Games Like Wastelander

In Wastelander, you must build a colony in order to survive having crashlanded on a desolate alien planet after your ship was pulled into the atmosphere by a mysterious force. Barren and devoid of life, you must build a colony and explore the planet, uncovering the technology and secrets of an ancient civilization long gone.

Time is of the essence, however. The planet is ravaged by increasingly powerful and destructive storms that threaten to wipe out your entire colony. You only have a limited time before the storms will become too powerful to defend against. You must escape before it's too late. Can you find a means of defending yourself from the storms while you try to escape this barren world? Will you unlock the secrets of the wasteland planet and escape before it's too late?

Wastelander is a turn-based strategy game where every turn counts. To survive, you must plan and make the right decisions as you expand your colony and explore the planet in search of technological remnants of the ancient civilization that once inhabited the now barren wasteland. Balancing exploration with expansion and defence is key to survival. You will need to ensure your colony has enough power to function but also keep pressing forward with your efforts to explore, while minimizing the damage the relentless storms cause. With each passing storm increasing in intensity and destruction, your basic defences can’t hold out forever.

You will need to prioritise what to focus on based on your current situation, deciding between searching for new technologies and a way off the planet or setting up defences for the impending storm. But sooner or later sacrifices will need to be made and you will need to choose what structures to save and what you let the storms destroy.

Starting with nothing but the scattered remains of what was once your spaceship, you must begin to build your colony, expanding bit by bit. In the beginning, you will only have a limited amount of basic buildings available to you, to get your colony started. As you explore and uncover ancient relics, deployable technology and new blueprints you will be able to build more advanced and complex structures to aid you in your mission.

Along with buildings, you also have abilities and items to help you, including scanners and drones to reveal unexplored areas, storm dispersers to temporarily stop the storms from striking certain areas or buildings, terraforming to change the terrain and dynamite to make pathways through mountainous areas. Every building, item and ability has its specific use and will help you escape, if and when used wisely.

In order to survive, you will need to master the wasteland. Understanding the dangers you face and how to defend against them is key to your survival. With each building, deployment, ability and item having its unique uses and mastering their distinct advantages and disadvantages while learning to adapt to availability will help you immensely. Wastelander is easy to pick up but difficult to master.