Flotsam
This is a delightful game. The main challenges are to have enough food and water; currently there’s no other goal except what the player decides to accomplish. There are small hidden treasures (zoom in the first time you build a house for a drifter!) as well as small frustrations (priorities are still a bit buggy, due to early access and updates changing occasionally). I generally stay on the slowest pace to play, enjoying the atmosphere, the music, and watching my little drifters scurry and swim around.
– Real player with 60.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Colony Sim Casual Games.
Still very promising, but definitely not ready for Early Access. Content is extremely limited and repetitive, and for those who play games like this on a regular basis, there’s about 1.5 hours of content. Hardest part was getting stable water supply, which I achieved on take 2, and then subsequently completed the game, which restarts you with your existing city at the start of the game.
In addition to this, I went through the game and focused on building a bigger city, rather than completing areas - bad move. The game has numerous bugs, including one that locks you into the map view and requires a forced restart. Other bugs included stuck boats, workstations that villagers refuse to use until you clear their queue and restart everything, production limits that are not really followed all that well, and etc. Several flaws in the UI made me want to claw my eyes out as well - like the blocky “Exit” button that you can see sticking out behind the “Delete” button on the “Continue” screen.
– Real player with 32.2 hrs in game
Ragnorium
This game is a gem in the making. Standard EA gripes apply. Unfinished content, which gets added regularly, lack of colonist micromanagement, bugs (although not gamebreaking and most of them get addressed pretty quickly). The developer is very hands on and takes care of your problems quite fast if you take the time to send your save files or crash logs. For me, it scratches a few itches. It’s a colony builder/manager, with leveling up your colonists which you get every few days with new launches from the mother ship, where you choose which colonist clone to create and send to the planet. You can equip them, take care of their needs to make them happy, which in turn earns you points in the CUDS panel - basically a place to order resources for “likes” and “happy pills” for “dislikes” your colonists accrue. The game advancement comes in cycles called research, which is currently waiting for your colonists to accrue research xp passively and getting “influence” by doing quests which reward those points. There are 2 game modes, one with 3 daily randomized events in intervals of 12h, 17h, 20h - they can add good or bad stuff to the game, depending on whether you want to spend the influence you obtain to choose a better event. Getting influence also speeds up the separate research you do when launching a new flight to get colonists/resources, which can include unlocking the radar, getting more advanced clones, getting access to special ship parts like water tanks to bring water or gear modules to bring clothes and so on. Currently the game ends it’s research driven play after 5 or so research cycles and you’re left in freeplay mode, but it’s a nice amount of play to get there and it’s well worth the price. If you want to influence how the game develops by adding suggestions which the dev always takes into consideration and often implements quickly, get it early.
– Real player with 114.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Colony Sim Atmospheric Games.
This Rare Gem, has so much too offer.
With many survival elements, building your primitive colony base, hunting creatures of the wild, Fighting other enemy tribes, setting up work stations for each type of main resources, like clothing, weapons, medical and cooking. Setting out your colonist on quest / objectives to gain research point to unlock new items/objects/technologies. The list goes on and on.
Theirs a big learning curve, which might require you to restart the game a few times, and with each restart you learn from your previous mistakes/failures. But its totally worth it, knowing your sequences of steps/actions/quest taken, insured your colonist stayed alive another day.
– Real player with 108.2 hrs in game
Dungeon Overseer
Promising early access, inspired by the Dungeon Overlord Browsergame.
Currently there are very few features and mechanics, but my hopes are high the devs have enough ideas and skill to improve the game. 6 Months until 1.0 release is VERY ambitious considering the current state of the game.
I just hope they will implement more mechanics to:
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AI
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Raiding (Overworld)
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Mining
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Minions (Skills)
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Multiplayer
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Stability of the game
– Real player with 18.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Colony Sim Base Building Games.
EA Sim dungeon builder + UI + promising = Inspired by Dungeon Keeper with unique features. Build with multilayer tiles, recruit, raid, defend, research and craft. If only I could smack the workers.
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– Real player with 1.7 hrs in game
Grim Nights 2
the game is good & i love it but its pretty buggy right now but alot of fixes have happen in 1 week with only 1 developer doing it so he deserves a lot of credit & support so join his discord by going to the discussion thing & most of you probably dont know where thats located so all i will say is look carefully & you might just see it by clicking on the game but not play it yet. the developer he needs to make changes like making the visitors spawn more often because im sick of being stuck with a low amount of villagers & i hope the max amount of villager is high enough to my likeing & that zombies & bandits go though some changes like spawning more often & being a bit harder after a while & there need to be more food in game & better stuff to refill energy faster & better & much more
– Real player with 72.8 hrs in game
Grim Nights 2 expands upon the original title with new occupations, resources, art and music. The focus has now shifted towards colony management. After picking your preferred location and biome (currently only 2 available) in a randomized world, you assemble four members to start your new settlement. Their perks and initial stats, which are determined by culture and background, will be instrumental in time and resource management - so pick wisely. You can later hone your settlers' skills, change their primary and secondary occupation and assign them items. They will require rest and food individually, so make sure you build them safe beds and grow and prepare enough grub.
– Real player with 46.8 hrs in game
Dead of Winter
Lead your villagers in a battle for survival against relentless hordes of undead as you gather, build and explore in a post-apocalyptic medieval fantasy world plunged into a seemingly endless winter
Gather what resources you can find before your supplies dwindle and your people starve
Build shelter against the elements and worker buildings to assign tasks to your villagers
Explore your surroundings to find the most defensible locations to build and gather resources in safety
Survive a lack of resources, the unending winter and the relentless hordes of undead
Exodus H
As it stands this is not a game, maybe you’d call it a foundational engine for one. The videos are misleading, all the demonstrated functionality seems to be missing or at the very least fundamentally broken. I reported a bug that was fixed and patched in a few hours though, so there is hope I might have cause to change my review later. I considered getting a refund really as it seems that no one is actively testing the game before releasing, but that last patch made me choose not to. I might regret that choice later if there is not enough patches and improvements in the next couple of weeks.
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
Songs of Syx
TL;DR: Paid full $25 USD. Definitely worth it, great balance between DF and Rimworld while doing it’s own new thing. Saves not migrating versions stinks, but understandable for a complex EA game.
Amazing. Still EA and some missing features, but what is here is very well built!
I was initially turned off this game because I played a much earlier demo, but this game has grown into something truly impressive! Games in this genre tend to fall under “Dwarf Fortress” or “Rimworld”, and often fail to measure up to either. Songs of Syx strikes right between DF’s sense of scale (but then skyrockets past it as your city-state grows), and Rimworld’s friendlier UX allowing you to actually enjoy playing (but UX scaled for a massive city-state, not a couple dozen colonists).
– Real player with 242.7 hrs in game
TLDR: 8/10 (Humble aesthetics, clunky UI, but does the game play have a real arse on it…)
Songs of Syx is an increasingly curious city-builder. Though it clearly has a bit of development to undergo (0.56 is the version I am reviewing), it is making leaps and bounds with each update. Sure, maybe it’s not a whole lot to look at and things are a bit muddy and cluttered, but that’s forgivable since its function is handled with such care.
Concept
This isn’t your typical hands-on city-builder or village survival game. While it shares a lot of ground with games like Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress, it’s functionally its own game thanks to your inability to manage individual citizens. Which is kind of a blessing, since you don’t want to be able to nit and pick when you’ve bloated to a city with 1,000+ people.
– Real player with 214.6 hrs in game
Stardeus
Stardeus is a sci-fi colony management simulator with aspects of automation, base building and space exploration.
Visit https://stardeusgame.com for more information about the features and current state of development.
The Wandering Village
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You can also join the game’s community on Discord:
In a world where mysterious plants are spreading all over the earth, emitting toxic spores as they grow, a small group of survivors seeks shelter on the back of a giant, wandering creature they call ‘Onbu’.
Become their leader, build their settlement and form a symbiotic relationship with the creature to survive together in this hostile, yet beautiful post-apocalyptic world that now surrounds you.
Build your village
A functioning village is the basis of your survival. Build your settlement and expand it over the creature’s back. Plan production chains and optimize them to utilize the limited space as efficiently as possible. Create a society that can overcome any challenge.
Live on the creatures back
Living on the back of another organism comes with its own set of challenges. Will you live in symbiosis, bond with the creature and survive on mutual trust? Or will you become a parasite, only aiming to ensure a better life for your villagers? The choice is yours.
Discover different biomes
Travel through a multitude of different biomes and adapt your village to their unique opportunities and threats. Scout your environments and send out foraging missions to gather rare resources and ancient artifacts.
Research new technologies
Remnants of the old world hold knowledge that has long been forgotten, but can be unearthed by your villagers. Find and research these technologies, but use them wisely, as progress can be a double-edged sword.
Survive the wastelands
Ensure the survival of both your villagers and your Onbu, even though poisonous spores, merciless weather, bloodsucking parasites and many more challenges mean that the odds are often stacked against you.
Timberborn
A really great game! I mainly play colony builders and this one hooked me immediately. You are essentially building a city of beavers with the goal of conquering the ebb/flow of wet seasons and drought. The water mechanics are really unique and there’s something tremendously satisfying about planning and building your dams and then seeing the consequences (crops live through the dry season! Oh shit I flooded everything!).
The current early access is extremely polished; I have played 70 hours and it hasn’t crashed a single time and I haven’t run into any frustrating bugs. It runs extremely well even when you push the engine. Because it’s early access the content still feels a little limited; you can reach a point where you can let the game run in the background for hours and know everything will be fine because you’ve solved the current ‘water + food for Population X to survive X days of drought’ problem. It would benefit from a broader tech tree and more map events (forest fire, disease, etc). The actual wet/dry seasons are far too predictable right now and it seems like the Early Access has everything in place to have actual weather and its consequences (ie. flooding that is due to weather and not my own terrible dam designs).
– Real player with 87.6 hrs in game
This is a really fun game. It does not yet have great depth (unlike the water reservoirs which you will greatly enjoy shaping), but I would say it’s worth every penny (bought it for some 25 Euros).
Playing with the water dynamics and building vertically is really neat. Yet - as in life, unfortunately - I feel I lack a bit of purpose. Hopefully this will be amended in future versions.
Improvement proposals:
- Please fix the leeve system. I don’t see the point of adding semi-realistic water dynamics if a 1m3 wood cubicle can withstand a 10m water column.
– Real player with 57.6 hrs in game