Before I launch into the review, let me make clear - I love this game, I love this game dearly, it's going to eat my life, in big horrible chunks, I can see it beating Dungeons of Dredmor for time played with *Ease*. Recommending it is easy enough, but recommending it to all and sundry is a different matter, this is a game for a specific audience, allow me to explain :

Banished calls itself a city building strategy game....

Right. That's akin to calling Dark Souls a light and cheerful romp through some ruins whilst a few slightly less than alive fellows duel you with rusty metal objects and you meet some not quite all there people on a quest of JOLLY CO-OPERATION.

Whoever came up with the store description is clearly a master of either understatement or satire. I tip my hat to them, I do. Banished is superficially about building a village, yes, but that's merely the outer layer of this rather hefty onion of a game, and it's made of many interlocking layers that are all simulated. Each citizen is simulated properly, they go to their workplace, they get hungry, they get cold, they get old, they die.

They may have children, they may end up marrying someone half their age (oh, and by the way, I had a family who's father was the tender age of eleven, the poor kid's voice hadn't broke and already he was a dad, awesome!). These are people where you can see the interlocking mechanisms take place all the time, you can see them work, you can see them travel to and from, you can see them interact with the world around them.

The simulation doesn't stop at people, it simulates wildlife and nature, you cannot just plop down a forester and assume that's the end to your lumber woes, it doesn't work that way in the real world, it won't work that way in banished. It takes time for trees to grow and mature, time for your foresters to build up an efficient cycle of logging, planting, and treetending, and as a result, much like everything else within Banished, every change you make is rarely immediate in it's effect, but it -has- an effect, and it's cumulative in nature. If you ever wanted a perfect exemplar of "the butterfly effect", this game can teach you far better than many textbooks.

As a result this game requires a level of planning, thinking and pondering which extends far past most normal city builders, it puts it more on the plane of games like Gnomoria, and perhaps it could be seen as an intro to things like Dwarf Fortress (it's a lot less impenetrable than DF thank Armok), but make no mistake, much like such games, it's very capable of whipping around in the blink of an eye and sabotaging several hours of work if you do not take due dilligence when you plan out changes to your village (a single scuffed up plan of mine utterly wrecked what was a solid village of mine, back to the drawing board once more, but from that failure I learned).

In the world of banished, the changes -matter-, treat the village with a genuine level of respect and plan your changes with a slow, methodical hand, and the game will reward you with perhaps one of the most intricate and engaging simulations outside of the aforementioned DF. Play it like a straight city builder and you will fail, and then you'll wonder why. Read the manual, do the tutorials, do your research, this game deserves that much out of you if you purchase it.

With that, I recommend this game to those who are willing.

Before I launch into the review, let me make clear - I love this game, I love this game dearly, it's going to eat my life, in big horrible chunks, I can see it beating Dungeons of Dredmor for time played with *Ease*. Recommending it is easy enough, but recommending it to all and sundry is a different matter, this is a game for a specific audience, allow me to explain : Banished calls itself a city building strategy game.... Right. That's akin to calling Dark Souls a light and cheerful romp through some ruins whilst a few slightly less than alive fellows duel you with rusty metal objects and you meet some not quite all there people on a quest of JOLLY CO-OPERATION. Whoever came up with the store description is clearly a master of either understatement or satire. I tip my hat to them, I do. Banished is superficially about building a village, yes, but that's merely the outer layer of this rather hefty onion of a game, and it's made of many interlocking layers that are all simulated. Each citizen is simulated properly, they go to their workplace, they get hungry, they get cold, they get old, they die. They may have children, they may end up marrying someone half their age (oh, and by the way, I had a family who's father was the tender age of eleven, the poor kid's voice hadn't broke and already he was a dad, awesome!). These are people where you can see the interlocking mechanisms take place all the time, you can see them work, you can see them travel to and from, you can see them interact with the world around them. The simulation doesn't stop at people, it simulates wildlife and nature, you cannot just plop down a forester and assume that's the end to your lumber woes, it doesn't work that way in the real world, it won't work that way in banished. It takes time for trees to grow and mature, time for your foresters to build up an efficient cycle of logging, planting, and treetending, and as a result, much like everything else within Banished, every change you make is rarely immediate in it's effect, but it -has- an effect, and it's cumulative in nature. If you ever wanted a perfect exemplar of "the butterfly effect", this game can teach you far better than many textbooks. As a result this game requires a level of planning, thinking and pondering which extends far past most normal city builders, it puts it more on the plane of games like Gnomoria, and perhaps it could be seen as an intro to things like Dwarf Fortress (it's a lot less impenetrable than DF thank Armok), but make no mistake, much like such games, it's very capable of whipping around in the blink of an eye and sabotaging several hours of work if you do not take due dilligence when you plan out changes to your village (a single scuffed up plan of mine utterly wrecked what was a solid village of mine, back to the drawing board once more, but from that failure I learned). In the world of banished, the changes -matter-, treat the village with a genuine level of respect and plan your changes with a slow, methodical hand, and the game will reward you with perhaps one of the most intricate and engaging simulations outside of the aforementioned DF. Play it like a straight city builder and you will fail, and then you'll wonder why. Read the manual, do the tutorials, do your research, this game deserves that much out of you if you purchase it. With that, I recommend this game to those who are willing.