Banished

I had my most fun and stress watching things go wrong... getting too ambitious and expanding faster than food, not streamlining a resources collection and seeing the devastation that results when you suddenly lack the 1 item. There are hours and hours of fun to be had on this game. Beautiful music, and it looks great. You really do just get sucked up in the 'making it work' endeavor/challenge of building your community up from a few people and a cart. For the obvious city builder considerations, this game is brilliant, but once you actually have things up and running, it does start to lose it's appeal a lot faster than most other builders... why... because it was built that way. There are little to no real objective to begin with, save survive. Once you have that well in hand, that's really all there is ..... game over, except it doesn't end. I ended up simply waiting round for a fire or tornado to come shake things up... I had fun waiting and watching my great streamlined civ function I do however really really wish there was a little more objective play.. something to keep it fresh and interesting even on your fifth new settlement/play-through.

This game has everything made right in it. Lots of micro-management and careful planning is involved, but one thing is missing for me - a reason to keep on playing. The reason itself should be 'because it's fun!'... And yeah, it is. But I got my first village to respectable size with no real issues and everything went well and was stable. But then I asked myself - Why should I keep expanding? Why bother? The game offered me no real reward for taking an initiative. Reaching a certain milestone of citizens gave me no new features or new thing to play with. So the game gave me no clear goal as a result. The goal is to expand? Fine, but why should I expand? The game seemed entirely pointless for me because of this.

...it wasn't too shallow. I'm not gonna lie, Banished hooked me. Is it because it throws the gameplay at you, without long and annoying tutorials? Is it because how satisfying it is to watch laborers build houses, cut trees and tend orchards in this beautifully-detailed world? Or maybe it’s because the game offers just the perfect dosage of challenge to keep me busy optimizing while scratching my head: why are steel tools better than iron ones (they cost more, it should mean something!) and why all my laborers are dying (hint: they are not immortal)? But then - after hours of fun - turns out all the buildings have been built. All the ideas have been tried. All the questions about the mechanics of the game have been answered. Then it strikes: well the game don't have a lot to offer right? What’s next? No enemies? No challenges besides achievements (I'm not a virtual badge loving person)? No campaign? No buildings to unblock? No events but occasional fires or pest? No upgrades but the houses? No tech trees? Don't get me wrong: I don't know if any of these features are actually a good or a bad thing. What I mean is that the game feels shallow after 20h of play. That’s too bad, I would have liked to see more out of it. Oh yeah, and the game still crashes in 2023.

There a enough reviews here that describe this wonderful little game. My only objection was the limited number of different buildungs and products. But now I'm playing Banished with the mod Colonial Charter and I really love it.

Banished has no story beyond the hint that you and your people have been exiled to the wilderness to fend for yourselves. It doesn't need a story beyond that. The natural, organic drama of the changing seasons, the births and deaths, the growing and the harvest, and the fight for survival in a wilderness that even at its mildest can leave you without food and firewood in the depths of winter, tell the story. Unlike most survival city sims, however, there isn't a feeling of desperate micromanagment. Banished is a game of thinking ahead, to the next season, the next harvest, and the next winter. It's like tending a garden of thatched-roof houses, hard-working peasants, and beautiful, ravenous wilderness.