Banished

[K9]

This had been vaguely on my radar, but now there's a gameplay trailer up.

Looks nice, gives me a Settlers/Populous vibe. Apparently there's no combat, challenges surround resource management and surviving winters. I'm guessing there may also be stuff like natural disasters and disease outbreaks to contend with.

[Mrbloodworth]

That looks really cool.

[Falconeer]

Looks so relaxing and right. I am looking forward to this, feel compelled to try it.

[Mrbloodworth]

All I can think is, "This is what The Guild 3 should be like". Sadly this does not seem to have the personal Avatar/family/lineage concept as The Guild series.

[Sky]

Looks a lot like an Anno.

[Paelos]

Looks a lot like an Anno.

Yeah but if it's anno sans the combat? I'm happy.

[schild]

This looked like a Tilted Mill game. That is to say, ugly and buggy, but somehow possibly maybe might be fun.

[Dark_MadMax]

Looks ok  I guess.  though I do wonder why should I play essentially a Settlers or Caesar game in 2013 when the best I can probably hope is that the game will replicate the feel and gameplay and at worst have some imbalances and quirks .For nostalgia sake I still have old games somewhere on my HDD

[Falconeer]

This is coming out today. Someone shell out 20$ and let me know if I should do the same.

Most recent "video".

[Ruvaldt]

This is coming out today. Someone shell out 20$ and let me know if I should do the same.

Most recent "video".

I'm picking it up today and plan to spend three or so hours with it this afternoon.  I'll post any impressions, for what they're worth.

[Lucas]

Total Biscuit's "WTF is...Banished":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAi5wWPDZjw

[Falconeer]

Wasn't Total Biscuit gone for good?

[K9]

No?

I watched that video the other day, I don't think he reviewed it badly, I think it was pretty clear that he struggled to enjoy the game more because it 'wasn't for him' than because it was fundamentally bad or broken. He's right that it is a survival sim, not a city builder, he just couldn't seem to review it right in light of that.

I haven't picked this up yet, but it's still on my list. I like the look of it, and I quite enjoy games with this level of detail and micromanagement. Now if someone could port dwarf fortress into an engine as pretty as this one...

[Maledict]

Complete sideways jump, but after binging on Tropico 4 and Anno 2070 for the last 12 months following the Sim city disaster, are there are other good builder games out there? Sim City still tempts me with it's shiny graphics but the size of the cities is still far too ridiculously small to be enjoyable.

Oddly enough this is one genre where I do actually pay attention to the graphics - I have tried Sim City 4 repeatedly but cannot play it due to the poor graphic quality. If you spend all your time building up huge areas, you want them to look good at the end!

[Falconeer]

I thought TB posted something on Reddit recently saying he couldn't handle the pressure of being famous on the internet and was going to retire. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

About Banished, yeah it is totally a survival sim. That's why Dean Hall, the creator of Day Z, seems to be very excited about this.

It also says:

The objective of the game is to keep the population alive and grow it into a successful culture. Options for feeding the people include hunting and gathering, agriculture, trade, and fishing. However, sustainable practices must be considered to survive in the long term.

Survival
Surviving the winters will be among your greatest challenges. Your tailors can make clothing, your people can build houses and burn firewood. But necessities have a price—Cutting down forests reduces the deer population you can hunt. Although your foresters can plant new trees, the cures for many diseases can only be found in forests that have existed for decades.

Farming for many seasons in one place will ruin the soil. Taking fish and game faster than they reproduce will lead to extinction, and your starvation.

right there as the first thing on the official page of the game.

[Sky]

Does the UI scale up at all, in particular the font sizes?

I can't really play Anno anymore because the text is so small on my tv. CK2 also suffers from that. Just a point or two larger would be fine.

[Quinton]

Grabbed this and played through the first tutorial -- will be playing more after work.  I love the look of it and am enthused by basic survival as a goal rather than "defend from waves of invaders" or whatnot.  Seemed pretty solid and polished but only spent 15 minutes with it so far.

[luckton]

This popped up on my Steam RSS feed today, and lo, here's a thread about it.   

Looks a lot like an Anno.

Yeah but if it's anno sans the combat? I'm happy.

This would greatly please me as well.  Will grab this weekend if things look good.

[Rasix]

Does the UI scale up at all, in particular the font sizes?

I can't really play Anno anymore because the text is so small on my tv. CK2 also suffers from that. Just a point or two larger would be fine.

TB rescales the UI about 2 minutes into his video.   

[Sky]

TB rescales the UI about 2 minutes into his video.   

Thanks!

[Sjofn]

Complete sideways jump, but after binging on Tropico 4 and Anno 2070 for the last 12 months following the Sim city disaster, are there are other good builder games out there? Sim City still tempts me with it's shiny graphics but the size of the cities is still far too ridiculously small to be enjoyable.

Oddly enough this is one genre where I do actually pay attention to the graphics - I have tried Sim City 4 repeatedly but cannot play it due to the poor graphic quality. If you spend all your time building up huge areas, you want them to look good at the end!

I love the shit out of Children of the Nile, but you should probably check some screen shots to see if it passes your graphics needs.

[Bann]

So this strongly reminds me of another graphical stab at DF. I spent my first session doing things like designating stockpiles, marking grids for workers to clear for resources, assigning jobs, etc. It did not really click for me, but these types of games rarely do. (The most enjoyment I've got out of the genre has been reading the boatmurdered thread by a longshot.) The graphics are better than most of the other games of this type, but it did not seem at first pass to have the insane attention to detail that seems to make these game endearing. Ill be playing more and will update my opinion later.

If you like DF, play it and write a letsplay about it.

[Ceryse]

I picked this up. Right up my alley as a city builder as things don't immediately become simple the moment you manage to get your base industries up. Played it for around five hours. Had my first city built up a bit and started to struggle as my population went from too constrained to too large (and almost had a massive famine on my hands right before winter) to barely stable.. to stable again. I'm enjoying it so far and I like the graphics to boot. The fact it was done by one guy? Icing on my reasons to buy it.

[Pennilenko]

I just had everybody die. I am thinking the trick is not to rush things and to lay off the high speed time adjustments.

[Quinton]

All of my settlement but one woman died of starvation by the end of year 3.  Linett spent the next year as a hunter, stockpiling food, and then the following two years working to build a trading post, single-handedly, as a last ditch effort to repopulated doomed Pottenberg.

It's 52% complete, she's in poor health, but there's still ~100 units of venison and I don't have the heart to end the game while there's even a slim chance she might pull this off.

I think I spread out too fast and tried to build too fast.

Building small stockpiles near buildings seems to be potentially helpful to avoid people carting stuff all the way back to town and then back out to the build site...

[Rasix]

This seems like something I'd enjoy.  Although, the absence of any sort of DF-like military aspect is a bit disappointing.  Just think if it was this unforgiving, and you had Indians shooting you from the trees.  Glorious.  Can the wildlife attack you?

Steam, however, has spoiled me and I'm a bit hesitant to pay full price for anything. TB's review/impression also led me to believe there are a few bugs/quirks remaining that have the potential to doom you just as fast as anything intentional.

[Quinton]

My second settlement is in spring of year three and is working out much better.

First year I started by building a hunting and gathering station in the woods nearby, then managed to build 5 houses by winter, housing and feeding my entire population.  Followed that up with a woodcutter and tailor, and then in the spring built out a logging station and herbalist.  Slow and steady seems like a big win here.  No deaths so far.

I've got a trading post, fishing dock, and blacksmith up and running, and I'm stocking up to hopefully trade for seeds or livestock.

[Lucas]

Long review on "Rock, Paper, Shotgun":
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/02/18/banished-review/

I’ve spent three days obsessed with Banished, and yet I don’t like it. I was obsessed because I was determined to find a way to break its back, to succeed even when its severity and its strange logic worked so hard to punish me. I don’t like it because it is so short on breathing room, so determined to stack the odds against me, that there is no scope whatsoever to enjoy the act of city-building. While no head turner, it is perfectly attractive, but that matters naught when it’s not paired with any excitement. I want to be challenged, sure, but I also want to be able to sit back and say ‘guys, just look at what we’ve made.’

I don’t like it because not a one of its structures or inhabitants creates a sense of joy or accomplishment when created. Whatever I might construct is another brown (or occasionally grey) shack, whose only visible effect – if I’m lucky – is to slightly slow the decline of one of the game’s many numbers. Let’s say that number is firewood. Let’s say that number was about 200 and falling fast, raised to about 400 and not immediately falling – but two or three more citizens and it will. What am I to divine from that? What does that number, changing dramatically all the time, really tell me about my citizen’s needs, and their demands? Games have forever been about the balancing of numbers, but here the numbers take over – I don’t know what 400 firewood means. All I know is that I need to stop that number from declining to sharply.

Then, as you can read, he goes on saying that at the same time he admires it for what it's trying to accomplish, and that the mindset you use to approach the game is fundamental (yeah, this is no Tropico 4, that's for sure).

[Yoru]

I picked this up at release but have only had a chance to play the tutorials and maybe 30 minutes of my own game (hard start, since that makes you go from scratch). My impressions line up with Quinton's - it's a slow-paced simulator, more akin to gardening.

It's not as madcap as Dwarf Fortress; it reminds me more of a more sedate, simulation-focused version of The Settlers (sans combat). Watching your village and planning ahead are more important than quick reactions.

It's rather easy to punch yourself in the nuts inadvertently, such as by clearcutting all the nearby forests early on - that's where your food comes from, doofus. Repairing such damage takes years: a well-staffed forester needs 3-5 years to fully plant up the area around, and that then takes many more years to mature.

[Bhazrak]

Tornadoes are not fun... had one stride through my forestry/farming area killing about 20 people and set me back several years. Thankfully I had a massive surplus of food or I probably would have lost.

Oh, and sheep rock for trading. All that mutton and wool made me stop having to barter with tools and firewood.

[calapine]

Little tip for fellow Euros:

Buy it on the developer homepage instead of Steam. You get a Steam-key either way, but buying directly costs $19,99 = €14,53 rather than the €18,99 Steamstore is charging.


http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/buy/

[Lucas]

Thank you for the tip :)

And finally, if you would rather dish out some money to GOG, they're selling it as well (for $19.99):

http://www.gog.com/game/banished

[Pennilenko]

I have had some good fun with this since my purchase yesterday. My villagers dies in so many different ways. Just a little while ago, I accidentally told them to clear all resources a little to far away and the little fuckers starved and froze to death before they could get back to the village for food and shelter.

[calapine]

I have had some good fun with this since my purchase yesterday. My villagers dies in so many different ways. Just a little while ago, I accidentally told them to clear all resources a little to far away and the little fuckers starved and froze to death before they could get back to the village for food and shelter.

Awwwww! 

Why do I have to think of this? 

[Sky]

I don’t know what 400 firewood means. All I know is that I need to stop that number from declining to sharply.

I know what that means. It's been a hell of a winter this year and the pile is low.