Hell yeah. Watch snow coming early in Autumn and destroy your crops before they're harvested, then see your population halved from starvation.

It's not like Cities XL, but you still can't make self-sufficient blocks and repeat them over and over again. 

Thanks. this looks like a great game!

How are the bugs? Have you found any that you thought should be a high priority for the dev to fix? (all new games have them, so I'm not trying to point fingers)

Like Werewindlefr said, the RPS review is way off.  Yes, the game can be punishing, but once you get your groove going, its really fun.  If I had to guess, the RPS guy had small farms, assuming he had farms at all, or his buildings were spaced out too much, or he had too much stuff in the queue causing issues.

The other big thing the RPS guy mentioned was that there is no alert when someone dies of old age.  Actually, there is, but it is not enabled by default (which is annoying).  Under the Event Log, in the top right corner, there are a number of buttons, the 1st one toggles death by old age alerts.

My current city is 135 people, and I've built almost every building (still missing the Chapel).  I've not run into any bugs, and the only really annoying thing that has happened is that I had a Teacher die without having any Laborers to take over (Laborers will automatically fill a position if someone dies).  That immediately kicked out all students and made them Laborers.  When I assigned a Teacher, none of the Students returned, which means I have a big spike in Laborers, but it'll be a few years before I get any more, as I now have to wait for Students to go through school.  This has the potential of being bad.

Other than that, I've been having a lot of fun with the game.  It can be very relaxing, and it can get a bit hectic at times as well.  I wouldn't really call it a Sim City style game though.  It's more of a resource management/survival game, where your people are your most valuable resource.

Those of you who have played banished a bit, would you consider banished a 'beer and pretzels' game ported to a PC?  Serious question...

One small thing about difficulty: while the "starting resources" settings are labeled "easy/medium/hard", don't let that fool you: this isn't the true difficulty settings. Difficulty comes from the weather settings and map type. "Harsh/Mountain" is extremely challenging. Even "Fair/Valley" is difficult, although more manageable after a dozen hour or two; even in that mode, some mistakes will cost you your town.

Small suggestion: when you start expanding beyond your "downtown" and creating fields which are somewhat remote, build another marketplace with another pack of house/services where you're expanding. That way, your workers won't have to walk for ages to go to work, but will still have access to food from the marketplace. If you don't build those secondary marketplaces, the center one will empty the peripheral barns and people leaving on the periphery will have to go downtown, wasting enormous amounts of time and sometimes dying on the way. This results in much lower food output (when farmers spend too much time on the road, they don't harvest on time and the snow kills the crops) and ultimately will kill almost everyone in town after a failure cascade.

Banished, the first "die and retry" city builder.

Dwarf Fortress?

I'm still debating about whether or not to get this game. The issue is that I've grown accustomed to buying games on sale, so I rarely pay more than $5 for a game these days. I also have more games than I've played thus far so I'm in no rush to pick up another game. Still, it sounds interesting so I might do some looking into it.

I had a lot of questions about that game from people first trying it. Maybe because they were hoping for "do what you want" sandbox and weren't able to find droids they were looking for.

That's the droids I've been looking for!

Gnomoria, Towns...

Anno was exactly what I thought when I saw this.

Which one?

That is more like "die abnormally and horribly, in many various and creative ways, and then retry".

I've played the game for about 4 hours.

I think my main issue is that there is very little simulation going on.

A simulation, to me, is more than a set of tasks that needs to be performed in a certain priority. It's more than having 30 bots running between X and Y task. The people don't feel alive - they get born, educated, work, and die. They might gather up some food meanwhile, maybe put on some clothing every second year, and they might idle at a graveyard or a tavern. But there's no life to them whatsoever, running in the same straight paths that the guy before them ran 10 years ago. They don't stop to talk, they don't laugh, they don't have any feelings other than "happiness" which is always topped out. And perhaps most egregiously, they don't seem to learn anything about their tasks. Someone dies after 70 years of working as a teacher? Replaced instantly by a toddler from the workforce. -1 Laborer, +1 Teacher. End of event.

And it's not an economic simulation either. While the essence is there, the mechanics are lacking. Unlike games like Settlers and Anno, there's almost no escalation of worth with your resources. A garden of plums is as useful as a gathering station in the forest. Would you like to eat some mutton or fish for dinner? It doesn't matter. You can trade for new types of farm animals and seeds, but again, there's no point to it other than burning through your precious resources. The only two improved paths that I see are iron, replaced by iron+coal, and leather or wool, replaced by leather+wool. And as far as building goes... nothing is unbuildable, every building requires the same resources and is available from the start (although you probably don't want to build some stuff right away).

There's no overworld interaction (besides trade). What you have is all that you have, and all that will ever be. No vicious wolf attacks (didn't I see that in a video?), no diplomats, no immigrants, no emigrants, no messengers from home requesting or giving aid.

What it is, I think, is a simulation of margins. There are slight efficiency bonuses to how you plan your city, and those eventually determine how quickly your city grows. But even then, it isn't difficult at all. I don't understand how you can even lose at this game unless you put everyone in the mines and let them starve. Even at Harsh weather, with disasters, on Hard, you should have no troubles in your first game. Three houses, one gatherer, one herbalist, you "beat" the game.

Ultimately what it comes down to is that the gameplay focuses you towards building an increasingly large village. But where's the fun in that? If the game was significantly more difficult I think it might be interesting. If it introduced new mechanics as your city grew (politics, diplomacy, crime), that would work too. The only difference between hour one and hour five is that now I have 50 bots instead of 16.

I'm finding a lack of drive to the game. Once you've established a stable economy of trade...you've won the game. Just take care not to overextend.

Is there something I am missing? Where is the endgame?

Why can't I build walls.....fight bands of raiders....have lions, tigers, and bears roaming and causing trouble...build up a local militia...have more than one type of bridge to build...quarry out a hillside....etc, etc, etc.

Don't get me wrong....I think this game has a great deal of potential...but there's got to be a reason for doing all that you're doing....why are you banished???

I've played the game a bit over the past few days. It is certainly quite a feat for 1 person to make (it says 1 person made it on the game website), but a bit of that does show. There are a few bugs and other problems that haven't been stomped out yet, like laborers traveling to the other side of the map to do a job and possibly starving and freezing in the process (because they are too far away from home when those become a problem), or problems with removing roads that haven't been built yet. I'm sure that these problems can be fixed with some work.

The game does seem beat when you have solved food problems and have a basic industry going. While iron and stone are theoretically finite (on the map at least), you can always trade for it. Basically, your best strategy is to develop things to the point where things are self sustaining, and try to do so before you make things difficult for yourself. Once you have the means to trade for things, you can always sell off your surplus for things that are finite for you. Basically: Self Sustaining + Surplus + Trade = Success.

Edit: I'm sure that the game will be improved in time, it just needs a bit of work until then. I don't mean to sound too harsh.

I have played this game a huge lots, and large populations are very hard to manage and a self-destruction spiral is easy to trigger.

But if you want to get the 900 citizens achievements, things are much tougher.