George breeds, kills, and exploits hundreds in the various buttocks-themed towns of Banished.Just remember: this channel takes itself fairly seriously. You can find Banished on Steam here: store.steampowe...
As some one who has a 600+ population town in Banished, it's at that point that you kind of lose interest. You've done everything there is to do, you've made a massively successful city, you're good enough at the game to sustain high population while keeping every one happy and healthy... A fun and interesting game, but one that really doesn't grip you for all that long. I did get 16 hours for my $8 though so if you can get it on the cheap then it's certainly worth a go.
I really feel like it will be the modding community that inevitably turns Banished into something that can outlast the initial few towns. I really enjoy the game but I, like others, wish for more. It feels like a city builder's first tier of construction options, with the second tier woefully absent. That is something that I think modders will bring to the table. More buildings to build, more mechanics, more dependencies, etc. And hopefully Shining Rock will put out an expansion which will add a good amount of fresh mechanics that will keep things moving. All in all, excellent review.
Just throwing this out there for whom it may concern: I found the best way to do things was to stall building farms for as long as possible, since gatherers and hunters alone can sustain you into the 40's and 50's of population in a more steady fashion.
Agreed, that's the place to start. I don't know that you have to delay it for too long, but you should start there since it's steadier; and keep a balanced portfolio of food sources.
If you or anyone else playing Banished reaches that point where you feel like you're running out of challenges, I have two words for you: Colonial Charter.
If they ever make a sequel, I hope they include things like the necessity of building defensive structures and hostile wildlife. It'd be much more engaging if after you built up a sufficient community and several generations passed, you would be able to slowly reintegrate with the wider world, with everything that entails. It'd be so satisfying to build your first Motte and Bailey castle and a little trading port, or to finally make your town a walled market town with its own stone castle.
Shajita Asston was pretty sweet though until George abandoned it. I lived there most of my life. Thankfully, I was one of the lucky ones who saw the trends of a leader deserting his people, so I placed myself in the porn file he created. I then jumped back into the game within Buttingham 1 and Two.
I do find the idea of a town manager where it's very possible to get a game over quite interesting. Almost feels like an attempt at injecting some Roguelike spirit into a completely different genre. You've intrigued me, sir :P
This game is an interesting mix of city builders and the survival genre that's all the rage right now. But the problem I had most with it is that it is a bit too punishing at higher difficulties to the point that there's really only one correct way to play it, de-incentivising any kind of experimentation.
I think that when the mod kit is released the game will grow exponentially, giving people the ability to add things like terra-morphing (Landscaping), more disaster scripts(Fire-tornadoes) , high-fantasy elements (Dragons), combat (Bandits), more housing (Brothels), a free play mode (Limitless resources), new house designs, it's gonna awesome. And I think this game requires the same kind of goal-setting as Minecraft or Lost Planet 2, set a goal and work to reach for it. If you're bored of the game, try going for some of the achievements, like getting a 300+ population, generate a large map and conquer all of the land by making the biggest settlement in the world. Self-imposed goals like that could keep you busy until the mod kit comes out. Also, since I have the maturity of a 4-year old, I found your town names really humorous, although Buttingham Two could've been called Abirear... I think... Is abri a commonly used word in english?
First few videos a watch from you and i'm very pleased. Searched for you from the Cooptional podcast and you earned a new sub :) Keep at it! Thanks for the good content
Oh that music, i remember hearing the first background tune thousand of times, is it from the 3000? I remember also some cool jazzy tunes. Banished is a great choice, i fled the sim cities and went to Cities xl (yeah, i know, lag, but: mods!), since i changed my computer I havnt played any city sims, still looking. Thankss for the review!
That first part about SimCity was enlightening. I've generally thought of this "but it's not a *game*" bullshit to be a recent thing, but apparently it's been a topic since the early days. As for Banished - I love this game. I see a lot of complaints about its "barebones-ness", but that's precisely what I love about it. It's the most interesting part (to me) of city-builder games - the first part where you're just getting things set up - distilled down into a very pure form. It doesn't need an "end-game", or any purpose beyond "you keep running your town until you screw something up too badly". I think adding tech trees or combat elements would actively detract from the experience.
Banished absolutely needs its modding community to be complete. Colonial Charter and Megamod. The base game definitely falls into that "simple to learn, difficult to master" category, and also definitely falls short on the content. But, much like Stellaris and others, it is absolutely *made* by the modding community. If you've gotten bored with Banished, try picking up the Banished Megamod with Colonial Charter, and try making a trading town, without farms and stuff. There's enough stuff in MM and CC that they almost require their own tutorials.
I think one of the biggest parts of these sorts of sim games are, in fact, the failure state. To play it the first time, think you're doing okay, then everyone dies from an issue you didn't even see coming. Then the second time, you do better until another issue pops up that ends it all over again. To replay it, over and over, and learn how to best manage all of your resources all at once to keep your civilization moving along is what the game is all about, and losing a bunch of times before you get "good" at it is a key component of that. Again, another review for a game where I wouldn't necessarily be interested in playing it myself, but to hear George discuss it is just as entertaining as always. Thanks!
Speaking of City Builders, have you played the Sierra City Builders from the late 90's like Caesar, Zeus and Pharaoh? They had pretty much the same concept but took place in ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt. I loved these games.
Funny and fair review of the banished vanilla! Outstanding work my good Sir! The Mods really took the game to a new level. With regard to massive death, you can use the stable population mod to make more realistic, because you know in real life peole who are born the same year do not die at the same time.
I've noticed that the theme of 'really hard trial and error game play, but after a few times you get it right and you're the bored king of your realm' has been pretty common in gaming in recent years. Off the top of my head, I remember getting a similar feeling about Minecraft and FTL. That's not to say it's possible to make every game interesting after you've learned it, but it's just strange to get this weird niche kind of difficulty curve where it's a steep climb, but once you're at the top, you wish you could forget what you've learned and start anew. I think there just needs to be a certain level of complexity at the top to keep things interesting. Dwarf Fortress is probably the most extreme example of an entrance curve, but once you're climbing it, there's layers and layers of new ways to play as you climb. There are plateaus, but the give way to even higher goals eventually.
exactly how i feel about Banished. it's simple, perhaps a little too simple technically, but i'm okay with that. what is there is well polished (other then AI priorities that were iffy for a while, but since have been improved), and the breath of fresh air for polishing what you have instead of pumping as many broken features as possible, is nice. i rarely play Banished nowadays, but it was still worth the $20 just the same.
I really feel like i'm missing something with this game. I heard it was really hard, mostly because of winter, but a hunter and a few fishermen are all you need to survive the first few years, leaving plenty of people left to build and gather and plenty of time to set up agriculture before your population is large enough to need that much food. The only hard part for me is trying not to fall asleep while playing it.
I got "game design: theory and practice" from library yesterday and today youtube recommends me a video that starts with a quote from the same book. Coincidences :D
The thing I remember most about my last time playing Banished was having a hard time "storing" all of the deceased, lmao. First game I bought on Steam btw. And I feel the same way about my purchase as you.
I wish there were more disasters and other stuff which could go wrong. I am at a state where I can reliably make a town and make it self sustainable with 60 citizens without problems. Sure, fires or tornados will force me to rebuild but making a nice clear age range means you can leave your town be without stagnating to death. Things like overfishing, overhunting, rotating crops, being able to see just what made a specific citizen sad/sick, inflation on overly sold wares and so forth would be pretty small and simple to make, yet make it a much more during game in and of itself - and without making it harder to learn initially.
Hey! Big fan of your stuff. Just a quick thing that I noticed: I don't think you credited the Futurama creators for the clip you used at the end, though it may have been short enough that you didn't need to. I just wanted to make sure you realized in case it was an issue before you got too many views on this one, so if you need to fix it you can do so before losing too much revenue.
Seeing this game reminded me of Caesar III. Not a day goes by that I don't crave Caesar III. Perhaps you could review it one day and tell me if I'm not smitten because of nostalgia goggles.
I wouldn't mind a city builder within a zombie apocalypse. You make a settlement among the living dead. It's basically Banished with threats of the undead. It would have a mixture of City Builder, Real TIme Strategy and Tower Defense gameplay.
I don't know mate. I was able to built 700 citizens town which spanned all over the map. At that point my CPU started tanking and the game was having FPS issues.
The citizens not having babies was quite unrealistic. It's not like living with your parents stop thousands of people from having babies all the time. Imagine if there were no condoms or birth control. They should have been popping out babies and ending up with tons of homeless instead.
I bought Banished and got bored of it in two days. The problem is that once you get past the initial difficulties. There is not much left to challenge you. So take that into consideration if you want to buy the game. Amazing though that it was made by one person.
I rather enjoyed Banished, but, like every city building game nowadays, after playing for a little while I just started thinking "I could just play dorf fort instead". And after about six hours of Banished, I did.
i played it for a bit but there needs to be a slower year cycle, a much more expensive and upgradeable building set. needs a bit more dwarf fortress in it.
Nice video. I really think Banished is really worth the 20$. Altho it may lack some content, it still has easily enough content to keep you playing for several hours. That is if your in to these kinds of games.
Huh. Reminds me of Starcraft, this review. You learn your build orders, try to get it all going soon enough to then try and withstand an aggressive attack of... Winter. Your enemy isn't another player, but just winter, it seems. So it's more RTS than you might think...?
Banished tips: Always start out on hard, no exceptions. Build a forester and a gatherer together at the start, just outside of where you want your town to be. Gatheres provides shit tons of food with absolutely no effort on your part. Add a hunter (mostly for the leather) once you have housing, food and firewood under control. Also: A couple of forresters and plenty of woodcutters, is a great way of getting both firewood to your citizens and also firewood you can trade (scale up as your town grows). Never expand too quickly with houses. My first city is currently hovering around 1000 people.
Banished is too barebones. You just build stuff and then wait for it decay slowly because of how uninterested you are in doing the same things over and over again. If you play something like Dwarf Fortress your towns will go out with a bang. That's far more interesting. When every single one of your towns will just have to deal with famine and winter it can't hold interest for long. Mods when?
I was intertained for like 2-3 days. It's too fast to build everything that game can offer. It feels very small as an expirience and maybe it's fine. There's some stuff I didn't see, for example I didn't notice any negative effects of inviting a nomad into your village. So I don't get why you have an option to refuse them
I loved this game till I knew how to play it and it ran out of challenge and content. I needed something for the end game. Even an insane out there goal or something. It was a game I wanted to play more of but didn't have anything else to give me.
Great review,Thanks. For those interested Mods are now available and this one adds a BUTT LOAD of content Colonial Charter Turbo - by [BlackLiquid] banishedinfo.com/mods/view/679-Colonial-Charter-Turbo-BlackLiquid
this game is fun when you get a hold of it, its hard and not forgiven at all but when you figuer it out its vary eazy to play and it no more fun, need more ingame stuff to last but i must say its way better then sim city.
