A terribly long drought came in on hard mode (22 days long). A few days in, I could see that we were running out of water and my village was overpopulated. I knew that every single citizen of Beaverton would die of thirst if I didn't do something drastic, quickly. I decided to build a second town center that was surrounded by only a few extra builder huts. The beavers that I sent here had no access to food or water, all that was in this district were builder's huts for the nearby reservoir that needed to be built. That's right, you guessed it. In order to ration our water and survive, I sent half of my population to a literal labor camp/death camp. Every single beaver in that second district died in less than a week, but their sacrifice will not be forgotten. This is one of my all-time favorite gaming memories. Timberborn is absolutely incredible. I have played a lot of colony sims (Frostpunk, Endzone, Banished, Rimworld, etc) and this is by far the best one. The water mechanics really make the game unique and engaging. It's the perfect mix of complexity and simplicity. It's not overly complex like Oxygen Not Included and Factorio, to where the mechanics are so convoluted that you need to look up guides, graphs, and charts in order to figure it all out. But it's not super simple either. In most colony sims, if you need X, then just build Y building, and you're done. Timberborn is different, and it adds a level of complex strategy because everything depends on your access to water, which is a physics-based commodity. You can't just build a water generator (like a well) and then you have all the water you need. No. You have to actively direct the flow of water from the streams and rivers by building dams, reservoirs, canals, and etc in order to make sure that your colony survives the droughts.
There isn't anything like FO 1 and 2 that I'm aware of. That's it for that genre. Those games were made a long time ago, they were awesome, now they're gone. The sequels after 1 and 2 just took on the same storyline but the gameplay is entirely different now, obviously. So for the longest time we had no options if we wanted to play more games like that. Now we have underrail, and it's really good. I don't write many reviews, but this is a game from a small developer that not a lot of people know about and I hope more people will buy it and experience it. I'm 20+ hours in now and cannot wait to get back to it once I'm done writing this review. I think the best way I can describe it is to just say that it really is FO 1 & 2 but better. Everything you liked about those games is here, but improved on. Story is great, atmosphere is great, combat is great, crafting, character customization, etc etc. It's great. Buy it. Share it.
