City Builder / Colony Manager General Discussion Thread

Yeah, I hate to say it, but it’s got good fundamentals, yet feels like it’s missing something. I definitely DON’T think what’s missing is military conflict (which is one of the game’s marketing points). It might be the lack of a developed world, a role that historical background plays in a lot of city builders. I do need to try playing past landing on a new planet…

So this has been in early access for 2 months now, anyone playing?

There are 3 developers using the exact same graphic assets for their games. Surviving the Aftermath has terrain and patched up vehicles that are identical with this and one other post-nuclear game does as well (can’t remember it’s name).

This is both a blessing and a curse of the Unity ecosystem. As a hobby game dev, being able to buy decent looking assets for cheap is fantastic. But those same assets could show up in any number of other Unity games as well.

I’m not sure what this says about the quality of the gameplay though, and their videos seem to show a pretty cohesive graphical style.

I’ve seen a lot of steam comments regarding difficulty, many saying its a harder game than Banished.

@BrianRubin I see you have 2 hours under your belt with this game, any opinion?

When I played it it felt woefully incomplete, but it had potential. I’ve not touched it since. You can find the video on YouTube.

People thought Banished was difficult?

That is a builder that hardly ever pushes on you as a player.

For some reason Banished has a reputation for being difficult, when in reality it’s just empty and half-finished.

My favorite part was when almost all of my colonists died at the same time because they started at the same age and everyone had a really strong trigger set to die at a certain age.

(I think it was fixed in a patch, I played on launch day)

I’ll admit that my first 2-3 towns in Banished struggled on day one, as I fiddled with mechanics. “Wow,” I thought. “Here’s a city builder that’s super punishing!”

And then I discovered gatherer’s huts.

And then I discovered that my population was quite happy, no matter what, to always eat the berries, nuts, and mushrooms collected by gatherers.

And then I realized I kind of couldn’t lose after that. The game never pushed me to improve my settler housing. Never pushed me to increase the quality or types of food. Never pushed me to do anything.

Speaking of city builders that don’t push you as a player, Before We Leave was mentioned above. I’m in the mood for a new city builder so I gave it a try. It’s a pretty solid meh. I got bored while expanding on the second planet. I don’t completely mind the lack of a strong push as long as there are at least some interesting systems or meat of some sort. I can play Cities Skylines despite the lack of challenges (aside from traffic management) because you are building cool cities. The simplistic hex grid and fixed ratio nature of Before We Leave isn’t offering me much to drive my desire to keep playing.

People in town of 10 people starting from huts and shit: “Man, I’m so fucking happy to eat these berries and twigs!”

100 years later, in the town now consisting of houses and whatnot: “Man, I’m so fucking happy to eat these berries and twigs!”

If ever there were a game that absolutely nailed the aesthetic while being designed by someone who spent all their time nailing the aesthetic, Banished certainly is it.

Heh. That’s a great description. I mean, goddamn I want to play a game that looks like Banished…but isn’t Banished.

I’m having a good time with The Colonists. I picked it up during this steam sale for 30% off. The campaign is good. I just finished the first “battle” portion of the campaign.

Layout is very picky and choosing how to arrange buildings to minimize traffic is very crucial. The developers give you many many buttons and knobs to adjust and I’m just getting used to many of those.

My first thought when playing it though was the “incentive” that these robots have to commandeer a ship and head for the stars is kind of refuted since they manufacture every new robot onsite. Where is their free will? Where is their yearning for the stars, eh?

They wanted to start over as humans. One could say they successfully mimicking their role model by just producing and consuming stuff : )

I am impressed to see the dev is still improving/updating the game.

btw. Tom did a video about The Colonists some time ago.

Started this last night and liked it too so far (although it let me put myself in a pretty bad bind in the second scenario… Don’t upgrade too soon because you can’t go back without a cost!)

I find the theming odd but charming at the moment. Robots who can self-replicate, but built with wood and live in huts? They just sort of wave their hands at it, but it made me imagine a game that takes it just an ounce more seriously: Humanity built robots that appreciate the aesthetics of simplicity and coziness and traditional living, but they wanted them to work all the time and live in sleek corridors and boxy buildings. So the robots left to pursue coziness.

I agree! I got caught in the same predicament and solved it by building a 2nd workshop and now I build 2 workshops every time. It allows me to go faster.

I think what you’re alluding to is that upgrading has so many prerequisites - when going to level 2, you need apples and a cider press so I’ve learned not to even start until I have both of those operational and producing cider.

I’m in the middle of scenario 5 where you upgrade to level 3, and it’s much more involved. I need wheat, flour, bread, paper and binding so you can imagine my level 3 workshop has been idle for some time while I try to get all these other things up & running. The good news is I still have a level 2 workshop running since I run with 2 all the time.

Layout space is very tight right now and I haven’t even begun to build any of the level 3 buildings.

It is kind of charming to play - there is a bit of tension when you do your first battle and learn how important and crucial the placement of watchtowers are.

They really are doing a bang up job in continuing to support it.