Smalland: Survive the Wilds is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 in Spring 2026, marking the first time the open-world survival game will appear on a Nintendo console. Published by Maximum Entertainment, the release will include all post-launch updates already available on other platforms, featuring guilds, stables, The Underlands, and more.
The premise is simple and immediately effective. The giants, whatever they were, are gone. Centuries have passed since the Smallfolk lived freely on the surface, and now you, a Vanguard, must venture back out into a world that has carried on without you. The wilderness you step into isn't some alien planet or fantasy realm. It's a backyard, a forest floor, a cracked road. But when you're barely taller than a blade of grass, a puddle becomes a lake and a tree becomes a skyscraper. That shift in scale is the entire foundation Smalland builds on, and it works because the world commits to it completely.
Dense forests give way to hazardous swamps and strange ruins left over from some earlier time. Cavernous cracks in roads open into explorable spaces. The biomes stretch across what the game calls the Land of the Small, a huge open world that earns its size through the sheer difference in perspective. Everything familiar becomes foreign when seen from ground level, and the game leans into that disorientation. Hidden NPCs are scattered throughout, carrying fragments of lore that piece together the history of the Smallfolk and the surface world they once knew. The mood sits somewhere between wonder and hostility. This is a place worth exploring, but it does not want you here.
Click to load trailer from YouTube
By clicking, you agree to YouTube's privacy policy. Data will be shared with Google.
Most creatures you encounter view you as a meal. Ants, cockroaches, beetles, wasps, and spiders all sit above you on the food chain, and the game makes sure you feel that hierarchy from the start. Weather conditions and seasons shift constantly, so survival depends on preparation as much as combat. Crafting weapons and armour is essential, with different sets providing resistances and abilities that change how you move through the world. Winged armour lets you glide through the skies, a grappling hook lets you swing between trees. These aren't cosmetic choices but functional ones that shape your approach to the dangers around you.
Taming is where the power dynamic starts to flip. Recipes hidden throughout the world unlock the ability to tame and ride an array of critters, turning former threats into mounts. Leap huge distances on the back of a grasshopper, zoom across open ground on a damselfly, scurry between cover on a spider. From geckos to scorpions, the roster gives you options that feel meaningfully different rather than just cosmetically varied. Building follows a similar logic of escalation. You scavenge and refine resources across multiple material tiers, from leaves and twigs up to sturdy stone, constructing encampments on the ground or high in the canopy. Claiming a Great Tree lets you design and build a base that follows you to any world, giving your progress a permanent anchor. The loop of scavenging, crafting, taming, and building feeds back into itself naturally, each layer making the next more accessible.
The whole experience supports up to ten players in multiplayer, and the scale of the world clearly benefits from having others in it. Exploring together, fighting together, building together. Solo play works, but a wilderness this large and this hostile has a different texture when shared. Smalland: Survive the Wilds is available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, with the Nintendo Switch 2 version arriving in Spring 2026 carrying every update the game has received since launch.