a brutal incoming winter—ensures that the gameplay never feels stagnant, continuously rewarding you with tangible progress as your small camp blossoms into a formidable, self-sustaining medieval dynasty. Visually and auditorily, Nested Lands leans heavily into a grim, oppressive design philosophy that brilliantly reinforces its mechanical hostility. The art direction is drenched in the macabre, featuring rotting landscapes, twisted flora, and shadowy, foreboding forests that look stunning thanks to the game's high dynamic range (HDR) implementation. The lighting engine does heavy lifting here; the warm, desperate glow of your settlement's hearth fires stands in stark, comforting contrast to the endless, suffocating darkness that blankets the wilderness at night. The character models of the plague-twisted madmen are genuinely horrifying, their disfigured nature serving as a constant visual reminder of the stakes of your failure. Complementing this is a stellar, stereo-mixed audio design that heavily emphasizes environmental storytelling. The haunting howl of the approaching winter winds, the visceral, heavy clash of steel during brutal melee skirmishes, and the desperate, ambient chatter of your frightened villagers all combine to create a deeply immersive soundscape. Every snapped twig in the woods or distant scream demands your immediate attention, keeping you perpetually on the edge of your seat. When looking at the current landscape of the survival and settlement genres, Nested Lands carves out a fiercely unique identity by marrying the best elements of its contemporaries while injecting its own distinct, dark flavor. It evokes the meticulous, ground-up village construction and generational dynasty-building seen in titles like Medieval Dynasty, but it rips away the peaceful tranquility of that game and replaces it with the hardcore, punishing survival mechanics and hostile open-world exploration reminiscent of Valheim or Conan Exiles. What truly sets Nested Lands apart from these competitors, however, is its profound emphasis on large-scale social management and its consequential reputation system. You are not just building structures; you are cultivating a society of traumatized survivors who actively evaluate your every decision. The pressure of knowing that your choices dictate whether you are revered as a savior or feared as a tyrant adds a rich layer of psychological and narrative depth rarely seen in traditional crafting-survival games. Nested Lands is undeniably tailor-made for a specific breed of player: those who crave monumental challenges, intricate systems, and the profound satisfaction of conquering insurmountable odds. If you are the type of gamer who loves to start from a completely clean slate, obsess over the minute details of base layouts, and manage the complex logistics of a thriving virtual community, this game will absolutely consume your free time. Furthermore, it is an essential recommendation for co-op enthusiasts. The inclusion of seamless online, cross-platform multiplayer elevates the entire experience, allowing you to share the crushing burdens of leadership and survival with your friends. Whether you are dividing labor to optimize farming and crafting, or standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the mud to fend off a raid of bloodthirsty bandits, Nested Lands offers a rich, dynamic, and unforgettable world that practically begs to be conquered. Do not let the dark themes intimidate you; the sheer triumph of building a beacon of hope in this hellish landscape is an experience entirely worth your time.

ストーリー

The narrative foundation of Nested Lands is deeply rooted in environmental storytelling and rich, grim world-building rather than a traditional linear questline. The game is set in a fictionalized, deeply dark incarnation of the Middle Ages, a time period already known for its hardships, but here pushed to the absolute brink of extinction by a devastating, supernatural plague. This cataclysmic disease did not just kill; it utterly transformed the world and those who inhabited it. Society as it was once known has completely collapsed, leaving behind mangled lands littered with the rotting corpses of the fallen. The once-bustling trade routes and grand kingdoms have been replaced by lawless expanses of wilderness where the embittered, mutilated remnants of humanity pray simply to survive another day. The lore paints a picture of a world where hope is a forgotten concept, and the remnants of civilization are slowly being swallowed by the disfigured nature of the environment itself. In this grim theater, the primary antagonists are not singular villains with grand master plans, but rather the tragic, horrifying results of the world's collapse. The wilderness is stalked by terrifying, morbid madmen—former humans who have been physically and mentally twisted by the ravages of the plague into aggressive, unpredictable beasts. Operating alongside them, though driven by sheer malice rather than disease, are bloodthirsty factions of bandits who lurk in the grim shadows, preying on the weak and hoarding whatever meager resources remain. However, the most formidable enemy in Nested Lands is arguably the world itself. The harsh, dynamic weather systems and the looming, omnipresent threat of the coming winter act as a relentless narrative ticking clock. The environment is a cruel, impartial judge that will severely punish the player for the slightest sign of weakness or lack of preparation. As the player, you embody an unnamed survivor who has inexplicably managed to retain both their sanity and their life amid this endless darkness. Your core motivation is simple yet monumental: to rise from the bottom and build a brand-new civilization from scratch. You are not a pre-ordained chosen one endowed with magical powers; you are merely a resilient soul armed with the will to endure. The central premise revolves around your journey across this massive open world to locate and rescue the few other survivors who share your plight but have not yet fully given up hope. You offer them something invaluable in this hellscape—protection and a place to call home—and in return, they offer their loyalty and labor. It is a story of communal survival, where every peasant you recruit brings their own implicit story of loss, desperation, and the fragile desire to rebuild. The thematic core of Nested Lands delves heavily into the concepts of morality, leadership, and the corrupting nature of survival. The game features a dynamic reputation system where all of your decisions are carefully watched and evaluated by the inhabitants of the world. Will you be a benevolent leader, sharing scarce medicines and food to ensure everyone thrives, thereby having your name praised by all? Or will the brutal reality of the Nested Lands force you to make callous, pragmatic choices, ruling with an iron fist so that your very name instills fear into the common folk? This exploration of how extreme privation shapes human morality gives profound weight to the sandbox gameplay. You are not just constructing buildings; you are defining the ethical foundation of a new society, determining what humanity looks like after the end of the world.

Gameplay

At the moment-to-moment level, Nested Lands demands a high degree of situational awareness and active engagement from the player. What you actually do on a minute-to-minute basis varies wildly depending on the immediate needs of your survival. In the early game, you will find yourself cautiously creeping through the highly interactive environments, manually gathering stones, chopping down trees, and foraging for vital sustenance. Combat is a brutal, weighty, and high-stakes affair. When engaging the bloodthirsty bandits or the plague-twisted madmen, you cannot simply button-mash your way to victory. You must manage stamina, read enemy attack patterns, and execute timely strikes and parries. The environment itself is highly interactive and can be used to your advantage; a clever player might funnel enemies into natural chokepoints or utilize the terrain to escape a fight they cannot win. Most pressingly, you are constantly managing an array of survival meters, the most critical being your health and disease immunity. Foraging or crafting scarce medicines is a constant anxiety, as contracting an illness from the disfigured world can drain your health rapidly, turning a routine supply run into a desperate race against time. The core mechanics truly shine when the game transitions from individual survival to expansive settlement building. Using a highly detailed crafting system, players can process raw materials into refined goods, constructing dozens of upgradable buildings ranging from simple woodcutter shacks and hunter's lodges to fortified palisades and grand mead halls. The building system is robust, allowing you to freely shape your settlement as you see fit. You can meticulously place hundreds of objects to decorate and customize your village, set up expansive agricultural farms, and manage pens of livestock. However, a village is nothing without its people. The social management mechanic allows you to recruit rescued peasants and assign them highly specific roles. You can order them to automate the gathering of wood, have them tend to the animals, or assign them to guard duty. This complex interplay of mechanics means you must optimize supply chains—ensuring your farmers are producing enough food to feed your guards, who in turn protect the woodcutters gathering fuel for the coming winter. Progression in Nested Lands is multifaceted, rewarding both the physical expansion of your dynasty and the personal growth of your character. As you perform actions, you hone your skills, leveling up your proficiency in brutal battles, resource gathering, and intricate crafting. Unlocking new tiers of the tech tree provides access to stronger weapons, better armor, and more resilient building materials necessary to withstand the increasingly harsh random events the game throws at you. Rewards are tangible; upgrading a meager campfire to a massive stone hearth not only provides better cooking recipes but massively boosts the morale and warmth of your villagers. The ultimate progression, however, is tied to your reputation and fame. As your fame echoes across the open world, you attract more skilled peasants and unlock the ability to tackle monumental challenges, transforming your fragile collection of rotting tents into a legendary stronghold that dominates the mangled lands. Finally, the multiplayer implementation is a transformative feature that completely recontextualizes the gameplay. Nested Lands features seamless online co-op with cross-platform multiplayer support, allowing you to embrace the horrors of this dystopian world with friends. In co-op, the deep mechanics become an exercise in collaborative strategy. Players can divide labor efficiently: one player can focus entirely on micro-managing the settlement's logistics, crafting medicines, and directing peasants, while a party of friends ventures out into the dangerous wilds to clear bandit camps and secure rare resources. The game scales its monumental challenges accordingly, ensuring that coordinated groups face appropriately brutal weather events and larger hordes of plague-ridden enemies. With features like full controller support and Steam Cloud saves, the barrier to entry for coordinating with friends is exceptionally low, making the shared struggle of surviving the Nested Lands a truly bonding experience.

Key Features

• 1Dynamic Settlement Construction: Design and build a sprawling medieval village using dozens of upgradable structures and hundreds of customizable objects. This allows players to express their architectural creativity while strategically fortifying against environmental and enemy threats.
• 2In-Depth Social Management: Rescue, recruit, and command a dynamic population of NPC peasants by assigning them specific roles like farming, guarding, or crafting. This transforms the game from a solitary survival experience into a complex, automated society-management simulator.
• 3Unforgiving Survival Mechanics: Players must carefully monitor hunger, temperature, and disease, where a lack of scarce medicine is often deadlier than a sword. This creates a relentless, high-stakes gameplay loop where preparation is the absolute key to enduring the harsh world.
• 4Dynamic Weather and Seasons: Face unpredictable, brutal weather patterns and the ever-looming threat of a devastating winter. This forces players to constantly adapt their strategies, stockpile resources, and ensure their villagers have adequate shelter and warmth.
• 5Consequential Reputation System: Every decision you make is evaluated by the world's inhabitants, dictating whether you become a revered savior or a feared tyrant. This adds immense replay value and narrative weight, as your moral choices directly impact how NPCs interact with your dynasty.
• 6Brutal Medieval Combat: Engage in weighty, tactical melee skirmishes against bloodthirsty bandits and horrifying, plague-twisted madmen. Honing your combat skills is essential to protecting your settlement and surviving the random encounters that plague the open world.
• 7Robust Online Co-op Experience: Team up with friends via seamless, cross-platform online multiplayer to share the monumental challenges of survival. Dividing the immense labor of base-building, resource gathering, and combat makes for an incredibly engaging communal experience.

Highlights

Pros & Cons

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Scores

“There is no place for hope in this hell where the remnants of humans, embittered and mutilated, pray to live another day.”— Game Tagline

“A breathtakingly brutal blend of Valheim's survival mechanics and Medieval Dynasty's social management, set in a world that absolutely despises you.”— Early Access Preview

“A lack of medicine can wipe your village out faster than any blade.”— In-Game Survival Guide

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