RecommendedSteam player
To lead off with a TLDR, after over 180 hours as of writing this, I would give it an 8.5 out of 10. It’s an amazing game that nails all the core things it was aiming for and gives you a few extra good surprises on top with mostly only small quality of life things holding it back from scoring higher in my opinion. TLDR out of the way for those still interested read on... THE GREAT BITS -- The gameplay depth is very deep with a lot of things going on under the hood. There is so many things to juggle it can be very overwhelming at first if approaching it the same way as a more routine city builder that doesn’t have a robust nature simulation also built into it. Understanding ground water, how to block the blazing heat in a desert, turning pollution into positive resources, prevent starving wild animals from eating your farms, making your villagers not run off into the wilds in winter, how to keep the wild life in check and so very much more. Once it all clicks, it is super rewarding to see your little pixel people conquer nature and build a rock solid village after you grasp managing everything. The developer is responsive and on top of things, frequently talking to the community and improving the games quality of life. THE GOOD BITS -- This title did a few things that were refreshing. Having multiple maps with different biomes was neat, so you’re not just turtled on one map, but can establish more settlements to build a trade network with your own cities across maps. And how you go into each biome is very varied. How you manage your pixel people in a drought heavy desert with high temps differs wildly from a perpetually cold mountain, and the fact you can enjoy both on the same game session gives it some nice variety. Do you build up the other maps to sprawling cities or do you just make them into mining towns to feed your main city resources, fun choices to be had. The music is solid, which is a good thing since you’ll probably be listening to it for oh so many hours. Just be sure to change the streamer option to hear the extended music library, which is a nice touch to save anyone from YouTube or others wrath. There’s plenty of data available to the player to understand what’s going on and why. The cause of death for your pixel people, resource displays, census graphs, various terrain map views and visual cues are just some of the many means to help you out. Having an editor is also a good thing for the longevity of the game. THE IFFY BITS -- Like most games of this genre, when things scale up little annoyances start to become big annoyances. While your pixel people are pretty smart and handle most actions well automatically, you do occasionally need to step in to manage them. Which correcting which house they live in or which job is more critical isn’t so bad with a small settlement on a single map, once you have a thousand people and five maps spinning at once it becomes very tedious to flip back and forth correcting them. While the core menus are great, a good chunk of menus don’t feel as polished and robust as you’d want. There’s also issues telling when something is a button verse just static data for you to read. Some buttons can be microscopic, some data points like the census don’t directly just you specific numbers, other bits you need to tab out of the game to the wiki for information. Just a lot of tiny quality of life things, all of which adds to the learning curve and detracts from the experience some. If the terrain is crowded with trees and buildings or certain map effects it can be very hard to see what you’re doing. Adds some annoyance when trying to line up your tetris piece building in and out paths. Diplomacy system to me doesn’t fully mesh well with the heart of the game’s simulation and city building. The quests also can be a bit weird in later scenarios with pacing pain points. THE BAD BIT – There’s nothing in the game I myself would consider bad or that make it unplayable. However dear reader, if you are not the type of gamer like me who wants to spend some hours experimenting and learning the finer mechanics and interactions of the simulation part to problem solve, then that learning curve could be a big turn off. As always, to those who made it through the wall of text. I salute you! Cheers.Show moreShow less
188.7 hours at review167 people found this helpful