Banished by Shining Rock Software

Malor wrote:

Starvation is bad, mm'kay?

I also learned this lesson the hard way. One summer I was looking at a 150% increase in my population. My poor hunters and gatherers couldn't meet the demand and my stockpile went from ~1500 venison to zip in next to no time. Lost half my pop. to starvation, and then about 10 of my original settlers died of old age, leaving me with 4 workers and 2 children.

New seed.

syndicatedragon wrote:

Is this a scenario-based game, or is it more sandbox? Is the terrain based on fixed maps or it randomly generated?

Sandbox. Randomly generated.

garion333 wrote:
syndicatedragon wrote:

Is this a scenario-based game, or is it more sandbox? Is the terrain based on fixed maps or it randomly generated?

Sandbox. Randomly generated.

SOLD.

Yeah, I'm about to lose my 3rd village to starvation. I need to figure out the food/population ratio that works.

I managed to get my first village up to a robust 60-odd citizens only to realize that people no make-a-da-babies unless they have their own houses. I had like 50 senior citizens and two babies at one point.

Now labor's so tight that I have a freakin' 12-year-old kid slaving away 24/7/365 just to try (and fail) to provide enough firewood for the village. Perhaps part of the problem is that he doesn't have any tools. I'd fix that, but I don't have enough manpower to work the iron mine I built during the village's heyday. Perhaps the other part of the problem is that I traded away the massive stack of firewood I had a few years back so I could get a pear tree sapling and some sheep.

syndicatedragon wrote:

Is this a scenario-based game, or is it more of a sandbox? Is the terrain based on fixed maps or it randomly generated?

Sandbox (your only real goal is to survive and grow your village) and randomly generated terrain.

Just finished the first game. The village name "Serenity Valley" wasn't appropriate, while we did have a good number of people starve to death, the largest amount, and the death knell, was all people freezing to death. And I don't recall Mal and Zoe mentioning that being a big issue in that valley. I'm restarting with Serenity Valley again. Maybe this time we'll die of starvation like our namesakes.

Browncoats forever. Or Hide Coats. Whatever. Brown Hide Coats.

This just popped up for me in Steam. The fact that this isn't listed as Early Access almost makes me want to buy it immediately as a vote with my wallet. With that said, how stable is it? Any game-breaking bugs encountered?

Pulled my village out of the starvation crisis, and played it for a few more hours...

Noticed that, oddly, it seemed Storage Barns would fill up, and then not empty again. Don't know if that's a bug or just a misreading of their max capacity on my part.

But it appears, sadly, that this village will succumb to dying of old age. Guess I didn't make enough room for young breeders.

So, I will regale you with the tale of Roldem, and Malista and Olive.

The village was a few years old when Olive was born, and Malista came two years after he did. They grew up across the road from each other, and at a tender young age, Olive entered the work force. Two years later, Malista followed, and having found an empty home, they moved in together, when Olive was 12, and Malista 10. Olive mined in the iron mine, and Malista farmed, and eventually moved to the position of vendor in the market.

But when Olive was 14, something went wrong. Malista gave birth to a young child, and Olive wasn't sure how any of this had happened. Unable to deal with the child and the young mother, Olive moved out. Malista raised the girl alone, to be a stonecutter, even though Olive could be seen about town.

Olive was taken years later by a typhus plague, but Malista survived, her daughter moving to a few different professions over the years. Ultimately, though, the harsh village life claimed her daughter.

Malista continued running the market as long as it made sense to. One chilly fall, preparing for the winter by gathering wood in the forest, at age 83, the lone villager left to survive the typhus plague, multiple famines, and years of harsh, cold, winter conditions, Malista's heart finally gave out, and the village of Roldem fell silent.

All of the events are true. I observed these two, incidentally, throughout the course of the game, even watching Malista cutting trees in the forest before her little avatar disappeared.

Sinkwater wrote:

This just popped up for me in Steam. The fact that this isn't listed as Early Access almost makes me want to buy it immediately as a vote with my wallet. With that said, how stable is it? Any game-breaking bugs encountered?

I played for several hours today. I had one crash to desktop when building a tunnel. Alt-Tab to desktop sometimes leads to odd offset in the cursor operation. Restarting fixes it.

Other than that, pretty solid. I just can't get over this being a one-man project.

Impulse buy. Thanks, jerks.

D-Man777 wrote:

I just can't get over this being a one-man project.

So much this. The combination of gameplay, stability, and design really feels like a team project.

syndicatedragon wrote:
garion333 wrote:
syndicatedragon wrote:

Is this a scenario-based game, or is it more sandbox? Is the terrain based on fixed maps or it randomly generated?

Sandbox. Randomly generated.

SOLD.

Randomly generated but with seeds so I imagine we will see neat seeds being traded around before long.

I read the RPS review today and it seemed to be quite negative. It may have been the user, but from what he said, the game is very numbers heavy with no context or explanation as to why. Aside from doing your own calculations, there is no population x eats y amount of food over z time interval graph to be displayed. That sounds pretty intimidating if that is true; however since I love survival games I am gonna try to watch Quill18's videos on youtubes.

Overall, my initial impression from this very positive. I really like the mechanics and gameplay, and am having a ton of fun trying not to kill off my population (which never works out well). I've only had one crash to desktop so far, but had no idea what I did to trigger it.

Overall, this is a fantastic accomplishment for one-man team. I encourage more impulse buys! Go! You have no excuse!

Naterstein wrote:

I read the RPS review today and it seemed to be quite negative. It may have been the user, but from what he said, the game is very numbers heavy with no context or explanation as to why. Aside from doing your own calculations, there is no population x eats y amount of food over z time interval graph to be displayed. That sounds pretty intimidating if that is true; however since I love survival games I am gonna try to watch Quill18's videos on youtubes.

May I recommend GamersDissent's LP's. They're edited to be more concise, in smaller chunks, and he seems to understand the game better.

I will admit to wishing for a bit more information, but I think the game would lose not only some of the challenge, but some of the charm, of figuring things out.

I might not say that after I lose a few more villages to starvation, though.

My biggest problem right now is figuring out how to maintain fairly steady population growth, while keeping up with demands for food, and all of the basic supplies for building things like extra houses, storage, and tools. And also putting on the brakes for my enthusiasm for climbing the game's tech tree, getting better tools, clothes, houses, etc. It seems more like the game wants you to stockpile rather than delve into progression and teeter on the edge of sustainability.

D-Man777 wrote:
Naterstein wrote:

I read the RPS review today and it seemed to be quite negative. It may have been the user, but from what he said, the game is very numbers heavy with no context or explanation as to why. Aside from doing your own calculations, there is no population x eats y amount of food over z time interval graph to be displayed. That sounds pretty intimidating if that is true; however since I love survival games I am gonna try to watch Quill18's videos on youtubes.

May I recommend GamersDissent's LP's. They're edited to be more concise, in smaller chunks, and he seems to understand the game better.

I agree. Etalyx can be a little too "enthusiastic" sometimes, but the videos are good, and make me wonder if he's playing the same game that Alec from RPS played.

Where the hell did the last three hours go?

Feegle wrote:

Where the hell did the last three hours go?

I'm asking myself the same question!

I just played an hour of it. Just jumped in, didn't look at the tutorial. My poor people starved before winter.

I think I need to figure out what kind of food they should start with so they don't run out. I'm thinking hunter-gatherers first.

I've had one mega crash when I clicked on the next tutorial button after finishing the second tutorial which restarted by laptop. But I switched it from integrated to the dedicated graphics and haven't had a problem. It's been running high shadows and textures, some reflections, at 1920x1080 DX11 like a champ. The card is is a GT750M.

I have had a bug where I can't remove resources after placing a path over them, even if I remove the path and try again. That's more annoying than anything.

As was mentioned up thread, I'm impressed that this is a one man operation and at $20 it is a steal.

BTW, Quill18's YouTube videos on Banished are quite good.

Fire. Just before winter.

After my first couple of attempts, both of which I quit before people died, because I could see what I was doing "wrong" and how to do it better, I think I've got the hang of the basics. I'm in year 3. No one has died, and none of my resources/supplies have run out (yet). Including the tutorials, I played for about 4.5 hours today. I could easily keep going, but it's past 1:30 AM. I should get some sleep.

Oh man. Tornado massacred my little downtown. Originally 65 civies, bright down to 20 in the blink of an eye. I may never recover (emotionally)

I was also quite taken aback by the RPS Wot I Think, I'm usually in general agreement with those guys when it comes to the games I am interested in, but, early impressions are that I couldn't be further from their experience/opinions. Not that that matters, overall, but it does paint the game in pretty bad light, and considering this being an Indie, one-man game, it does need all the positive publicity it can get, having no marketing campaign.

In time I may come to agree with some of the aspects Alec had issue with. There are many points he makes, however, that seem to point to him not really 'getting' the setting of the game. It's supposed to be a bleak, pre-technology battle against the elements, while maintaining basic needs of human beings long enough for them to breed, and work their lives away. It's not aimed at being a colourful, cartoon-like Settlers clone. So what if the numbers are hidden? I don't want to play a colourful spreadsheet. Games have always hidden numbers being the animations and workings of the game, otherwise you just get into a min/max situation, which usually ruins gaming experiences for me.

Time will tell on the longevity, of course, but if you have any interest in town-builders, the I'd say give that $20 to what could be a much better game for you than RPS have described.

RPS wrote:

I know roughly what went wrong, and that is that, during a time of relative plenty, I actively chased expansion rather than first laying all the groundwork which would support it.

Game. Over.

I'll reserve judgment on the rest of what he said until I've played more.

Hah, figured out my issue with the game crashing when loading. Apparently running in windowed mode for me causes the game to crash when loading a level. Once it loads, I can switch back to windowed mode with no issues.

So, I've only got through the first tutorial so far. Depending on the work load today, I should be able to burn through the rest today and then get in an actual game after work

Speaking of windowed mode, if anyone is still getting the black borders around their screen in DX11 mode some people are reporting that a temporary fix is to press Alt-Enter once you're in the game.

garion333 wrote:
RPS wrote:

I know roughly what went wrong, and that is that, during a time of relative plenty, I actively chased expansion rather than first laying all the groundwork which would support it.

Game. Over.

I'll reserve judgment on the rest of what he said until I've played more.

I'm honestly not sure how what he said would be any different about a game like Caesar, or SimCity. Aren't those effectively spreadsheet games as well?