Timberborn

This title is early in its release phase. It's just received its first update (which added more recipes & buildings) but already it's a very satisfying experience. The game has a quite unique setting - a seemingly post apocalyptic world in which intelligent beavers are settling in lands formerly occupied by humans. The only sign humans ever occupied the areas are various ruins (which are useful for obtaining metal). The art style is cute and almost picture book, coupled with pleasant primarily string music. But don't let that fool you! Beneath the wholesome setting is a game with the mechanics and tools that allows for the construction of complex and impressive cities/towns/villages. The closest comparison would be to Banished. As much as I love that game it suffers from some of its design choices, particularly around production distribution, storage allocation and efficiency/productivity control. Timberborn has some important design differences that gives the player far more control. Labour outposts, distribution centres/drop off points, and districts. These tools allow for specialisations/production focuses in different areas of the settlement. New districts can be aided by established districts by setting up supply routes & transferring beavers to/from districts. Water, & controlling/using it, is a vital consideration. Things can only be grown in areas in close proximity to water, & droughts are a constant threat which means you need to keep an eye on infrastructure. Water, & other things, can also be used to produce power which is required for factories. The power network system is very useful and adds further considerations when planning infrastructure for each area. Lastly, this game performs very smoothly for an early access game. I've yet to encounter performance issues (Ryzen 7 4800H, RTX 2060, 16GB RAM, 144fps@1080p, max quality settings) & will likely run well on even entry level game hardware @ lower settings. Can't wait for the next update!

After keeping an eye Timberborn since first launch, I was attracted to the premise, and have always loved city/colony/settlement builder sim games. (FAVs are Banished, Planetbase, etc). Timberborn has a great start, and requires planning to weather the droughts, to manage the badwater, and to keep your colony active, busy, and socially entertained. The beavers are just so cute (even the robotic ones), and the AI is predictable and manageable. Love that GOG has this DRM free, as I slowly wean myself from Steam, and repurchase DRM-free versions of Old Favs & New titles HERE gladly. I'm a veteran of the days of jeweled case CD/DVD games that we OWNED, and GOG scratches that itch nicely with digital, no connection required games. NOW, for the not so good on Timberborn. After the first few hours in game, everything, and I mean everything, felt like lather, rinse, repeat IMHO. I did not find much depth to the game, and once you have water, power, badwater, under control, which doesn't take much, interest seemed to stagnate for me. And that really surprised me since the Trailers & player vids greatly appealed to me. I recognise how popular Timberborn is with the community, so keep in mind YMMV. Happy Gaming! Cheers

But the recent update ruined that. Storage managment became a major pain and sucks all the fun out of it, not to mention adding diffuculty that shouldn' tbe there. Storage buildings now only accept one product it seems, So you have to have a warehouse for each good, which is going to lead to warehouse spam not to mention the pain of mangaging each one, instead of where it was the beavers would just take the products to where ever. I'm not interested in such micromanagement.

Great, different kind of city builder, have had a blast with it for about 3 days. But, there's virtually no endgame to speak of. Lots of builders are like that sure, but after you get most things unlocked, the game has a very "now what" feeling, and I'm not really feeling like going back to it for quite a while now. It gets pretty dull once you get to a certain point, and even going to other maps leaves a bit to be desired. Would love some more end game goals or objectives, though it can be really hard to balance that at times without creating something that's just...tedious. There's not really much of a challenge after a certain point, and at times the game can be overly punishing in the beginning if you make a few mistakes. I could do with some more explanation of how some more advanced features work, like migration. There's no tool tips or tutorial for how beavers will move between different districts of the of the map, but the early tutorials are almost TOO descriptive. It's also not entirely clear how you grow your population from the in-game tutorials with the starting colony faction, and it wasn't very intuitive for me. Maybe I glossed over it, but I had to look it up. Maybe newer factions (there's only two "civilization types" to choose) with different tech trees could help. I think I've had a good fun to cost ratio, and hope for a lot more to come. It seems like it's been in beta for quite a while now. I might wait on buying it, or wait for a less than $20 sale, in its current state.

This is a really good city builder with innovative dam-building mechanics. It has a good foundation to build on but it does have a few problems that happen around mid-late game that prevent it from feeling like a complete experience which pushes the player to build into a larger city. At a certain point in time, you have largely researched and built everything pertinent and there is not enough goals mid-game to fill out the remainder of the experience. Well-being status does not really have many implications in the game and feels like a developmental dead-end. There is a couple different factions with slightly different play styles. I think a battle mechanic would be a lot of fun between the two factions. This would really add a little more challenge to those who have already mastered how to overcome drought.