Re-edit of my review after playing some more and the dev responding:

I love this game very much and have been sucked in since the official release. I like how obvious it is that the devs really care about their product, as they've been very active throughout early access and even now after the 1.0 release. They're always listening to feedback and trying to make sure things are balanced and enjoyable. Honestly, I feel bad my first review wasn't more enthusiastic because it definitely highlighted my frustrations more than my many, many positive experiences.

I've honestly had so much fun restarting and trying different configurations to see what works best, and I've even come to terms with my hate for the temperature setting (thank you to the dev for explaining work-arounds). It's actually kind of fun trying to solve the problem at later stages when things start getting a little crazy.

Honestly I feel like the biggest tip I've learned (but still ignore way too often) is to just play the game at slower speeds. A lot can happen in just a few in-game days and if you run at max speed you won't notice what went wrong until it's much too late.

If you like this game, you might really enjoy another little known colony builder named Lords and Villeins. Both have unique mechanics that are not emphasized in other city builders, and they boast interesting economy systems.

Anyways, I hope this game continues to be added to if only because I love it very much and would support future DLC for it, but I also would respect if it did not get more additions as it is perfect as-is.

**
Original Review:


One of my favorite city builders, and I play/own pretty much everything on the first few pages of the genre's listings. That said, after 60 hours I still don't understand several mechanics at all LOL. I think the lack of explanations makes the game really hard, but in a fun way. Others might get frustrated, but I enjoy having to figure things out on my own. That said, there's a lot I still don't understand, such as:

Temperature:
My least favorite thing that was added to the game since early access is temperature- just wish there was a way to turn this setting off. I made it to over 300 people in one town and ended up having a death wave of 50 people perishing to cold every winter, which would then be replenished by children growing into adulthood, which would then be wiped out again next winter. I threw finn torches down EVERYWHERE only to not have enough people to operate them. Then I realized the problem is maybe that I'm not making enough clothes. Don't even get me started on the desert map- constant heat deaths until I just planted palm trees on both sides of all of my roads. Even then, someone still manages to die once in a while.

Pollution:
I had pollution everywhere, which I didn't know was an issue until I finally looked at the dirt overlay after many hours of playing and went "Oh... Everything is pitch black.. Why?" Things got so bad I had over 30 cleaners and dozens of cesspits, which by the way, NEED TO BE DOWNRIVER, but things were falling apart all over the place by this point so it was a bit late to fix this issue.

Water levels:
I still understand nothing about this. I honestly do not know what the weirs do and the difference between a high and low one. I can't tell which direction they are supposed to face, and I don't know what they do regardless of where they face. I stuck one downriver hoping that it will just keep all of the water in my farm area from escaping, but I'm not sure that it does ANYTHING. The water overlay is the one I understand the least out of all of them. Speaking of.. I'm also not sure how many wells you even need but I put them by my farms even near the river because I can't tell if they can just get water from the river, or only from wells..

Immigration:
I just finally started to understand how this/the villager prosperity levels work, but I kid you not I went from like 100 to 300 people only through village births because no one wanted to immigrate to my town for HOURS of gameplay. I didn't realize that all of them lost a level of prosperity due to not eating enough cooked food. At this point my people are always missing some resource, which prevented immigration from occurring, which meant that there would be no one around to operate another kitchen or another tailor, which meant people would continue to be lacking resources.. This game becomes a vicious cycle very quick.

Cooking:
I still don't know how many people you need at each campfire to make your people happy, or how many campfires to have at once. Also do kitchens replace all campfires once we unlock them?

Basically, in conclusion, all of my fun with this game has come from things just not making sense and then me having to figure out how to fix it.

Edit: I re-read my review and realized that it sounds like I'm just writing a lot of negative stuff, but I do genuinely enjoy this game very much. I think it's very well made and 99% of my struggles with it are me being too impatient to figure things out before expanding my settlement. I do wish some things were explained a little differently, or that the game gave me more warnings when things are going to hell, but at the same time I've really liked having to problem solve on my own. The water overlay though - please god someone explain to me how weirs work or I'll be 300 hours in before I figure it out.

I'm pretty picky about my city builders. I have a bad habit of going into them expecting hoping for more Banished. This is NOT Banished. What this is is incredibly unique, relaxing, and enjoyable.

The background simulations are impressive. The ability to speed the game up so much is a core part of the gameplay which brings me joy. The dev is incredibly responsive to feedback and clearly has a passion for the game.

Just one more upgrade then I'm going to sleep. Oh, hello there sunrise.