Lightyear Frontier has been on my radar ever since I got an early demo at Gamescom 2022. Its stunning art style, unique premise, and robust systems impressed me almost two years ago. After sinking several hours into the Early Access build, I am even more impressed at what Frame Break has done since then to build its little plot of land within the survival genre.
Smooth Survival
The biggest thing that stuck out to me while playing is how polished and pristine everything in Lightyear Frontier feels. Most survival games, and even more so, most early access games are known for being clunky, running badly, and not exactly feeling great. However, Frame Break has clearly put time and effort into ensuring it didn’t face those criticisms.
Running around in your mech or on foot, using the various tools in your arsenal, and placing buildings, furniture, and plots of land to grow seeds in are all intuitive, easy to control, and most importantly smooth.
Chopping down trees, sucking up water to use to grow plants in your allotment, hitting rocks with your pickaxe - it all feels incredibly tactile and satisfying. Materials you find can then be sucked up by your futuristic pickaxe tool and thrown into your mech from afar, without needing to trawl through menus or move each item individually.
The process of playing Lightyear Frontier is nothing like the crash landing that you experience at the beginning of the game after falling from space onto this mysterious, insanely pretty well. There is a sublime progression curve right from the moment you rebuild your mech that has you exploring the map’s various regions, cleansing them, and building up your arsenal of tools and blueprints to build your tent, allotment area to unlock new items and improved abilities, and upgrades for your mech.
Not once during my playtime did I experience a huge roadblock or issue that halted my progression, or run into a grindy objective, which allowed me to fall in love with the survival genre, which is an area I am usually turned off by. The lack of any hunger, thirst, or other means is also a major boon, as it puts fewer obstacles in your way.
A Peaceful Life
That ease of progression, instant gratification of building new items, growing your little plot of land, and discovering new secrets across the map also means that Lightyear Frontier is one of the most approachable survival games for anyone of any age of gaming experience.
Add in the fact you can play it in co-op means your kids or you and your partner can have a lot of fun just exploring the world and customizing your mech, without having to worry about getting attacked every other minute or running low on food and starving to death or running out of energy.
In fact, the charm of Lightyear Frontier reminds me of the charm of Animal Crossing, where the enjoyment comes from growing and customizing your specific area of the island (or the world in this case), rather than simply making some stats or numbers go up to make you less killable.
This is an early-access launch so you will eventually reach the end of the main story path on the island, but you can still continue growing your farming area and allotments, while Frame Break works on the game over the coming weeks. But, as mentioned, for an Early Access launch I have had an impressively smooth time playing on Xbox Series X and only run into a small issue where some items randomly disappeared, but this was easily remedied by spending a few minutes harvesting more.
Lightyear Frontier is yet another fantastic Early Access survival game launch in 2024, following in the footsteps of Enshrouded, Palworld, and Nightingale, and it already feels like a finished product. With how great gameplay, crafting, building, and exploration feel, I am beyond excited to see how Frame Break expands the world, systems, and narrative in Lightyear Frontier over its Early Access development.
Lightyear Frontier was previewed on Xbox Series X with a code provided by Frame Break over the course of 12 hours of gameplay - all screenshots were taken during the process of preview.
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Echo Apsey is a writer with five years of experience covering the PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch, as well as the best games and franchises. You'll find… More about Echo
