The game looks good and runs very well.
The concept is nice, combining city builder and a strategy map.
At the moment, it just doesn't have a lot of content. Once you build a basic village you're basically done...
Yes, the game has great potential, but for now there are too many things that still need to be done. The game is hard, and seems to perfectly grasp the medieval climate, but there still are plenty of bugs that are just annoying, even if the game didn't crash.
I wish I could give more, but in general game is not ready, it has plenty of annoying bugs which any QA would log straight away e.g.
- variable names showing instead of actual variable values :/ It looks tiny and probably quick fix and very annoying.
I am afraid this is just the tip of the iceberg of big mechanics mockup made to deliver "something".
- I've had an crash on resolution change 2minutes after buying it almost straight after release.. I was like ok sh.. happens.
- then I opened just to realise single village map is terribly small like some kind of demo. Worst of all its not auto generated like in banished :/
- NO STATS?
- I really don't like to adding all WIP broken features (like who wants this stupid broken walking...) there should be more focus to release at least core city builder which would bring longer fun. I hoped for banished with improved UI, but got something like banished 2.0 demo.
- devs should be hired to build a team and actually make a product not PoC hacked to milk people for cash
- sandbox mode after reaching big town is actually never happening and you get asked same question over and over until UI is full of questions and you can only quit - both me and my kid got this.
Very mixed feelings, I am seeing a lot of "games with potential" on /r/tycoon but sadly many of them are never finished as solo devs don't know how to work with others and project eventually dies, then another comes to have many of mechanics issues of his predecessors.
I hope some patches and improvements will be delivered here regularly as looking on sales they can afford now proper QA and bugfixing process to match level of Banished because as it is now - it is far away from it despite what you can see on youtube vids.
I ran into many bugs where keys stopped working, right click to close windows, then I couldnt press Esc to get to the save menu. Royal taxes keep increasing making it impossible to pay without increasing taxes, then people leave town. Theres seems to be food balance issues as well. I'd like to like it but its way too early.
The game state currently (in July 2025) is more of a concept than an actual product. It has potential to be a decent city builder video game but lacks not just a lot of polishing and gameplay features but also direction:
- Some gameplay features are way too structured for a single player city builder or 4X game and feel more like they are ripped off from some general online PvP RTS playbook (regions and how they are claimed/controlled).
- Some gameplay features feel a bit more leaning towards 4X however there are no random events or exploration or generic "tech trees" one can develop. Tech or building advancement is instead cloned from Anno games.
The game has also novel features like army building. It feels like the militia actually comes from the village/town. However at current state I really can not recommend this game and this title should be avoided for now.