Banished [Shining Rock Software]

[DaveYanakov]

And I admitted error. Please let it drop.

[FlowerChild]

Oh, I'm sorry, that wasn't my intention, it was just a reply to Dave's statement that "if this newbie can do it, I wonder what FC will do" is a bit unfair to a guy with a decade of industry experience. I didn't mean it as a comparison to you, just a correction towards Dave :)

Yup, it's cool, just relative comparisons tend to invite more, and that tends to draw me into things that I want no part of :)

And I admitted error. Please let it drop.

Yes please :)

[Taleric]

Decided to give this a try. All the resource elements are very intuitive for a midrange gamer. Took a pass or two to lock down supply/demand and season impact.

I just have to figure the reproduction influencers and I am set to build my sprawling city.

Once I figured out early game I felt comfortable running at maximum speed (a year in <5 min). I feel like mid and late game will be all about the proper design to keep balance as you expand.

It is very relaxing to play. The price of $19 USD is what I would call a fair maximum. Love the visual style. Runs very cool being kind to your rig.

[LupusExMachina]

So I had my first real desaster.
A fire in my original Village, taking most of the houses, my smithy, the tailor and worst of all, my storage barn with it.
The barn contained most of the food I had stockpiled so far.
On top of that, all of it happened mid autumn.
If it had not been for the fact that I build my villages rather decentralized and dot the map with a lot of specialized little settlements deep in the woods, it would have cost me the session.
I'm struggling and I think I will make it. I am not sure though, as the sessions tend to be at a point of no return long before it becomes apparent that they are lost.

The game feels well balanced and the way it plays out produces some very nice to look at surroundings. A foresty map dotted with little settlements here and there.
What still feels somewhat missing though, is a stage beyond that, an endgame or second tier of settling.
The process of building a medieval city is not really in there, even though the game feels like it is heading exactly that way.
After some initial struggle it starts to get more and more trivial to survive.

As this is the main part of the game at the moment, it feels lacking in it's later stages.

(I'm in the second year after the desastrous fire now, my initial settlement is half rebuild and I think I will make it :) )

[DaveYanakov]

It's almost unfortunate that this game is going to inevitably be compared to an Anno or other established city builder title. This is more a homestead survival simulator akin to building a house of cards. The game is in seeing how high you can build up without overwhelming the foundation you laid down. If you are finding the large flat maps filled with resources to be unchallenging, there are smaller and/or more desolate mountainous maps to play with. I am glad that the disasters are recoverable with a bit of planning to allow for them. If a fire could wipe out a settlement despite the best efforts to prevent it, it would be game breaking. Yes you can rebuild but you are going to be set back several years while you do it and it's another ball or two you need to keep in the air.

[LupusExMachina]

It actually wiped out a settlement with a well in it.
The only option to really be sure your map and it's inhabitants will survive is to spread it out and have several settlements that are rather more than less self sustaining.
In that regard it really seems to become an almost trivial task to survive when you get around 100 adults.

There are still some little tripwires left, but they seem to be more systematic than desasters.
An overaging populace might be something that could kill you if you don't go and do some micromanagement where to put your remaining people.

But it really boils down to the point that there is nothing beyond the survival part which can definitely be beaten.

I think you could compare it to the early game of BTW. It's beautiful in that regard and plays out very satisfying over the course of that time. It is very survival based over the most part of that time.

After the early game it goes a little into the direction of providing happyness to your people, but that sadly isn't as rewarding as the early game, especially because you can't really lose at that point.

What ups my hopes a lot is the modding support that was announced.

[FlowerChild]

I spent the day with this yesterday, so I thought I'd share my observations:

-Early game is very cool, no denying it. I started off with a hard start as I didn't like the idea of starting with structures already built for me, and didn't have much trouble surviving. Had a couple of deaths in my 2nd winter from people freezing to death because I hadn't set up a wood cutter or tailor yet, but that was about it until I had a population crash years later when my original settlers started dying off due to old age, which turned into a bit of a tantrum spiral for the remaining ones as I didn't have a graveyard yet. Still recovered from it though and am still on my original village.

-The harvest mechanic on farms is very cool on one level, but I think too click-centric on another. I really wish there was an option for me to specify that some villagers should work "x" job during "y" seasons and "z" job during others and then leave it to them to switch back and forth automatically. Constantly manually switching my villagers from job to job once I had a farm running started feeling very grindy.

-Some of the buildings are rather obtuse in their functionality due to being a combo resource production/passive bonus. The herbalist and tavern in particular. It took me quite awhile to realize that even though these building had maxed out their stock of goods, if I unassigned villagers from them to get rid of the annoying icon hanging over them (which tends to indicate they're useless now), I'd lose the associated bonus (heath in the case of the herbalist, dispensing ale and thus happiness in the case of the tavern). At least that's the way I *think* they're working, which me eventually switching people back to those task permanently and ignoring the warning icons, and then seeing my associated stats climb back up over time seems to support.

-Very early on, looking at my build options I began to get the sneaking suspicion that there just wasn't much to the mid to late game, and as I progressed into it the sensation increased until it finally arrived at "so that's it?". My overall impression of the game is that it's a great *base*, but it isn't really a complete game in itself. Mid to late game seems to devolve into "rinse and repeat" with no real sense of progression anymore or real goals to aspire towards. Honestly, it feels like an incomplete game, to the point where I even went to check the website while playing to see what his future release schedule was like, figuring he might have just "released" to bring in some cash flow, only to see that he doesn't seem to be planning to continue development beyond this point.

So yeah, overall impression: very cool base for a game, and definitely interesting for a few hours. Beyond that though, it feels rather unfinished and there's just not enough there to sustain interest in the long term.

As an aside: it seems to be a very odd trend amongst indie developers to discard tried and true design principles and then go on about them as if that's a feature. In this case the developer seems to laud "no tech tree! you can build anything anytime you want!" as a feature, when to me, that seems to be what the game is really missing. The KSP devs seem to do the same thing with "we don't want to force you to play with any particular feature" as if that's a good thing, when really, that kind of structure is precisely what their career mode is sorely lacking in.

Anyways, just a side observation I've been making as of late.

[BinoAl]

As an aside: it seems to be a very odd trend amongst indie developers to discard tried and true design principles and then go on about them as if that's a feature. In this case the developer seems to laud "no tech tree! you can build anything anytime you want!" as a feature, when to me, that seems to be what the game is really missing. The KSP devs seem to do the same thing with "we don't want to force you to play with any particular feature" as if that's a good thing, when really, that kind of structure is precisely what their career mode is sorely lacking in.

Anyways, just a side observation I've been making as of late.

I think Minecraft really set that off; People just started looking at games in a different light, though I think it was a very wrong observation. They saw Minecraft and saw a game with no goals, storyline, etc, and just how popular it became, so now the cool thing to do is disregard any sort of structure. BTW has made it very clear, though, that there is a structured experience in Minecraft, and expanding on that had made it far more enjoyable than anything else, at least to many of us.

[FlowerChild]

I think Minecraft really set that off; People just started looking at games in a different light, though I think it was a very wrong observation. They saw Minecraft and saw a game with no goals, storyline, etc, and just how popular it became, so now the cool thing to do is disregard any sort of structure. BTW has made it very clear, though, that there is a structured experience in Minecraft, and expanding on that had made it far more enjoyable than anything else, at least to many of us.

You know, I think you're probably right with that, and it's something that's happened in the past with big games as well. People make surface-level observations about them and go off on all kinds of crazy design tangents as a result.

In the case of MC the unthinking "it's a sandbox game!" (as if that means something) battle-cries that you hear from the community whenever any kind of structure is introduced support that. I've run into that from people trying to convince me to water down the design of my KSP mod as well. To me, the real artistry with designing these kinds of games is maintaining the right balance of structure and open endedness to make them engaging, not throwing structure completely out the window.

Good observation.

[FlowerChild]

As a fairly random aside: I think it would be pretty cool tying into my idea for seasonal workforce management if students could be used as reduced-efficiency laborers during the summer months, or really any time but with only x-seasons of education a year required to actually educate them.

Part-time child workforce ftw :)

It would also introduce a cool element whereby during emergencies you could put your students into full-time labor at long-term cost to their education and thus future productivity.

[DaveYanakov]

I think my initial impressions may have been coloured by both a lower skill level and more limited play time. I assumed that the end goal was just to get the population up past a threshold and keep it stable for a coupe of decades.

There is a lot of room for added depth here but I fear the mods that will add it will also greatly increase the relative complexity. What I would really like to see is for this style of game influencing future citybuilders to get closer to some of the older greats. Unstructured sandboxes are bad enough but a sandbox where you do not even have to try to not fail your people miserably is just an ant farm. At least with an ant farm you still need to remember to feed them once in awhile.

I am still happy with the purchase. It does not tax my available play time as badly as something like a Civ title and it keeps me invested in my citizens the way a game should even if not to as great a degree as I might like.

[Rob]

Would it be a stretch to attribute some of MC success to the Modding community? It's been said multiple times on this forum that if it wasn't for BTW they wouldn't have stayed with minecraft. How many times could that same sentiment of been used for X mod? Vanilla Minecraft couldn't hold my attention for very long, the novelty wore off quickly and if it wasn't for talented mod developers I wouldn't have stayed long. What I'm getting at is I think the creator of Banished might be banking on a modding community to carry continuous appeal for players. It has been stated somewhere that modding will be(or already is) capable.

[FlowerChild]

I think my initial impressions may have been coloured by both a lower skill level and more limited play time. I assumed that the end goal was just to get the population up past a threshold and keep it stable for a coupe of decades.

Well, don't get me wrong: it's good at what it does, I just wish it would do more :)

Like, feeling a need for a 2nd day off (gasp), I found myself drawn back to it and started up a new village. My old one is fine, but I just didn't feel compelled to play it beyond where I am with it as it was starting to feel like further play would just be more of the same. When I considered starting fresh though, I found myself getting excited about it again.

Anyways, started fresh, and had a couple of villagers die of starvation a couple of years in because I didn't get tool production going quickly enough, and thus the productivity of everyone plummeted drastically when they ran out. Going to restart again as a result to try and get the early game down pat as that seems to be the most entertaining portion for me anyways.

On another side note, my villages so far have been named "Dagon", "Ipswich" and I do believe I'll call the next "Dunswich". I seem to have come up with my own background explanation as to why my villagers are indeed "banished". Just wish one of the church visual options was a tad darker looking ;)

And yeah Dave, I definitely agree with you on a need for this kind of challenge level in city builders. It's definitely a very welcome change of pace and the core here is extremely solid. As I said, I just wish there was more to it, and to me it looks like the developer might not have the staying power to truly and richly explore this kind of concept as one of the reasons he mentions for stopping development on his website is a desire to move onto other game concepts.

It might be symptomatic of him being more programming than design focused, as like I've mentioned with regards to mods in the past, some people are all about the "oh! Shiny!" of developing new features and get bored when it comes down to the long hard work of fleshing out a game fully. Other people like me get totally turned on by those details, and if anything have more problems pulling themselves away from working on a game than with continuing to develop it :)

[Taleric]

It is actually a little challenging to think of satisfying end game material. All my gut reactions are the fantasy type but it is not really the scope. I would love to establish a cult and build shrines ect.

I guess "wonder" type projects would be something, forcing you to squeeze everything you can out of the map (balancing against fail cascade all the while).

Population density options like 2 story buildings, ox driven plows for major food and sewers to collect waste? Maybe wind and water mills as well...

I can't blame the developer for resisting the major investment to advance things further.

[Gunnerman21]

Considering this game looks entirely non-fiction, I would guess building better technology would continue the game. Although, I don't know how to implement that with getting all the technology at once and all, but I guess resources and man-power can be a continuing cost of development instead. Technically it's just like real life, take a look at Dubai for example: They built giant palm-like sand peninsulas for more housing and huge amazing architectural buildings. The only thing they need for this is money and man-power. They use the technology the world already has to offer, like concrete, steel, etc. So why not build bigger in the game with the same stuff? More workers means more things can get done at once. Cutting stones that are strong enough to support "big" buildings would be feasible with lots of people, and so would building machinery like wind and water mills ;) Those mills could also cut logs into planks to build big housing as well. The only problem with this development is that you would eventually run out of iron, coal, and stone...

Huh.. This is sounding a heck of a lot like BTW but with early renewable food and lotsa people.

[icynewyear]

I put out a review video with my feelings on it. Would it be in bad style to link it?

[FlowerChild]

I put out a review video with my feelings on it. Would it be in bad style to link it?

Nah man, totally on topic.

In terms of where I'd develop the game further, more elaborate late game production chains would definitely be my inclination. Mills requiring a water source for increased locational dependency, wheat being higher value food that requires milling, maybe integrating some kind of engineer/machine shop profession/location.

Where I find these games really get interesting is the location-based dependencies affecting your rate of production. Personally, I'd probably also lean towards sewage management or something along those lines as a factor in the health of your populace, again, creating interesting location based dependencies, say with having to choose a downstream place to channel your sewage to prevent it affecting your fishing and/or water supply. Early on, latrines might suffice, but as you expand into a major city sewage would begin to become a major problem, bringing more depth to the late game. Pest control might be another consideration/interesting direction for development. Rat catchers and such, which could tie in well with sewage management (and provide an additional food source in emergencies ;) ).

There's plenty of interesting directions to take such a design without resorting to fantasy elements or warfare. The trick without a tech tree is to integrate gameplay elements that blossom in the late game and add additional depth with higher populations, which is what I find is lacking.

[icynewyear]

My thoughts

[DaveYanakov]

A lot could be done with exhuasted quarries as a requirement as well. Projects that require a pit to be dug out and worked for a decade before you can even start would require quite a lot of forward planning.

[FlowerChild]

You know, I'm having a lot more fun with this second play through, and I think it's coming down to mostly one thing: I'm not farming :P

I've got more than enough food production going for my 60 villagers (I actually had to move some off of food production as I was filling up my warehouses faster than I could build them) with fishing, hunting, gathering, some animal pens, and a single orchard (which requires much less micromanagement than a farm) to make my ale.

The seasonal click-fest that is farms is really soul crushing IMO. The game is rock solid otherwise, lack of late game content aside. I *might* make a single farm just to put some veggies in my village diet, as I have an annoying half-pip of health missing that I suspect comes down to that, but I think I'll wait until I have a sufficient surplus of laborers that I can just leave them assigned year round to that task.

[Rianaru]

I feel like this game could be improved a lot of the dev added something like what flower talked about, something that would increase in importance and complexity as the population grew. Another way might be to add requirements that kick in at certain population limits. For example, a small village could exist on the barter system, but a town of a couple hundred might have a more complex economic requirement(currency), and that could add silver/gold mines, a mint, and maybe a tax collector.

I feel like merchants were underused as well. I kind of wanted the possibility of a fur trade village or something, where I could specialize in production of some material or luxury resource and trade that in order to feed my villagers. There are some other things that make me feel like the developer didn't focus much on it, but they're mostly just a jumble of fairly minor things. I'm all for limitations enhancing gameplay, but I was expecting to be able to pull something like that off, and the fact that I wasn't able to was jolting for me. Both because of the irregularity of the traders and the lack of mechanics to set up permanent trading or working out recurring trade deals of some sort. There's more gameplay value to be eked out of merchants imo, I'm just not sure how to make it better.

[FlowerChild]

Well, at around year 75 and with a population of about 300, the poor village of Ipswich (which I decided to continue after all after those first couple of starvations) is crashing to desktop every time I try to save the game or it autosaves.

Checked the forums and a lot of people are reporting the same thing, so I guess I'll put that aside for the time being. I was basically just going achievement whore on it anyways, as it had just turned into a cycle of constant expansion.

Seriously though guys: don't build farms early game. It's WAY more fun if you don't, and it's really no trouble surviving without them as even if you micromanage the hell out of them (which like I mentioned gets soul crushing fast), their output really doesn't justify the hassle in comparison to other food sources.

Instead of focusing on upgrading food sources (which is the "mistake" I made with my first village), focus instead on upgrading your villagers which seems to make a much bigger difference. In other words, go for education and steel tools as soon as it's feasible as this will greatly increase the efficiency of pretty much everything your villagers do, meaning you need less of them working on any given task for the same output. Also, think twice before accepting nomads, as while it can be handy to get a bunch of adults at once instead of having to pay the food cost of raising children yourself, the thing is that nomads are uneducated, meaning they can cause your overall efficiency to plummet all of a sudden.

Also, I think upgraded coats (wool + leather) also improve efficiency a bit as I think they let your dudes stay out longer during the winter meaning they can get more done in the same period of time (probably most valuable for hunters and such), so sheep are extremely valuable if you can trade for them (since you get plenty of leather from hunting anyways).

At a certain point (it happened for me around 60-75 villagers after building schools and a mine for coal to make steel tools), you wind up with mass surpluses of food and labor, at which time you can freely assign villagers to farms year round without worrying about it. Towards the end I wound up with one of every farm and orchard type with a full time staff on each of four villagers, and generally still had around 30 laborers just milling about. The only real advantage I could see from this is that the farms offer food diversity, which seems to improve the health of everyone. Otherwise, like I said, I was basically just achievement whoring.

Also, I'd say that tipping point where your population and food production skyrockets is pretty much the end of the game, as short of a tornado randomly hitting the center of your town, I can't really see anything that seriously threatens you. I got hit with a few diseases here and there, but since I had physicians, all that amounted to was the sick individuals wandering over to the nearest hospital and staying there until they were healed.

Anyways, definitely more fun if you don't build farms, but I still pretty much feel the same way about the late game in that it becomes very "samey" very fast.