This is a very pretty game. I love city building games and there are few that involve building vertically and around (Cliff Empire is the only other one I can think of - which is an amazing game). City building games usually have a balance between efficiency (logistics), expediency (what you need to do NOW), and emergency (dealing with the unexpected).

This one is almost 95% efficiency centered, with logistics being your primary focus. Because it is essentially "free" to move every building in pause mode, your main concern becomes maximizing the efficiency of movement of goods from one production chain to another. The game treats goods transportation and building construction as instant - there is no build or true travel time. Which is why those reviews about it being closer to a puzzle game are relatively true. Normally, city building sims have some time penalty for constructing and deconstructing buildings and model logistics via actual time delays when transporting goods from one place to another. In this game, everything occurs instantly even in pause mode.

There is some space management, etc... but the absolute primary focus is getting the cost of moving goods from one place to another under control either by building it closer (typically losing efficiency), or by using transport options available (which can rapidly spiral costs). Attempting to expand production chains or push up the mountain levels without considering how you are going to either create or move goods around is how you get an irrevocable economic death spiral particularly at higher difficulties.

Many people who build city sims attempt to expand their cities as fast and as far as possible keeping to the razor's edge to expand the advantage in mid to late game due to some time constraint imposed - in this game, over expanding appears to be the fastest way to lose. To that end, the tutorial is quite poor. It should be teaching the main tools you'll need to beat this game: the ability to instantly and freely move buildings around in pause mode and the different ways you can move goods around in the game to maximize production chains and logistics.

It should at least mention that you can "chain" the starter transportation buildings to one another to expand their range, and that higher research levels allows for more efficient movement of goods. It should also mention that using the oxcart incures a massive penalty for distance (mitigated by how paved your roads are) and amount of goods in the cost of artisans and yaks.

Overall, I liked the game once I figured out how it works. You are tight on income in the early game and the midgame sort of becomes seeing how fast you can push to research level 3. Once you get to research level 3, the game becomes significantly easier since the the endgame transport option is obscenely efficient. This means if you wish, you can move entire production chains to the most efficient places for them and rebuild your cities for maximum shrine/tax effects while shipping in commodities and food from literally anywhere on the mountain. At that point, the game becomes an exercise in building the correct production chains to complete all the objectives and build the summit.

However, the tools to move around buildings are extremely clunky. I found myself more than once dreading moving multiple buildings from one side of the mountain to another since you are forced to do so individually - so moving production chains becomes a time heavy chore despite it being almost necessary at higher difficulties.

TLDR:

Pros: Pretty game, vertical expansion and expanding around the mountain is nifty. Yaks are cool.

Cons: Pretty clunky tools for moving buildings despite it appearing to be almost essential. I would love to have the ability to lasso and move multiple buildings (please!!!) and also reset the send/receive transport state of buildings (please!).

It would also be nice to have a goods limit on transporting stuff, particularly the artisan carriers as the penalties for moving goods across large distances are enormous and providing some goods is better than outright denying transport to entire food centers because I can't shoulder the manpower costs.

I was really looking forward to playing this game but I can't get past the first section of the tutorial about moving the camera when it asks me to use 'oversee camera'. It doesn't let me continue the tutorial past that. Will delete this review if/when it is fixed!!

Sublime ! I was looking for some peaceful city builder and here on top of mountains this is beautiful !
I just love it and can only recommend it if you are fan of this type.
Rem : no the building can not be rotated and it is fine like this :-D
A BIG thanks to you developers for this excellent game and product