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Banished

Dark Drakan

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Recently came across a new indie title called Banished which has just been released and has been developed by a one man studio Luke Hodorowicz (Shining Rock Software). The aim of the game is to grow and maintain a settlement of outcasts into a thriving community. They are born, grow older, work, have children of their own and eventually die. Keeping them healthy, happy and well-fed are essential to making your town grow.

Gameplay

The townspeople of Banished are your primary resource. They are born, grow older, work, have children of their own, and eventually die. Keeping them healthy, happy, and well-fed are essential to making your town grow. Building new homes is not enough—there must be enough people to move in and have families of their own.

Banished has no skill trees. Any structure can be built at any time, provided that your people have collected the resources to do so. There is no money. Instead, your hard-earned resources can be bartered away with the arrival of trade vessels. These merchants are the key to adding livestock and annual crops to the townspeople’s diet; however, their lengthy trade route comes with the risk of bringing illnesses from abroad.

There are twenty different occupations that the people in the city can perform from farming, hunting, and blacksmithing, to mining, teaching, and healing. No single strategy will succeed for every town. Some resources may be more scarce from one map to the next. The player can choose to replant forests, mine for iron, and quarry for rock, but all these choices require setting aside space into which you cannot expand.

The success or failure of a town depends on the appropriate management of risks and resources.



Has anyone been playing this yet? Has a Settlers vibe to me without the combat aspect.
 
That looks so awesome I think I'll get it.
 
I was stunned when I found out that it was created from the ground up by 1 guy, the specs needed to run it are quite generous also (though doubt laptop would run it). I shall be following it closely and looking out for updates on it. Game is only about 150Mb too and can purchase it on Steam or through the website here.

Minimum Specs:
OS: XP SP3 / Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8
Processor: 2 GHz Dual Core processor
Memory: 512 MB RAM
Graphics: 512 MB DirectX 9.0c compatible card (SM 2.0+)
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Hard Drive: 150 MB available space
Sound Card: Any

Recommended Specs:
OS: Windows 7 / Windows 8
Processor: 2 GHz Dual Core processor (or greater)
Memory: 512 MB RAM
Graphics: 512 MB DirectX 10 compatible card
DirectX: Version 11
Hard Drive: 150 MB available space
Sound Card: Any​
 
I got it on launch day. Don't buy it on Steam; buy it from their website. It is a bit cheaper and you still get a Steam key.
 
I got it on launch day. Don't buy it on Steam; buy it from their website. It is a bit cheaper and you still get a Steam key.

What are your thoughts on it so far? I have heard plenty of praise and a couple of things they are working on improving.
 
I like it. It is quite hard, you're constantly juggling things like rate of population growth vs. food production. You're constantly adding to a house of cards and one mistake will make it all come tumbling down on you. Resources to build stuff are also limited; there is only so much Iron and Stone laying around the map for you to pick up. Trees regrow, but as you might expect they do so slowly.

There are some balance issues though; like how Farms and Pastures don't seem to be worth it. As you can plainly see in the gameplay trailer above, they need a lot of space (20x20 squares to give the highest yield possible) yet don't seem to produce enough Food to warrant that sacrifice - space is limited by hills, mountains and rivers, and you can't terraform at all so you have to work with what the RNG gives you in terms of map composition. If you instead use Fishing Docks, you conserve a lot more space because they can be placed on the shores of the rivers/lakes in the area, and you can't really build anything else in water so you're not "wasting" valuable space.

Also, fire breakouts are overpowered as crap. No matter how many Wells you build to fight fire, if your settlement catches fire you might as well restart because it burns to the ground, resulting in people freezing to death and other nasty things.
 
Its another intriguing concept by an indie developer and look forward to seeing some more of it and apparently he has decent amount of DLC ideas including a thought on including military.
 
I think adding military would be to the detriment of the game, to be honest. SimCity didn't need it, nor does this. I would love some sort of militia to keep the peace, as well as protect you from wildlife (currently there are no predators or nothin' in the game).
 
I think adding military would be to the detriment of the game, to be honest. SimCity didn't need it, nor does this. I would love some sort of militia to keep the peace, as well as protect you from wildlife (currently there are no predators or nothin' in the game).

I can see it from that point of view but also from the other side, would remind me of Settlers in a way if it went that route. So long as they didnt attempt to turn it into Age of Empires or a regular run of the mill RTS game then shouldnt devalue the original concept too much. Military was only used in Settlers to expand your borders and had to meet certain conditions/requirements to go to 'war' with another team. Things like gold stocks to pay soldiers and weapons reserves, coal, iron ore and steel stockpiles as well as food requirements for the soldiers. All added another more strategic element to the military side of things and more resources to manage. Settlers II remains one of my favourite games of all time and still play it on my laptop with help from DOSbox.

A refreshing change to have a resource management/RTS game without the threat of being attacked by another team on your mind though. I imagine from the sound of it you already have enough on your plate without having to worry about defending yourself too. The concept already sounds good though I have to say and either way I hope it does well and hope to try it myself in near future.
 
I've just had to restart like 10-15 games in a row because my people bred too quickly and starved. Trying it on one of the worst starting conditions, terrain/enviroment settings and difficulty for an achievement.

D'oh!
 
I've just had to restart like 10-15 games in a row because my people bred too quickly and starved. Trying it on one of the worst starting conditions, terrain/enviroment settings and difficulty for an achievement.

D'oh!

I heard that certain scenarios can be quite the challenge & natural disasters can really screw things up as well as illnesses.
 
Nah, its that you are forced to play on a Small-sized map with Mountains for this particular achievement. This leaves very little in terms of natural resources and space to expand since you can't terraform.
 
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