Too many colony simulators - none good.

[Alexej]

WTF is going on. There are so many colony simulators right now and they all look and feel like Banished. There was time where i would say - shut up and take my money, but right now its just sad. There is really no variety in them - they not only look alike(inclusive colors) but they all offer same base princible and same time period and cultural regions. Yeah, i could play lots of them - but only if not all of them were set in medieval europe - what about colonization of americas or wild west? The ideal periods for COLONIZATION games, where you start from zero and has to independently survive. Or what is with asia? At least the visuals would differ in that setting and set them apart from the rest. No, no luck here. Its just sad situration here, especially when you think that most of them arent so good when it comes to gameplay in first place, so they should be looking for things that make them special - but none of that is seen right now...

[Lone Wolf]

Hand simulator is good lol well come to steam where all them games or must are rubbish

[sfnhltb]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/569480/Kingdoms_and_Castles/

[Anonymous Helper]

It's not unusual for developers to jump on the bandwagon of a popular genre. We've had surge of Survival games after minecraft. Zombie and post apocalyptic themes has been popular for a while and as you've noticed colony management games have seen resurgence in recent times. Not entirely sure why though as I don't remember any extremely successful ones out of hand other than RimWorld but that's too new to have caused the resurgence and it's copycat's are still in development.

Here is one wild west themed though it's reviews are mixed:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/762650/Depraved/

There was sort of colonization themed colony management game called Clockwork Empires. Unfortunately it flopped and studio developing it closed taking the game down with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRJ1B4DknOY

[shiel]

Anno 1800 is great.

[Alexej]

Originally posted by Anonymous Helper:

There was sort of colonization themed colony management game called Clockwork Empires. Unfortunately it flopped and studio developing it closed taking the game down with it.

I tried it - i wanted it to work so much, but it was so broken and terrible, that i had to give it back. Idea was nice, but technically this was just... In comparision to other games it was just not there.

[Electric Cupcake]

The only people who call Dwarf Fortress bad are the sissies who can't handle it.

[Violeta]

Rimworld?

[Kamiyama]

When I was a kid I liked playing the first Outpost by Sierra. It was a DOS game and was released in an unfinished state meaning it was impossible to actually beat the game. But you could still pick equipment to take with you, pick a star system and planet to land on, and then have to build a colony that would survive the terrible environment with no oxygen and no life on an alien world.

It was the only colony simulator I've ever played that had a good man versus nature dynamic. No enemies invading your base. No aliens. No need for guns or tanks. Just your colony and a hostile environment trying to kill you.

It was awesome even though it wasn't finished.

For some reason GOG has Outpost 2, which has guns and tanks and invading enemies. They finished that one and most people think it's "better" because they added combat.

No I like the first one.

Build a oxygen generator, then a meteor shower hits and blows it up.

Dig down into the crust and build an underground residential facility so your colonists can survive the meteor showers. Then an earthquake hits.

You finally get food production going so your colonists won't starve to death. Then they decide they hate you and riot. Now the farms aren't producing food anymore.

Planning everything out and seeing it ruined through no fault of your own was frustrating and addictive and awesome. It felt like the game was just out to get you, and you're right it was.

[ambi]

Originally posted by White:

Rimworld?

[trousers]

i just want a cool colony-sim/citybuilder that isn't grid-based and lets me make settlements that don't look like the kinds of things sentient squares live in. is it so hard to ask for?!

[Squingus]

Originally posted by Crosseyed Mie:

The only people who call Dwarf Fortress bad are the sissies who can't handle it.

well its dated and its controls are really counter intuitive, lack of polish and modern feature are a big turn off for people because nobody has the time to sit down for five hours and learn the controls.

[RRW359]

I have Planetbase and Spacebase DF9. Neither are particularly good but they are still colony builders that aren't medieval.

And that's just Steam. They are very different mechanics wise but but AOE3 kind of counts (and if it does AOE 1 probably does as well, although I don't believe it ever directly calls your settlement a "colony" like AOE3). I also have Deep Sea and Moon Tycoon which are old games where you make a space/sea colony although they are more like Sim City than any other games listed.

[Ⓥenom Ⓢnake 🐍]

Can I get OP to list a few of these games for reference?