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[Enduin]

I wish this was coming out Friday for the long weekend, but no it's out on Tuesday afterwards. I guess it'll give me time though to beat Bravely Default and some other stuff I have left on my plate so I can just dive right into this.

How do we know its great? No one actually played it yet.

There's a number of pre-release video playthroughs on Youtube that are very good. Quill18 has like 8+ hours worth of playtime on the game uploaded and it looks great. Bug free and the mechanics and systems seem to work very well.

 

[Neuromancer]

How do we know its great? No one actually played it yet.

Yeah the thread title is a bit ambitious. It certainly looks great and I'm optimistic but you never know how anything is going to turn out until you actually get your hands on it.

 

[Mengy]

How do we know its great? No one actually played it yet.

There are 89 people in game playing Banished on Steam right now.

There are a lot of pre-release copies out there, a lot of people's own gameplay opinions, screens, and videos of it being played, and I have yet to see one person come away with negative feelings on it. I think it's very safe to say that at least the game is good, but from the consensus so far it's bordering on fantastic / great. It's not going to be Simcity 6, so don't go in expecting that kind of game. But it's a neat mix of city builder / strategy sim survival management.

 

[Mr Swine]

So it it more like the Anno franchise?

 

[chubigans]

So it it more like the Anno franchise?

Yeah, I'm not sure I get the Simcity comparisons because there's no zoning and more resource management, like Tropico or Anno.

That said, day one for me!

 

[Volodja]

When I saw Dwarf Fortress mentioned I was hoping for something a bit different, but this seems to lack the personalities and abilities for the inhabitants and the crazyness from that game.

I'll still keep an eye out for it because a good city builder is something I'm not gonna say no to.

 

[Enduin]

Yeah, I'm not sure I get the Simcity comparisons because there's no zoning and more resource management, like Tropico or Anno.

That said, day one for me!

I'd say its a mix of a lot of franchises but it seems to deliver something new all the same. I like that it looks much more slow paced and deliberate compared to Anno or Settlers which has you going from small settlements to large cities very fast, and I never cared for Anno's system of perpetually working to fulfill citizens desire for goods and services. I like the focus on survival in Banished and creating the most efficient and prosperous settlement. Better goods and food serve a purpose and aren't just an arbitrary desire that your townspeople crave, they keep your people healthier and safer from the elements.

I think that's where the SimCity comparisons comes in that you are working towards efficiency and focusing on one settlement from the start. Anno and Settler's campaign modes have you hopping from one island or area to the next and even in free mode you are still constantly expanding out from one area to the next after you've exhausted resources or have outgrown that part of the map. It's all still very crafted and focused on what you can do. Where as Banished it's like, here's some people, here's some stuff, here's some land, good luck with that. From there you either sink or swim.

 

[Pyrrhus]

I remember reading about this while it was in development. I'd forgotten the name but was actually thinking about it the other day. So, uh, thanks for this thread.

 

[Mengy]

When I saw Dwarf Fortress mentioned I was hoping for something a bit different, but this seems to lack the personalities and abilities for the inhabitants and the crazyness from that game.

True, while Banished does do a great job simulating the people accurately and with lots of information, it does not give them the quirks or personality's that Dwarf Fortress does. Not many games do that as well as DF does.

Banished is more focused on the strategic layout of the town and managing it's resources / workers. While the building style might be more akin to Anno, it definitely gives that Simcity 4 feeling while playing it. In SC4 the player is balancing variable like traffic, commute times, the RCI graph, water, electricity, and money. Banished has a very similar feeling but with different variables like natural resources, building layout, food, health, and population.

It is not a game where you simply build as fast as possible to grow your community, it has to be done carefully and with forethought. For example, the pic in my OT that has the graph in it. That came from a Steam user, I think his name was Peetum? If you look at the graph you can see that his population grew very large very quickly but then suddenly fell to almost nothing. He said that he tried to grow as fast as he could, laying down houses and farms and such as much as possible, and he kept his food in supply but a few times came close to not having enough. Well all it took was one early winter and he lost half of his crops. Then, a fire broke out in one part of his town and he had neglected to put any wells anywhere at all in his village, so not only were many of his people suddenly homeless during the harsh winter but starving as well. It dominoed into most of his city either freezing or starving to death before the food supply recovered and reached a point of equilibrium.

The game isn't just about building a large city that looks good, it's about building a city that functions good too. And it doesn't shoehorn you into any one way of doing that, it gives you complete freedom to fail or succeed however you want to.

 

[Doug Heffernan]

Wow, this looks great.

 

[Dabanton]

This looks right up my SO's street she loves these type of games Anno, Tropico, Simcity, The Settlers etc. I think I'll DL it onto one of our laptops for her to play.

 

[PsychoSoldier]

I didn't even know this game existed but it looks good. Will buy and lose many hours to.

 

[Neuromancer]

I wish this was out now. It'd be a great snow day game.

 

[Mr_Moogle]

Yeah, I'm not sure I get the Simcity comparisons because there's no zoning and more resource management, like Tropico or Anno.

That said, day one for me!

Yeah I got a Tropico vibe as well.

....and this is a good thing because Tropico is awesome.

I reckon I'll buy this when it comes out. I love the concept of a building game where the goal is survival against nature. Certainly different from your typical city building game and it looks way more in-depth than Tropico.

 

[SparkTR]

Elder Geek posted a video review, it was extremely positive.

 

[Mengy]

Elder Geek posted a video review, it was extremely positive.

Thanks, I added it to the OP. Good review, seems to squarely agree with everyone else's opinion too.

 

[Cindres]

I was just reading the email he sent out yesterday and can't believe this is finally getting released tomorrow. This game definitely needs more exposure.

 

[Sir Blaming]

i feel the hype.

Spoiler

I need this REAL BAD

 

[JoV]

I was just reading the email he sent out yesterday and can't believe this is finally getting released tomorrow. This game definitely needs more exposure.

It's had as much exposure as any indie game I can remember. Just about every gaming related forum I visit has a thread devoted to it.

 

[Jintor]

Oh man can't wait for it to be out

 

[Sub Zero]

Pretty impressive that this was made by one guy and doesn't suck. Major props to him

Will get it as soon as it gets a discount

 

[oipic]

It's very rare that I pick up a game on day one these days, but this will be an exception.

Still blows my mind that one bloke spent three years creating this labour of love, practically solo - that in itself is a great story, and his development updates have been really honest and insightful. I hope it does really well for him.

Edit: oh, and I meant to say: nice thread, Mengy - thanks.

 

[addik]

Ugh. I have exams the entire day tomorrow and I won't be able to play this until tomorrow evening.

Good thing though that I don't have much to do this week after that, so I can play the night away after a stressful past few days preparing for my hell Tuesday.

 

[Mengy]

Edit: oh, and I meant to say: nice thread, Mengy - thanks.

No problem. I'm a little bit passionate about this game. I love a good city builder, and I've been craving a new one for some time now (ever since Simcity 2013 broke my heart).

The purchase button is supposed to go active tomorrow around 2 PM, eastern standard time. I'll be playing Banished all night starting the very instant I get home from work. Even Dark Souls and Minecraft will have to take a backseat for a bit. The only thing I don't know yet is what I'm going to call my first village...

 

[Ashitaka]

Can't wait for this. I'll probably download it on my crappy work laptop tomorrow just so I can try it out before I get home.

 

[Tommyhawk]

TB just uploaded a "WTF is... " for this game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAi5wWPDZjw

 

[sant]

I am very interested in this game

 

[smokeandmirrors]

Hopefully this game gets a lot of love. It looks great.

Also the dude wrote a complete engine for this too. That's what impresses me most honestly.

Looking forward to this even if I can't play till the weekend or so.

 

[SirMossyBloke]

Will this game run on a shit pc? I mean so shit it can'trun the Sims 3 at max kinda shit.

 

[smokeandmirrors]

Will this game run on a shit pc? I mean so shit it can'trun the Sims 3 at max kinda shit.

Minimum:
OS: Win XP SP3 / Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8
Processor: 2 GHz Intel Dual Core processor
Memory: 512 MB RAM
Graphics: 512 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible card (shader model 2)
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Hard Drive: 250 MB available space
Sound Card: Any

Recommended:
OS: Windows 7 / Windows 8
Processor: Intel Core i5 processor (or greater)
Memory: 512 MB RAM
Graphics: 512 MB DirectX 10 compatible card
DirectX: Version 11
Hard Drive: 250 MB available space
Sound Card: Any

Requirements don't seem all that high so I assume so? Double check in any case.

 

[ambientmystic]

Those are some lol-tastic (in a good way) low requirements.

Seems like any PC made in past 8-9 years should be able to run it. 512 MB RAM is barely enough to run Windows XP smoothly, and Shader Model 2 exclusive cards haven't been made since 2005 lol.

 

[Mengy]

Requirements don't seem all that high so I assume so? Double check in any case.

What I'll be really curious to see is how the game handles large towns with populations of several hundred people, like say 600+. There are achievements for some very large pop towns, but I do not know anyone with a pre-release copy who has gotten a settlement up anywhere near that high yet. That's a lot of AI to process, and I'm sure at some point the framerates would have to suffer, I just wonder where that wall is.

 

[smokeandmirrors]

What I'll be really curious to see is how the game handles large towns with populations of several hundred people, like say 600+. There are achievements for some very large pop towns, but I do not know anyone with a pre-release copy who has gotten a settlement up anywhere near that high yet. That's a lot of AI to process, and I'm sure at some point the framerates would have to suffer, I just wonder where that wall is.

Yeah that kinda has me worried slightly. Unless it's multithreaded processing hundreds of graph traversals for pathfinding is gonna get messy and cumbersome.

 

[a3den]

Yeah that kinda has me worried slightly. Unless it's multithreaded processing hundreds of graph traversals for pathfinding is gonna get messy and cumbersome.

Pathfinding is indeed threaded, but the dev said it didn't need generally need more than one thread. We'll see, but it looks well done.

I'm a bit surprised TB thinks the game is difficult. I still think once you have the critical pieces of knowledge and you think a bit ahead, it's an easy game. It just punishes your carelessness kind of hard.

You probably don't need to a follow a fixed build order unless you start with hard mode (you run out of resources at different rates so you have to set up your production in the same order if you want your first years to be smooth).

Also, he obviously didn't understand the game mechanics that well (several bad building placements, I don't blame him though). It'd be helpful if the tooltips told you what you need for a type a production to be efficient (gathering and herbs want dense and mature forests, fisherman's dock efficiency depends on the water coverage, etc...).

 

[Mengy]

Pathfinding is indeed threaded, but the dev said it didn't need generally need more than one thread. We'll see, but it looks well done.

I'm a bit surprised TB thinks the game is difficult. I still think once you have the critical pieces of knowledge and you think a bit ahead, it's an easy game. It just punishes your carelessness kind of hard.

You probably don't need to a follow a fixed build order unless you start with hard mode (you run out of resources at different rates so you have to set up your production in the same order if you want your first years to be smooth).

Also, he obviously didn't understand the game mechanics that well (several bad building placements, I don't blame him though). It'd be helpful if the tooltips told you what you need for a type a production to be efficient (gathering and herbs want dense and mature forests, fisherman's dock efficiency depends on the water coverage, etc...).

I've talked to several people who have played the game quite a bit, and they all agree that the game is easy to play but hard to master. A few mentioned that it's very difficult but even so it remains fun and addicting, even while your town is dying slowly. Maintaining a small village is relatively easy once you get it up and running, but the larger you go the more difficult it becomes (but the more impressive it becomes too). And there is no one way to properly play with regard to "how" to build your town. The reason why all buildings are unlocked straight from the start is because the game is flexible enough in that what you build isn't really critical, it's HOW you build that matters.

That's what I've been told anyway. Sounds fantastic to me. It's almost like the roguelike of city builders.

 

[SirMossyBloke]

Requirements don't seem all that high so I assume so? Double check in any case.

That gives me hope then. I have some old ass quad core processor (not of the I3 or I5 variety) and some terrible onboard nvidia card with 6gb of system memory.

Maybe, just maybe.

 

[J. Bravo]

I'm somewhat glad I'm broke as a joke right now. That will make me wait for impressions from gaf before I buy this game.

 

[Rentahamster]

Awww fuck yeah Banished OT.

Less than a day to go, hype hype hype!

 

[Lingitiz]

Excited to play this tomorrow. I could never get into Tropico or Anno all that much, although I enjoyed the brief time I spent with both. Hopefully this will do it for me.

 

[Ledsen]

This will be unlocked at 8pm for me... perfect!

 

[oipic]

Banished is now available on GOG, for those so inclined. Go!

Edit: ...and on Shining Rock Software's official site, too ($20, DRM-free + Steam key).

 

[JoV]

Playing the tutorial

 

[kevb34ns]

Been following this one since it was announced. Since then I've become much more interested in game development, and I'm so much more impressed now that one guy built his own engine and it looks and plays this well.

 

[Shahadan]

F*ck steam then, want to play it now

 

[Jintor]

Damnit Steam

 

[archnemesis]

I'm still at work and by the time I get home I hope the Steam version will be live.

 

[Demain]

Definitely downloading this when I finish work tonight.

With those min specs, I wonder if there are any plans to port it to tablets?

 

[MrGlass]

Cheers OP, i hadn't heard about this game until i saw this thread and from the description it sounds like exactly my type of game!

 

[Krakle]

Thanks for the heads up OP. Booting the game up now.

 

[British Monsoon]

Ran through the tutorials, I love the aesthetic of the game and it seems remarkably in depth for a title made by one person. The trading system is cool, lots of micromanagement for people who like that sort of thing, and this definitely seems like it'll scratch that city building game itch, with a survivalist twist.

Some screenshots;