Looking at: Banished

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Wagon Train

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You'll need to keep an eye on citizen's health and happiness.

Banished is a the first ever survival-horror-city-sim game ever, at least as far as I can tell. All of those genres already exist, and they all have standout titles, but Banished is the first game I can honestly say combines all those elements together at the same time. The question is, does it do it well, and is it worth playing?

The first answer is, yes it's an incredibly well designed game. Coming to us from one man developer Lucas Hodorowicz's Shining Rock Software, Banished is a testament to what can be accomplished when you really put effort into a project. The game was in development for three years before release earlier this year, and the effort shows greatly. The last few years have given us a lot of great one man games like Braid, Cave Story, and (despite Phil Fish being Phil Fish) Fez, and Banished is just another great example.

Died of Dysentery

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Creating a well functioning city is difficult, but rewarding.

The easiest way to describe Banished is a combination of Dwarf Fortress and Anno 1404. The problem with that explanation is that both of those are incredibly niche titles, especially the later title that was actually re-named in the west. At a glance, it's Sim City, circa 1400's. You construct a city, taking care to provide needs to it's citizens both basic and luxury, and try and see how far you can get before your hard work inevitably implodes on you. It's a complex game that embodies everything PCgaming stands for. 

Like so many managerial games, Banished is a mess of menus. Thankfully, this shows off one of its strengths: the UI. Designing a good UI can be difficult, especially for a game like Banished where so much of the game takes place in various menus, and it's great to see how much effort has gone into making everything accessible. The various buildings are all categorized according to their functions, with a separate menu button for all your various managerial tools. You can assign people to do jobs from one overview menu, or select specific buildings and add workers there. Constructing a town hall will grant access to various charts, and there are simple to use tools for checking happiness and health of your citizens. 

Hard Core Agriculture

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Winter slows production to a crawl, and often brings with it death.

Where Banished differs from its contemporaries is its adherence to a hardcore nature. You will fail in Banished, quite often really. It's taken me somewhere close to ten tries to get a town to function successfully, and even then it's problematic. It all comes down to properly balancing everything. You'll need to provide food and warmth for everyone, but to do that you need to build houses and workshops, and to do that you'll need resources, and to get that you'll need properly maintained tools, and to do that you need people to work, and to get that you need to provide food and warmth for everyone. You'll constantly have several dozen plates spinning at a time here, and balancing them gets trickier the longer you survive. 

That's really the gimmick of Banished, just survive. The title of the game is derived from the proposed back story where your settlers are banished from their former home. You're abandoned in a forest with little resources and a steadily approaching winter, and all you need to do is survive. In a lot of ways its reminiscent of old frontier stories of the first settlers to America, sans the native slaughter, and its refusal to be anything but obtuse does a good job of reinforcing this motif. Doing repetitively simple things feels like an accomplishment, and surviving a winter or constructing a huge project gives you a feeling akin to Dark Souls. 

The Fire Consumes us All

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Fires can wipe out whole cities in seconds, and there's very little you can do to stop them.

Unfortunately Banished is problematic. There's a huge barrier to entry, despite the games modest price tag, and it's very hard to recommend it to people. I've always hated the way so-called "casual" gamers are portrayed by the gaming community, since I believe that games are for fun or interesting experiences, and nothing else; but I really can't recommend Banished to anyone who plays games casually. The managerial sim genre of games is already fairly niche, with only a few standout titles like Crusader Kings 2, Roller Coaster Tycoon, or the previously mentioned Anno series, so trying to talk about a game even more hard core then the norm becomes more difficult. Furthermore there's issues with the game itself, likely due to it's development. Like I said, it's a very well designed game, but graphically it's indie nature betrays it. There's a nice level of detail in things like trees changing colour with the seasons, or snow on the ground in winter. Like so many games before it, zooming in and trying to observe the little things is disappointing. There's very little detail put into the characters, and building are largely static. The different professions don't change what people look like, and there are only a small handful of animations for various actions. Landscapes can be difficult to read, and it can be hard to tell what's a buildable surface and what isn't.

Banished's biggest issue is it's balancing. It can be brutally difficult at times, and pleasently simple at others. Its a constant roller coaster, and you can't always control the speed. Citizens have a mind of their own, and construction projects will go unfinished for months without any explanation. Despite having a small army of people working to provide resources, you'll constantly receive messages telling you the stocks of food or firewood are low. You need to know exactly what to do from the first seconds of the game, and one small mistake, like queuing up a house rather then a fishery can cause everything to fall apart. Disasters like fire or disease can occur randomly, and there's very little in the way of proper prevention you can prepare. 

Banished is a good game, but only if you like games exactly like Banished. Considering how barren the world of managerial sims is, it is nice to get one that tries to add new ideas, and once you get on its wavelength there really is a great game here. Is it well made? Yes. Is it fun to play? Not always.