A lot of foreshadowing early on, plus figuring out the controls is not intuitive, which actually forced me to restart once early on. Still, it's not rocket science and eventually I started to get the hang of it. I seem to be stumped for the moment, but I assume I just missed something and I need to figure out just where and what I blew off another clue. It's a little frustrating when you think you've done everything right, but still can't get the puzzle solved. Oh well, just gotta keep plugging away at it.
This game is a pleasant little city-builder without a lot of outside distractions in the form of enemy invasions or anything, however, despite the lack of foreign complications, it's a fine line you walk between feeding, housing and employing all of your citizens and avoiding death from starvation and disease. Timing is everything in this game, with the player needing to establish his priorities right out of the gate in assigning workers, deciding what needs to be built first, and so on. As new buildings, pastures, orchards and farm fields are set up, it is vital to man them intelligently in order to get the most out of your crops and laborers, and then, during the winter, you need to hastily reassign your labor to new tasks, such as hunting, fishing and gathering in order to survive the winter. Every step of the way you are managing resources and deciding just what you need in order to keep your community going. As time goes on, you begin working on better ways to gather resources, such as quarries, mines, tool makers, clothing makers, and so on, and meanwhile trying to balance that with trade, a tavern, even a church and graveyard. There are a LOT of variables to dal with, and you need to be clever and adept in assigning workers and projects so you can continue to grow your community with "just in time" construction and worker assignment. All in all very challenging without being too stressful.
I first played this game about thirty years ago. It's very closely based on an old board game called "Stellar Conquest" and I just love it! It's turn based, so if that doesn't appeal to you, you may not like this one, but it has everything that all the modern 4X games have but in a very simple way that actually results in some very complex interactions. Definitely worth picking up if you enjoy 4X style games!
