Tiny Roar’s Into the Emberlands launched into Early Access in June last year and has started 2025 by fully releasing their completed version 1.0. Set within the delightfully cute world of the Emberlands, you are tasked as being the Lightbearer, carrying the ember lantern which allows you to venture outside your village into the wilds, finding lost souls and returning them to town, as well as gathering various resources throughout your journey to aid in the reconstruction of your home. This combatless, easy-going explorathon has a leisurely pace and a beautiful art style, as well as many elements which help to make each journey feel unique and worthwhile.
You play as a Knack (a kind of small, cute blob creature) who has been assigned as the latest Lightbearer; the role of helping to clear the world of Miasma, which has blanketed everything in a thick black fog and anyone who travels into it immediately becomes hopelessly lost. The ember lantern allows for limited trips into the wilderness; each square you move uses up a part of the charge, meaning that you’ll need to plan trips effectively to make sure that either you find ways to recharge the lantern, or make it back to town in time. If you fail, your Knack becomes lost and a new one takes their place, starting you off again where you left off, minus anything your old Knack was previously carrying.
Your primary goal is to rebuild and expand your village, constructing houses, shops and facilities until you build up a proper full-scale town. Each building requires a number of resources to construct, as well as a number of Knacks to run it. You can collect all of these during your journeys across the Emberlands, but you only have limited space in your inventory, meaning you’ll need to think about what items to collect and when. Axes are needed to chop down wood and pickaxes are needed to mine stone. These are also used to clear paths across the landscape, allowing you to set a course. Lost Knacks are also scattered around, and collecting them grants you 10 additional embers to recharge the lantern, as well as adding them to your posse. You can have an unlimited number of Knacks follow you and it’s very funny to see a whole train of them snaking across the forest behind you.
Across the wilds, which are procedurally generated, you’ll encounter a wide variety of creatures and peoples during your travels. These include trolls who want wood in exchange for crystals, huge Emberclucks (extremely long-necked chickens) who will trade your crystals for various upgrades like more inventory slots, ominous hands who will trade your precious embers for a large amount of materials, and so on. Some of these might require a specific object which you’ll sometimes find in the world, like the aspiring artist, who is always in search of his painting supplies.
The further you travel from the village, the more likely you’ll encounter different biomes, including overgrown groves of vines and flowers, desert wastes, and the “Enderlands”, where your ember decays twice as fast. You will also occasionally encounter deactivated Metro stations, which if you can repair with resources will allow you to fast-travel back to your home town.Each time you finish your task list, you can then go to the candle tower in the centre of the village to upgrade the entire settlement, expanding it significantly and adding a new set of tasks to complete. This also completely resets and repopulates the surrounding world, creating new forests, swamps and lakes for you to explore.
Visually the game is truly gorgeous and has this incredibly cute and lively art style, with bright vibrant colours, everything swaying gently in the wind and the little Knacks wandering around town, each of whom will give a little bit of humourous flavour text if you click on them. Thanks to the different biomes and the always changing layout of the world every time you level up the village, each journey feels like you’re continuing to make progress. The jaunty music also helps to keep the mood nice and upbeat, even though there’s only a limited number of tracks, with one per biome. Into the Emberlands is all round just a lovely little adventure; a charming and lighthearted palette cleanser which will help to enlighten your day.
