Frostpunk
Dear God, yes I recommend. I’m fucking obsessed with this game. It dominates my every goddamn thought nowadays. I don’t think I’ve ever been so obsessed with a game before in my life. If you’re reading this, buy the game. Buy the DLC’s. And somehow contain your excitement for Frostpunk 2.
– Real player with 329.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Resource Management Games.
The Good:
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Special and creative gameplay will make just enough to enjoy the game in Easy and Normal mode but also very very difficult and hardcore in Hard, Extreme, Survival mode.
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Detailed images, map design make you really feel the “frost” of the game
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Each map has its own story and gameplay.
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Nice background music.
The Bad:
- The gameplay is hard to get used to for newbies (I gave up 3 times because I couldn’t understand the game, but it wasn’t until the 4th time that I felt the fun of it because I believe 11 bit studios can always make a good one).
– Real player with 152.1 hrs in game
Dice Legacy
I picked this up on a whim, purely because I am a sucker for these hybrid dice games. While I do recommend this game, it still is a very flawed game and your appreciation of it will surely come down to your flexibility to cope with said flaws. A lot of games exist that are imperfect and this is one of them.
What is fun?
The core system of building up a unique dice pool, in real-time, with stamina and special powers is pretty fun. It feels at odds with itself at first but it definitely caters to it’s real-time gameplay mechanics unapologetically which I think is a good thing. You can tell from others' reviews that others do not like the RTS elements and wanted something slower, methodical, and more tactical). That isn’t this game which I think is going to just be a matter of taste.
– Real player with 61.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Roguelike Games.
I’m more of a turn-based and tabletop gamer myself. This game seems to draw heavily on the mechanics of some very good tabletop dice games like Roll for the Galaxy and Dice Forge, but with real-time pacing. If you’re like me, the RTS pacing of Dice Legacy might be a bit much for you. In that case, I have some advice for a more laid-back gaming experience:
1. Start a new game on pacifist difficulty. It effectively disables the biggest source of real-time pressure, the hostile raiders, and lets you think through your moves at your leisure. The game far, far less stressful as a result, largely becoming self-paced. The economy of the game is still involved enough to get many hours of fun even with the raider threat removed. And you can always bump up the difficulty later if you find yourself mastering the rest of the game, and want more of a real-time challenge.
– Real player with 25.6 hrs in game
Timber and Stone
Timber and Stone, in short, is a great but slow game.
Guide your settlers in the steps it takes to build your castle/town/underground refuge/etc.
The game is a balancing act between harvesting resources, training soldiers, and building your defenses. Fail at any of these and watch in horror as something simple like a wolf pack kills off all your settlers, or something as extreme as a horde of skeletons following an evil magician burns your world to the ground.
Its a slow process of mining rock, shaping it and building it into your massive castle, training settlers to be knights outfited with the best armor and weapons, setting up an economy to trade for resources you dont have, and finally reaching a level of safety and refuge for your lazy/weak/overeating, worthless settlers. Its your choice whether to feed them to wolves, or let them stay in the hopes that maybe they will contribute at some point.
– Real player with 55.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Early Access Games.
This game is amazing.. Don’t let the graphics turn you off. Be prepared though; this game does have a bit of a steep learning curve, but is worth it! The best way to describe this game is putting Minecraft, Banished, and some other games together (build farms, build buildings, make tools/weapons, defend your settlement, build armor/weapons, get resources, etc.) You also trade with a trader than comes in; to do so you need to build roads to the edge of the map (build in all directions from your townhall); these roads also allow immigrants to join your settlement every so often. It’s pretty cool that you can build buldings pretty much anyway you want provided you have the materials.
– Real player with 40.5 hrs in game
AstronTycoon2: Ritual
I am playing the game for a while now and really enjoy it. At the first glance there were a lot of things going on so it took a while to understand villagers behaviour.
Game is very well balanced and have good pace. At the begining possibility to play on slow speed allowed me to absorb and admire nice nature and sun rises :)
Later on when making new buildings, harvesting or cutting wood I preferred max speed. At the later stage of the game, I just slightly changing villagers behaviour through economy interface and focusing mainly to build my own Stonehenge.
– Real player with 80.4 hrs in game
I love this game. I found it pretty intuitive, got stuck a few times but I figured it out. The motto of this game is KISS, Keep it simple, stupid. It has a basic recipe that once learnt permeates the game and allows you to progress at a good rate. I didn’t get all the achievements on my first play through and I learnt so much about where I should place things that I absolutely have to try again and I want to start from the beginning because, it’s just that much fun to play!
I can understand why some gamers may be frustrated with the game however I believe that has more to do with the current culture of gaming more so than the game. What I mean is, people are used to games that are tedious and arduous in nature. This game is casual, it has simple mechanics that are straight forward. If you can’t maintain enough herbs, consider that every time they are watered, they grow. If you plant 100 plants then your workers have to water them to full and then chop them, it is inefficient. This is the first lesson of the game. If you cannot figure out that the management style is about efficiency, then you will not enjoy this game.
– Real player with 61.8 hrs in game
Ancient Cities
So, I think I have enough time to comment on this now. As a disclaimer, I never backed the game but saw it a year ago, read all the stories about the time it’s taking, that the game was empty, the devs not being capable of this challenge and even that it was a scam. I put it off for these reasons, wanting to be sure I wasn’t wasting what is a lot of money for EA, but I do not think this is a scam any more, no. I think the devs have wasted time building a custom game engine and may have overfaced themselves, yes, but the level of detail and the continued work on the game to me shows this is a passion project that they will continue, if slowly.
– Real player with 171.0 hrs in game
The game looks amazing, much better than Dawn of Man (even with my Realistic Stone Age mod ). I will update with a proper review after I will play some more, but so far I can say this (compared to DOM):
- You can choose to start playing from 10,000 BC up to 3500 BC, and the end of the last glacial age is depicted on the overview map, as it shows how snow evolves from one date to another, even from summer to winter (I do not know if anything else changes). In DOM you can only play in 10,000 BC.
– Real player with 46.7 hrs in game
Endzone - A World Apart
Good concept, well developed scenario, extensive tutorials possibly the best I’ve seen in games I’ve played, nice graphics, random system generated maps for new environment every time, simple game mechanics with standardized keys, many options for difficulty levels including custom settings, fun achievements, good balance of resources, mix of post apocalypse survival with city building, some fighting of raiders but can be turned off in settings if you only want to do survival or city building, many different side missions with interesting bylines, prosperity DLC is nice but I still think we should not have to pay for it as it doesn’t change the game enough, played 280 hours but still have some things to try and haven’t completed all the achievements yet. Overall very good game.
– Real player with 333.7 hrs in game
Endzone is a city builder in an apocolyptic world. It is a tougher challenge than other games in the same genre. Mistakes can lead to punishing death spirals in communities. But it is rewarding when all goes well overall.
The colour palette of the game is dreary and this can make finding particular buildings difficult to do, especially in the late game when buildings are crowded together. There is no search function for building types which is definitely a drawback.
The latest expansion, “Prosperity”, does not offer much – a few new buildings and missions – you miss little by sticking with the base game.
– Real player with 251.2 hrs in game
Dawn of Man
I love a lot of this game. But what genius makes a game of superhuman raiders that march through winter and blizzards but your dudes decide its just cool to sit in the hut while the town in destroyed. Go ahead and slice my head off while is sit here with yellow thermal condition. Spend hours building and surviving only to have a uncontrolled illogical game issue ruin it. Congrats in your inability to handle this issue in beta.
– Real player with 555.2 hrs in game
Dawn of Man is an excellent educational game. It’s a quick way to teach children how difficult it is to build up a town, society, and people. Farming, Hunting, Building - all skills that all humans should know the basics of how to do it - For REAL - and do with their own two hands. This game gives students a way to experience decades of development in only a few hours.
– Real player with 539.6 hrs in game
Dream Engines: Nomad Cities - A survival city builder with flying cities
–-{Graphics}—
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe
—{Gameplay}—
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It‘s just gameplay
☑ Mehh
☐ Starring at walls is better
☐ Just don‘t
—{Audio}—
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape
—{Audience}—
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☐ Adults
☑ Human
—{PC Requirements}—
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boiiiiii
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
—{Difficulity}—
– Real player with 40.2 hrs in game
This game feels like it’s trying to combine multiple popular survival RTS games and it’s failing miserably as a result. In the end, we get a mess of a game.
So you start off on a world, there are native swarm type aliens on it. Killing them off is easy. In fact, I’d call them an poorly utilized obstacle. I much prefer the way They Are Billions handled this. But back on topic, you have to kill the native swarms to get access to resource nodes. They honestly feel like a placeholder enemy, and I’d be much more interested if these were a more significant enemy.
– Real player with 26.7 hrs in game
Frostpunk 2
Frostpunk 2 is the sequel to the highly acclaimed, BAFTA-nominated society survival game that blended city building, strategy and management gameplay, creating a brand new genre. Its successor takes place 30 years after the apocalyptic blizzard storm, and Earth is still overwhelmed by the icy climate of neverending frost and harsh weather.
You play as the leader of a resource-hungry metropolis where the expansion and search for new sources of power is an unavoidable reality. After the age of coal, conquering Frostland for the oil extraction industry is expected to be the new salvation of what’s left of humanity. However, change does not come easily, and not everyone in this new multi-layered society will welcome this new direction.
Demands and expectations of various factions will raise tensions and evoke conflicts, but will a cold-blooded rule and a Machiavellian approach to politics be necessary? As the everlasting cold continues its grip on the city and outside threats arise, you’ll need to make sure your people are united, driven, and ready for difficult, unavoidable sacrifices!
Jakub Stokalski, Frostpunk 2 Co-Director, had this to say about the grand vision of the game:
“What we aim to deliver to players is an experience that goes vastly beyond that of the original Frostpunk. With a still-growing team of nearly 70 people, we have more manpower available to focus on all aspects of the game from the scale, the production value, and the quality of UX, but our ambition is to do more than a straight-up sequel. What players should expect is a wide universe of choices, the freedom to shape the society and the city however they see fit - and reap the consequences. Frostpunk 2 builds on the conflicts of its predecessor - survival vs human values, life vs the arctic frost. But most importantly, it adds a new layer that is present in many aspects of the game - be it politics, society or technological progress - the conflict between humans and their nature".
IXION
IXION combines city building, survival elements and exploration, into a thrilling space opera as you explore the stars. Propelled onwards into a perilous journey, you are the Administrator of the Tiqqun space station, charged with the task to find a new home for humanity after the Earth can no longer provide.
Keeping the station sound and flying will require a deft hand and strategic thinking, as you are constantly pulled between maintaining the hull integrity, bringing in new resources and managing power consumption.
What choices will you make when confronted with impending disaster? What will you discover out there in the dark?
IN DOLOS WE TRUST
A population to manage, not all willing crew, not all from the initial launch, some fresh out of cryo… Maintain trust in the corporation that started this venture or face failure and mutiny. Six sectors can be unlocked within the station, each able to house more population, support new jobs, provide opportunities to monitor the crew with the Data Listening Service. Will you bring hope to the people?
CHOICES IN THE DARK
Who said you were the only ones to escape the fate of the Earth? Brush up against other pockets of survivors, navigate on from the failures and wrecks of others… IXION will lead the player through gripping chapters of story, where new threats and opportunities are presented, all in aid of reaching the final destination, a new home.
FRONTIER ACADEMIA
DOLOS are famed for their innovative technology, their scientists, but the Tiqqun now finds itself cut off. Find what resources you can, research what you do not have. Find new ways to provide for your settlement, construct new buildings to create what’s needed. Modify the Tiqqun station, improve it, forge ahead in this odyssey.
OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS
Space is a dangerous place. Hull breaches, overloaded power supplies, electrical fires… It is up to you to manage these risks, deal with emergencies, create backup power solutions, and enable Extra Vehicular Activity…
STELLAR EXPLORATION
There are whole new stellar maps to explore. Send out probes to reveal what’s hidden, create mining and cargo ships to find resources and trade, commission science expeditions to discover the secrets and threats you’ll find out there in space. Encounter other survivors and bring them into the fold of your mission, objective - survive.