Banished

[Sava]

Anyone playing this? It's fun.

and it can be unforgiving



If you haven't heard of it, Banished is a city builder with a survival component.

If you like these kinds of games, I highly recommend it.

If you buy it direct from the dev's website, you get a non-DRM version as well as a Steam key. $20 currently.

http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/game/

The only critical review so far has come from RPS (oddly enough). Apparently, the reviewer thinks the game is too hard and he doesn't like the UI.

But other than that, it seems to be getting good reviews.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

does it have Zombies?

[Felch]

Is it like Settlers or the Anno series? I dug Anno, but the DRM was a huge turnoff.

[Guynemer]

VERY unforgiving, but definitely recommended. I'd be playing it now if I didn't have to go to work in the morning.

I managed to get my village up to around 150 citizens without any major problems, an overabundance of food, everyone was happy... and then a fire broke out in one of my two main neighborhoods. It burned down EVERYTHING. No one died in the fire, but their houses were destroyed, so they moved into the bunkhouse. Unfortunately, I had used up all my stone, and couldn't get a trader to bring me any more, so I couldn't rebuild any houses, and people had to trudge across the whole map to get to work, their morale suffered, and no one had any new kids.

Population dropped down to 60 before things finally stabilized and I was able to secure some stone to help rebuild. Soon after that, a group of about 40 nomads asked to move in, and things seemed to be going in the right direction.

Literally the next season, a tornado touched down directly onto my school, killing all the students, and then proceeded to tear ass from the just-rebuilt neighborhood, crossed the river, and then slammed into the OTHER neighborhood. 60 people died in all.

[Guynemer]

Is it like Settlers or the Anno series? I dug Anno, but the DRM was a huge turnoff.

Anno's DRM is annoying, but at least it isn't punishing.

There's a lot of similarities, ie you have to trade for seeds to grow a new crop, but there aren't different classes or "races" of citizens, no NPCs in other areas of the map, no taxes, in fact there's no "money" at all. Just subsistence farming and barter.

[Dinner]

This looks interesting. I shall download it.

[Guynemer]

Also, you have to wait for the trader to come to you, you can't send out anyone to trade. That's a bit annoying, to be honest.

[Sava]

Yes.

[Guynemer]

The developer will hopefully add that as an option in the future, or perhaps a modder.

[EPW]

Sounds like Dwarf Fortress.

[Sava]

One thing that I'm noticing about this game... the pathfinding is good. The dev is just one guy. He managed to get it right. It still boggles my mind that EA could get Simcity so wrong.

DF was an inspiration for the game. There's no monsters or combat though. It's just pure city-building and survival.

So far, I'm having a lot of fun inspecting the houses and looking at how the people pair up for marriage. Though, sometimes its sad. A spouse will die early, and then the widow lives alone. One guy didn't manage to find a wife. His name is Kartez. I checked in on him every so often, hoping he'd snare some young lass. Sadly, the man lived through the prime of his life alone. He's a fisherman. A lonely fisherman.

My current town is growing very nicely. I'm keeping a close eye on food production so my population doesn't crash. I've got about 30k food stored in barns. Hopefully, that will give me a bit of breathing room if I have supply issues.

[Guynemer]

One thing that I'm noticing about this game... the pathfinding is good. The dev is just one guy. He managed to get it right. It still boggles my mind that EA could get Simcity so wrong.

DF was an inspiration for the game. There's no monsters or combat though. It's just pure city-building and survival.

So far, I'm having a lot of fun inspecting the houses and looking at how the people pair up for marriage. Though, sometimes its sad. A spouse will die early, and then the widow lives alone. One guy didn't manage to find a wife. His name is Kartez. I checked in on him every so often, hoping he'd snare some young lass. Sadly, the man lived through the prime of his life alone. He's a fisherman. A lonely fisherman.

My current town is growing very nicely. I'm keeping a close eye on food production so my population doesn't crash. I've got about 30k food stored in barns. Hopefully, that will give me a bit of breathing room if I have supply issues.

Hopefully you avoid the Tornado Of Death. That was actually the second tornado that city suffered, but the first one was out in the hinterlands and didn't actually get into the settlement at all. I think I just had bad luck with the disasters, I've read of people playing over 100 years without a single one, while I had four (also had an influenza outbreak) in 40 years.

[Sava]

Hopefully you avoid the Tornado Of Death. That was actually the second tornado that city suffered, but the first one was out in the hinterlands and didn't actually get into the settlement at all. I think I just had bad luck with the disasters, I've read of people playing over 100 years without a single one, while I had four (also had an influenza outbreak) in 40 years.

Ugh.

I generally turn off disasters in games like this. I prefer facing the actual challenge of the game and not just random bull****. Sure, managing the effects of disasters is certainly challenging. But with random events like that, you can do everything right and still lose. I don't like that.

[Dinner]

I'm still trying to learn the various commands. In my first game I made the mistake of telling them to clear to large an area so my people starved because they never bothered to build the various buildings (like the fishing harbor, the farms, or to gather food) even though I assigned people to do all of those things. I also assigned some workers and some gatherers but for some reason everyone just spent all their time cutting lumber, ignored me when I told them to hunt and gather for food, and instead starved.

[Sava]