LogFAQs > #932240013

34.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBGX0dl5Ziw

2014
PC

I like city builders, but one thing I cant handle is too much complexity. Thats kind of the genre though. I want to like Cities: Skylines but I open it up and am greeted with a thousand different icons and menus and its super overwhelming. Ive tried 3 or 4 times and have anxiously walked away from it very quickly each time.

Banished, on the other hand, is a village builder, one that focuses more on surviving the winter than just building stuff. The end result feels more organic as you spend more time on resource management and micromanagement than trying to build a megalopolis.

You might go a year in the game and only build a single house, and maybe not even that if you want to focus on just clearing trees or collecting stones. Banished is the definition of a slow burn, but that buildup feels really authentic as you go from 20 named people to maybe 100 people over the course of many hours. You likely will never hit 1000 even in the best conditions. Its small enough that the game notifies you when a single person grows to be an adult and when they die.

It also has a really nice back woods tone that I really like. The quiet ambiance of a village -- the music helps here -- feels all the more impactful when things happen, positive or negative. This game feels lived in and real, unlike the other city builders that Ive played where they feel magnanimous and booming at the macro level. This one has quiet moments that can feel absolutely deadly on a personal level when your town gets wiped out because the winter was particularly harsh and there isnt enough food or warm coats to survive it.

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xyzzy