I haven't had a single issue with frame rate and my newest city currently has 600 villagers. I hate when people give negative reviews for games based on their frame rate. You should've looked in to whether or not your computer could run this game sufficiently before buying it. It's that simple.

As for the gameplay, it took me a few attempts to grasp the game. It's very simple to understand once you've played with it for a bit. By the end of the 3 hours, I had built every building available in the game and covered 3/4 of the map provided. It'd be nice if the maps could be bigger.

It's not too pricy considering how smooth the game runs, and how little bugs there are (if any). It would be nice if there was more content, however. What I would've loved to see is being able to actually explore landmasses occupied by other kingdoms and raid them. Some may be vikings, some may be vast kingdoms like that which you yourself create. This game has potential to be a lot better, and I hope they expand on it.

I like city builders, even though I'm not very good at them, they're usually fun. This game mainly consists of two things - making a succesful and optimized city, and defending it against invasions. However, after first few captivating hours comes the realization that the game lacks depth in any way and there is nothing else for you to do other than mindlessly doing same thing over and over.

Here lies the problems with the game - it offers you tiny, randomly generated map, which is always very similar, so there is no feeling of a different game here. It's one little map, giving you no sense of actual freedom, and reminds me of Sim City 2013 in that way. When you get the hang of things, there are 2 main themes - "keep expanding the city and optimize it", and "defend yourself against invasions". Well, the invasions are extremely primitive and lacking. Either a dragon shows up, or vikings come to raid you in increasing number of boats. This then repeats over and over. You've seen one invasion, you've seen them all, they're just coming from different parts of the map, and vikings get more challenging, but they're always the same and quickly become boring and mundane.

So the other thing is to keep growing the city. I've spend probably 6 hours just killing time, building on everything the little island offered to me, but it wasn't the same as the first few hours, where I've explored most of what the game has to offer. Even the building selection is rather small, there are no advanced options, no statistics and even optimizing your city is just very primitive and dumbed down compared to most of the other games - you can't even do basic things like moving specific resource from one stockpile to another. Later in game, the invasions become a mess to watch, because using armies is just painful, you end up chasing enemies all across your city, and the god damn clouds keep getting in your way. The game also starts having performance issues when you start getting closer to 1000 citizens. Your advisors don't have much to say and they start repeating the same few lines over and over.

Being casual is not bad, but lacking in content and depth is another. The game needs more variety in every way. It feels like an early access title that just got released, or an early tech demo. There are no objectives, no campaign, no variety in invasions, no joy from new discoveries, anything at all. It's just a tiny sandbox, and compared to games like Banished (when Banished first was released), there is no depth to it's systems.

It doesn't make the game bad, but it simply needs more depth and content before I can recommend it to anyone else but a person who won't feel sorry that they paid 10 euros for few hours of casual fun. While the price is low, for 10 euros you can get so many other building strategies with much higher value, that there is really no competition. Games like Prison Architect, Banished or the Anno series are far more interesting, because they allow interactions and optimization of the whole ecosystem on much deeper level, or they have campaigns and different objectives.

Thumbs up! Ignore those people who say "I've played the whole game in 2, 3, 5, 'whatever' hours" and "felt my money could be spent better some where else"
Its a £7 game. You can't even go to watch a film at the movies for that price! Such Stingy people...

Now, the game is simple, with some initial challenge that gets easier as you understand more about it. Fun and pleasent to look at. It is basically what it says on the label perfectly, "A city builder with a tower defense strategy" and the devs are working to add even more content... for your £7.
If u have a tenner to spend, and you like the sound of it. just buy it. cos u wont find any other form of entertainment for the same amount.

or if this aint your kind of game then dont buy it! and see how far £7 gets you in the pub! :P