The Anno games are kind of, yeah they’re city builders but they have a different feel than most the other games in that genre, at least it does for me. It’s just, well pushier. If you do or don’t like it, I would encourage you to try different one too, eventually.
Just played some of the Timberborn demo that’s up on Steam, and really liked what I played! My beaver-town:
A lot of the elements are standard city-building stuff. But the way you can stack some buildings is pretty unique (Airborne Kingdom does it too, but doesn’t require you to build stairs, etc, to access stuff). And creating a water wheel and axles to power my sawmill was quite satisfying (once I figured out how).
Just as I was getting my feet under me and starting to raise my population’s satisfaction levels, I was told that “dry season is coming.” And then the river dried up, my crops died, and my new tree farm never even got started. It’s kind of terrifying. It’s cool when the water comes back, literally starting in the riverbeds at the edges of the map and traveling down them to where my settlement was. Wish it had gotten there quicker because just as the river filled up and my water pumps could start back up… my beavers started dying of dehydration. Lesson learned!
I’m looking forward to this!
Oooh nice, I like that idea for a mechanic instead of the usual winter/summer split.
I have been playing a bit of Ostriv recently. This blog entry goes into what is really floating my boat with it - the detail is excellent.
What would you say its current state is? I’ve had my eye on that one a while, but – while I’m not averse to EA titles at all – is has seemed like it might be a little too early for lasting content. Have you found that to be the case, or would you consider it to be one for now as well as the future?
What’s there at the moment is solid, but barebones. The roadmap on the frontpage of his site shows what’s still to come (a lot). I’d recommend waiting.
I like it as a chill out game where you can watch the people build each building piece by piece.
Love it!
Yeah, that matches the impression I’ve had. I’ll continue to just watch it with interest for now. Thanks. :)
I am really excited for this game along with about 15 others in the genre. So much on tap and nothing done!
There’s a demo of Distant Kingdoms - the fantasy city builder Scott linked above - up on Steam until February 9th. Video walkthrough of the demo here.
Looks cool, but it may be hiding its light under a bushel. You have to build up your city before engaging in the fantasy part (hiring heroes and sending them out to explore,) meaning you have to do the stuff every other city builder has before getting to the part that makes it unique.
Came to post about Pumpkin Days. It’s a Stardew Valley alike. Might be time for a new thread for this genre!
This game is out in full release as of now after a successful EA period. It’s very similar to Stardew, but with enough differences to make it unique. Yes, it’s still very farming-centric. But it’s much more in-depth than SDV. There’s also cave exploration for mining, however there is no combat. Other activities include: bug catching, fishing, animal husbandry, cooking, and of course, making friends and/or finding mates. Yes, multiple spouses are possible.
The story is about the same as SDV. Evil corp is building a factory, and will take over the island if you don’t help the museum (like community center in SDV). The twist here is that you set the amount of completeness to solve the museum as part of the difficulty selection for the game. So you can choose 100% for a harder game, or 50% for an easier game, etc.
I’ve played the game a lot in Early Access, and my last save wasn’t wiped this week for 1.0 so technically, I’ve “completed” a 50% museum playthough.
I can highly recommend this to anyone who likes SDV or similar farming/life sims.
You know those people who play games like Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo and Cities Skylines as creative sandboxes? Get a feeling they might love this if it lives up to its potential. Feels a bit like a spur off of the city-builder genre, or a parallel genre, to me personally as someone who played SimCity for the simulation-ist aspects but given the popularity of the creative, sandbox side of the genre among players and content creators there is clearly a demographic for such experiences.
Again another Early Access deal though, so doubt anyone here will be too keen on jumping in at the ground floor at the scheduled 25th February, 2021 release date. Thought it was worth mentioning though to show off something that was taking a different approach to the whole “build a city” fantasy.
It’s a little hard to say what that game is, but if Townscaper is the building sandbox that Nintendo would make, this is the one Paradox would make!
This doesn’t look like it has a simulation part though, based on their description which the others still have, even in sandbox mode.
Imagine if you had to play it with that music from the video playing at full blast and you couldn’t turn it off.
I tried out the Timbertown demo and its now the only game I really want to play :(
Though, I’ve seen people mod significant parts of the simulation of Cities Skylines before when doing creative focused builds. So how much of the underlying city simulation still functionally exists as a gameplay loop varies from player to player.
Funnily enough, back during the original Crytek engine prototype (circa 2018) for The Architect: Paris the developer Enodo Games was planning on incorporating city simulation gameplay as well as the creative building focus they have now. According to information from the developer those plans were eventually shelved as they couldn’t prototype out a fun, engaging gameplay system for the simulation aspect and so they decided to refocus on what they had that worked and was working well in the prototypes they built.
Though who knows, maybe either the developer or a modder will revisit it in the future and reincorporate a simulationist layer to the game if they manage to prototype something that is engaging and works well with the other layers of the game.
I’ve watched trailers and read about The Architect: Paris but I still don’t understand what the game is. Is it a sandbox?
I seriously suspect that I will need to play the game to be able to accurately answer that question, because I find myself wondering the same thing at times. Closest thing I can pin down to at the moment would be a creative sandbox.
On a completely different tangent, been doing some city-building the past couple of weeks. Or, well, city-building might be exaggerating a bit at the scale that I have been working at. A suburb or township would be a more accurate descriptor for the size of this settlement. It’s very much a bedroom community or commuter town to a larger city elsewhere in the region. Something of a slice of Americana, at least the stereotype, both creatively and functionally. Well, apart from the non-typical good high-speed rail link that the majority of the population uses to commute into the city for work I guess.
You could say that it’s a sort of SimSuburbia…
Nice! I’m assuming that’s Cities Skylines?
No I think he was playing simcity 2013. Hence the tiny city.