This game is a blast to play for a couple of hours; slowly growing your city, fending off vikings and and dragons.
The core gameplay loop is quite solid. Sustain, expand, defend. The problem, arises when you realise that there are a limited options of what you can build. What you see, is what you get. A balista and archer tower. Nothing more. The RTS element is rather undeveloped as well. While no one is expecting a C&C game, the fact that you cannot send your unit after another, i.e. they go to where you clicked, not who you clicked on, can be quite maddening.
Is it fun? Yes, but how long is the question. At 5 dollars I'd say this is a pretty no brainer purchase; at 10? Well, not as much. If you won't feel 10 dollars, pick it up and give it a go.
If I could give this game 2.5 stars I would, but 2 is all I could offer. On the surface the game is a fun and fresh take on a classic defensive city builder, but that's kind of where it stops. The game lacks any real depth to it. Build a wall around your city and you're pretty much done. The hardest thing about it is getting enough stone and wood to do so and the heavy handedness of the developers giving such a high resource cost is a blatant attempt at extending gameplay.
Vikings come and beat up your city, sometimes bringing ogres, and you can have a small army (as of this point I've yet to figure out exactly what the critera for a solider is because sometimes I get them right away, sometimes I don't get any for a while), but by and large you rely on your walls and wall archers to kill things. Dragons will show up and occasionally try to burn your town down, but between well placement and the lack of any real threat shown by the dragon, you'll have no much to worry about with the exception of a building or two burning down. I lost my main grain silo and was still able to recover without much lost.
The potential in this game is obvious, but without any depth given, the lack of diverse buildings, the inability to have a large map and build multiple cities, trade with said cities or NPC's, more disasters, or have an economy that relies on Part A connecting to Part B connecting to Part C in order to make the whole city function leaves the player with no real challenge (Yes, you can mind stone and iron without a blacksmith for tools).
In closing the game is fun for a few hours and may make you come back at some point for more, but once you have your city (with no real incentive to grow it past however far you want), the game loses luster and lacks any desire to replay it. If you see it on sale, grab it, but otherwise your money may be best put elsewhere.
Meh.
I just bought this game and found it hard to quit playing. Yes it is very simple unlike for example Banished.
If you liked the Anno series this is probably a good game for you. However Simple does not mean easy or boring.
You have to keep track of your resources. Space (especially furtile ground) is your most important resource in this game. I'm really looking forward to new updates. So far i'd say it was 10 Euros well spent.
I've enjoyed this game. If you ever just want a relaxing city building game, this is a good start. I hope the Developers continue to grow this game. Advice to new players is to pause the game from the start and look at all the buildings and descriptions. I feel that will help you to determine how to build and grow.
What is fun about games like these is that there is potential for more. I love the geometric graphics and I feel it can definitely add more. The complaints I have are minor. nothing that can't be fixed with some more effort. I feel like the movement of the screen as you move the mouse to the edge of the screen is a little slow at responding. And at times it moves the camera a little to fast for me. I would love a camera speed and I have easily learned how to use the keys to move. There are some notifications for some hotkeys for time that appear off the screen for me. I could go on but all the complaints to me are minor.
In conclusion I would play this game for some while. I feel soothed and relaxed as I play and watch as all the peasants move around building and growing the city. I'm sure I will continue to have good experiences with the game.
After having given the game a solid try, it does captivate me with the simplistic graphics and the fun of designing your castle can be enough for a certain type. Sadly i am not that type, five and a half hours through my first gameplay. On (admittedly) normal difficulty i have done everything i can, there's no real threat to the city, no "death" so to say. Yes a large amount of your populace can die, but thats a temporary issue.
So! What does it have? Well if you're the type of person to make goals for yourself, like "build X amount of this type" or any of the sorts, i would think you could have great fun. If you're like me that likes to build something that is self sustainable, well then there really isn't a lot of replayabillity. When i got bored i tried seeing how tall you could build your walls, apparently there's no limit to height, which resulted in me having 10 tall towers with ballistae. Resulting in no real threat from any enemy, since the ones that can actually destroy my walls. Are dead before they even get near the city - so i got a "Thriving City" that is more or less self sustainable - which in my eyes is the end goal of all city builders. Achieved in 5 hours - on a single map yes, but i will argument that the difficulty doesn't increase gameplay - just extends it.
So with all that taken into account, it's a solid 3 from me. With room for improvements.
