Clanfolk
Clanfolk is an elaborate life sim set in the highlands of medieval Scotland.
Live off the land using historically accurate tools and processes to survive while building a growing settlement for your Clan. Every tile on the map has a purpose. Where you place your settlement, and how you build it, really matters.
Clanfolk will execute your grand building plans while also intelligently fulfilling their own personal needs. Get to know your Clanfolk as they live their entire lives in your care.
The world is fully simulated, and the largest threat is nature itself. Initially, food will be plentiful and the nights warm. There is lots of time to plan and enjoy the medieval homestead atmosphere. As the seasons change, resources will dwindle and careful planning becomes critical. Surviving your first winter is highly unlikely.
Colony Sim
The Clanfolk’s homestead will begin as a wilderness surrounded by mountains, forests, grasslands, and lakes. Over time it may develop into an industrial farm, or a livestock ranch, or a bustling trading post, or a quiet forest Inn, or maybe a hidden mountain fortress.
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Build sealed structures out of Floor, Wall, and Roof tiles.
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Structures track lighting, warmth, beauty and various unhappy smells.
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Windows allow ambient lighting into rooms.
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Use wall torches and fires to heat, light, and occasionally burn down straw houses.
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Venting system to allow fire and body heat to travel from room to room.
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Door locking system to keep Clanfolk, visitors, and livestock where they belong.
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Storage container objects to keep the ground clutter under control.
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Crafting can be prioritized, scheduled daily, and also controlled by maintaining a desired supply.
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Till the land, plant seeds, water them, add fertilizer, harvest, re-till the soil, and start again. All automated to the level you desire
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Care for livestock from birth. Keep them warm, dry, fed, watered, and clean their stalls.
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Learn just how hard it was to make a linen shirt. Grow the flax, thresh out the seed, throw the stalks in a river, let them rot for months, strip the loosened fibers from the stalks, spin the fibers into thread, weave the threads into cloth on the loom, and THEN sew your linen shirt!
Life Sim
Clanfolk live their whole lives on the Clan homestead, from birth until death over multiple generations. Clanfolk follow daily schedules, waking up before sunrise, taking their morning meals, washing up, and maybe having a conversations before the day’s work starts. Throughout the day, they will work as hard as their mood and health will allow. In the evening, they finally all come back together to eat, drink, have a chat, maybe play the flute for a while, then off to bed, hopefully a little better off than the day before.
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Clanfolk needs include: Hunger, Thirst, Sleep, Warmth, Cleanliness, Bathroom, Social, Fun, Beauty, and the inexplicable need for Plaid
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When needs are not within safe ranges, then afflictions may result. These afflictions can range from having a bad mood, to a cold that slowly deteriorates into pneumonia.
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Clanfolk have many skills which are improved through use. Skills can be prioritized or disabled to give Clanfolk different job roles to best utilize their skills.
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Babies inherit some skill proficiency from their parents. They are mostly time vampires, but they are cute and keep everyone’s' mood up (during the day)
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Babies grow into Juveniles that begin to provide labor. Juveniles are idea sponges, working slowly but learning much faster than adults.
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When Juveniles become Adults, their learning slows, but Adults finally work at full speed. Ideally, their childhood will have been spent on jobs that they enjoy, making them experts by adulthood. Another benefit of adulthood is the ability to have children to grow the Clan.
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Eventually Adults become Seniors. Seniors work and move more slowly than Adults, but they have the highest skills and provide learning bonuses to others working near them.
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Finally the Seniors will be unable to work and will need to be cared for. Clanfolk are able to understand the needs of other Clanfolk and are able to take care of the sick and injured, fulfilling all their needs when possible. Once the Senior dies, they can be buried in the family plot, and the cycle continues.
World Sim
The seasons in Clanfolk never seem long enough. Winter is always approaching and your time needs to be spent wisely. Each Season has ranges of temperature, rain, snow, wind, and even windchill. Some seasons are for growing and others for harvesting. Winter is for staying inside a warm room and processing the materials collected throughout the year.
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All four seasons have smooth transitions between them, ever advancing and changing each day.
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Sparks start fires that spread throughout the environment based on moisture and object flammability.
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Plant growth system that is aware of ground moisture as well as fertility level, which can be changed with watering and fertilizer.
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Overlays to quickly show fertility, moisture, heat, and beauty.
Neighbor Clans
Visitors will occasionally arrive from neighboring Clans surrounding the homestead. Over time your reputation with these neighbors can grow based on how they are treated as guests, workers, or traders. As your reputation increases with these Clans, contact will strengthen, providing better opportunities.
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Each neighbor Clan comes from a different Biome with different products and desired items for trade. The savvy player can run a profitable trading post if there is enough trade traffic from different Clans.
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As seasons progress, different items become more scarce and therefore more expensive.
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Neighbor clans have intrinsic skill bonuses based on their Clan type as well as their Biome. When looking for the best workers (and potential partners) keep these in mind.
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Neighbors do not send their best and brightest visitors until relations between the player Clan and the neighbor are strong.
Read More: Best Colony Sim Base Building Games.
Knights and Merchants
Great Nostalgia, as I played the original game ~2000 when I was a kid. If you already played this game, you can’t do much wrong buying it again, it contains both campaigns (The Shattered Kingdom [TSK] & The Peasants Rebellion [TPR]) which should take ~50hrs of raw speedrunning if you still know the concept of the game.
There is a problem though: This is NOT the original game from 2000! It’s a remake with a hell of new bugs and changes (esp. if you played TSK and didn’t own the Gold Edition)
Some things I noticed:
– Real player with 148.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Colony Sim Classic Games.
If The Settlers and Dark Souls had a love child, it would be Knights and Merchants.
I never got to play this when it was originally released in 1998, and I regret it, but the mistake has now been rectified!
K&M is an old school RTS/city economy builder hybrid. The concept is simple, the graphics a little dated, but still good enough, the sounds are simple and your minions make cute little comments when ordered to do something. The UI is easy to understand and on the surface, it seems a simple game.
– Real player with 140.4 hrs in game
Kingdoms and Castles
–-{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 110.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Colony Sim Building Games.
Extremely fun. Easy to pick up and put down AND come back to.
– Real player with 71.9 hrs in game
The Settlers® : Heritage of Kings - History Edition
i have owned and played, at some point, all the settlers series over the years (settlers online included despite the very toxic community) and this one and the first are by far the two i have enjoyed playing most. unlike most games of this sort, this one is not overly complex and holds you to play at a nice easy rhythm.
for many this would be a great introduction into the genre.
i cannot say the same about the rest of the series as 7 is just a whole new direction compared to the rest of the series and i personally dislike it as it cannot be played leisurely, 6 was fine but i didn’t find is as enjoyable as this. the original will always remain my favourite as it was back in the days before internet and disk drives and amiga 500’s. missions that could take days even a week to finish just to get the password for the next quest. watching those little carriers between flags was mesmerising and damn frustrating :D
– Real player with 168.3 hrs in game
I thought a very long time, do i should recommend this game or not. Finally i decided to write review - a negative one.
On this review purpose, let’s strip the name of the game from “the settlers” because it’s a lie in this case and just leave “heritage of the kings”.
In short HOTK is decent RTS where our target is to build nice economy which will allow us to build an army, and conquer our opponents , but a lot of things in this game are just done bad, Ubisoft decided to not write an AI ( which is essential for games like this) so now we only can beat scenarios where AI is totally scripted, but if you want to test your skills in real battle, you won’t be able to(because multiplayer is of course dead).
– Real player with 97.1 hrs in game
Going Medieval
Oke . So I want to stipulate that I did play this game before roughly around 100 more hours before. At this moment I have 200-250h play
This game is something pretty amazing to me. Mostly because it is an amazing concept with making your own Settlement.
Theoretically, you can put settlers to make stuff automatically, assigning them jobs, they get skilled on this, or draft them to attack raiders. Build underground, build castles above ground
A mix of RTS-Survival-Sandbox. Really cool.
HOWEVER. The game is obviously in a very Early Access state. Let me explain why this rating is negative:
– Real player with 213.5 hrs in game
If Sims and Banished had a child, it would be Going Medieval. This game, so far, is well balanced, enjoyable and has enough sandbox elements with the right amount of warfare. I am very eager to see the progress in this game.
IDK if this was supposed to happen, but I was attacked by bandits who had two catapults and they were pretty OP, spurring me to build a massive 8 story wall, 4 layers deep around my small city. So far, they haven’t returned, and the small bands of mercs stand zero chance with all of my well trained archers.
– Real player with 151.8 hrs in game
Kingdoms Reborn
I played this way too much. It was really easy to get in to, but had a LOT of depth. There’s definitely room for massive improvements around trade & AI players, but that alone isn’t big enough of an issue for me to stop playing. I found enough to keep me happy and occupied.
– Real player with 246.5 hrs in game
Kingdoms Reborn is a new take on the generic medieval city builder with a card system where you buy cards to place buildings, and a progression system to boot. This game is still in beta but once it releases don’t be supprised to see that 59 H go up. Since this is beta though I still can’t give it a rating, check it out though, if you like the genre, you (probably) won’t be disapointed
– Real player with 59.7 hrs in game
Lords and Villeins
Little bit of background: I own about 50 management/colony sim/city builder games. I love the genre but a lot of the games are very similar so it can get boring. I bought this game impulsively not expecting a lot but once I started playing I fell in love with its unique mechanics and game play system.
Pros:
Unique art style
Hardworking, responsive, and dedicated devs
Positive Community
Frequent updates and bug fixes
Solid base game for EA
Ability to change speed of the game
Great tutorial that isn’t annoying or makes you feel dumb, allows you to naturally learn the game while giving hints
– Real player with 86.7 hrs in game
I’ll preface this by saying I’ve never bought an early access game before. I’ve read plenty of horror story reviews about people who have bought a game and the Devs just up and quit on it, or worse, Devs that continue to charge for a game they’ve knowingly abandoned. I’m very guarded about paying for something that isn’t finished, with a promise that it will be, someday. That said, this looked like the perfect game for me, and I can see this Dev team is actively reading reviews, they use critiques constructively, and they’re putting out regular updates, so I decided I’d take a chance on this one.
– Real player with 82.5 hrs in game
MicroTown
Very fun village builder, easy to learn, on my second run I got to the end goal (Monument). Not much random so not a lot of replay value at present. Highly recommended but don’t expect it to keep your interest past one solid day at the present state. I really look forward to new developments in this game! Some specifics:
1. Nice easy to learn mechanics
2. Tutorial needs to teach balancing, in particular (a) how do you tell when to add workers at a building, and (b) how do you know when to build more houses, and © show how to change the number of builders & carriers
– Real player with 56.1 hrs in game
Worth the $8, a good game to mindlessly play while listening to music or a podcast. I recommend turning on background play so i can click away and do other stuff while the little guys idle away. I’d like to see a better graphics option and more content as it is updated but you get exactly the kind of game you expect. It’s quaint and relaxing. I’m satisfied.
–-{Graphics}—
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☑ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe
—{Gameplay}—
☐ Very good
– Real player with 21.1 hrs in game
Our Dear Kingdom
Raise Our Dear Kingdom from a small village to a big kingdom!
Our Dear Kingdom is a game about gathering resources, manage the population and politics.
Design, build and grow your dream medieval city.
Save your population and manage the relationship with every faction.
Your decisions will shape the future of Our Dear Kingdom!
Some features:
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Sandbox mode
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Politics and relationship with each faction
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Procedurally generated maps
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Gather resources
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Manage the population
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Design and grow the city
Depraved
pros
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love the weather cycle
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great attention to small details
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better than average graphics
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great foundation to build on with improvements
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bandits/native american interaction is a nice aspect
cons
-terrible economic system at all levels (easy medium hard)
at hard you pretty much can only build one way or you will fail
at medium you can waiver a little but not much
at easy not much different from medium
if you want to build only a logging town and never advance your populations status then you have no worries
– Real player with 165.4 hrs in game
Bottom Line Up Front: This game will be amazing when it’s finished.
Pros:
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It’s a very cool concept of starting a town in the wild west.
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The Devs. have come up with a great backbone for the buildings and resources you will need to be successful.
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Replay-ability once complete will be a GINORMOUS 10/10.
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It’s not an easy game to master in the beginning. You really need to think a few steps ahead before building anything. This makes it so much more fun when you are successful in your choices.
– Real player with 43.1 hrs in game