City-building Game Catch All

Wow, this is, like, almost Pixar-level quality animation. Color me intrigued.

More info on Anno 2205:

Gameplay preview from July

Feature Special - Multi-Session Gameplay (may be more of these to come?)

D-Man777 wrote:

Not actually a "city" builder, but hey, my thread--I can fudge the rules.

Planet Coaster is looking like the RCT successor we've been waiting for. Very charming art style and attention to individual people as shown in this first dev diary. I'm encouraged by the passion I'm seeing in these people. It reminds me of the Colossal Order folks making Cities: Skylines. Enjoy.

An RC successor either fits in just fine with the city builder genre or it appeals to the same type of gamers...not sure which, but I agree! The passion of these devs is infectious, and I love to hear the methodologies behind the systems.

And you're right, Stone, those animations are really top notch!!!

Very excited about this one so far!

Where did the folks at Planet Coaster get the money for that amount of art and animation? That stuff looks incredible.

Has Elite Dangerous been that successful?

As far as I can find out, they sold 640,000 copies by May this year. That was before the Xbox One launch of the game. An unconfirmed (I can't find the original source yet) suggests that current sales across all platforms are around the 1.2million mark.

There's also the possibility of external funding for Planet Coaster, that is nothing to do with Elite.

Guess it depends how much profit from those sales has been reinvested in future Elite content, and what can be moved to other projects.

garion333 wrote:

Where did the folks at Planet Coaster get the money for that amount of art and animation? That stuff looks incredible.

Has Elite Dangerous been that successful?

Short version: yes.

The Planet Coaster tech shows that they can do character animation and crowds, so I'm curious if they have future plans to leverage that in Elite in a few years...

Well, there's a Kickstarter to self funded and self published model that worked. It's incredible how well Elite has done. Bravo!

The next Anno 2205 Feature Special: Modular Buildings and the special resources they require (not sure how I feel about that one).

2205 is on the maybe list for me. On the one hand, I didn't really play much of 2070, the futuristic setting appeals to me much less than the mediaeval one. On the other hand.... oooh, snow!

kergguz wrote:

2205 is on the maybe list for me. On the one hand, I didn't really play much of 2070, the futuristic setting appeals to me much less than the mediaeval one. On the other hand.... oooh, snow!

Exactly my opinion. In 2070, the production chains were unnecessarily complicated, IMO. But...moon colonies...

As for the special resources, I almost expect IAP's. God, let's hope they didn't think of that one. :/

For those of you who bit on Timber and Stone, how are you enjoying it? Any more opinions?

UMOarsman wrote:

For those of you who bit on Timber and Stone, how are you enjoying it? Any more opinions?

I bought it a year or two ago and have spent quite a bit of time with it.

I really enjoy the free-form building aspect of it as well as the progression of building from 8 settlers and wagon into a village/castle/whatever. However, development is pretty slow and there are a few irritating bugs that crop up fairly often. Also, lack of difficulty settings means you can't tailor the experience much.

I think it's going to turn out well as it's already quite a lot of fun, but it is still a frequently frustrating experience due to its early stage of development.

In short, if you like playing unfinished games like this it's well worth the price, but it's far from ready for primetime. I'd definitely keep an eye on it though.

Anno 2205 preview. Overall he seems to like it, but not without some criticisms.

Some videos coming out for Anno 2205. Overall things sound pretty positive. There was a live stream earlier today from the devs too.

I just picked up Anno. I'll give some initial impressions once it's done loading and I can play

UMOarsman wrote:

I just picked up Anno. I'll give some initial impressions once it's done loading and I can play ;-)

Excellent, thanks for taking one for the team.

Curious: How big is the download? The specs say 35GB HHD space.

I really am anxious for a new Anno, but the $60 is trivial compared to the new PC I'd need to run it.

OK, about 90 minutes in. I'll post more later (kids need food), but one issue I'm experiencing is a lack of in game voice. It's been posted to Steam and Ubisoft forums, and apparently I'm not the only one. Is it game crippling? No way. Is it annoying. Hell yes.

UPDATE 11/3: They've patched the voice issues.

Gameplay - great so far. Much more transparent on production chain needs and balances. I even enjoy the combat missions, but I can see how they'll get repetitive.

$60? That's a tough one. My brother bought it for me, so cost isn't as big of an issue for me.

Green Man Gaming currently has Anno 2205 (Uplay key) for 41% off ($34.99).

A few more hours into the game, and I'm really enjoying it! As I mentioned earlier, I find it MUCH easier to balance my inputs/outputs and know where I need to expand a production chain here and there. The module mechanic borrowed from the latest Sim City works well when you're budget or space-strapped, and the multi-map is much more satisfying for me than the old multi-islands were.

I'm still concerned about longevity, however. There's no sandbox mode - you just keep playing your campaign map forever. Probably not a huge deal (considering how I played the older games), but YMMV.

Combat is incredibly simple, but for dipping into every 20-30 minutes of gameplay, I don't really mind. It definitely needs the most polishing in future patches / DLC, but it's loads better than having the combat in the same map as the building aspect.

UMOarsman wrote:

Gameplay - great so far. Much more transparent on production chain needs and balances. I even enjoy the combat missions, but I can see how they'll get repetitive.

How transparent? I enjoyed Anno 1404, but could never do well against AI skirmishes because of production balances. I was spending more time in web-based production chain calculators than actually playing the game.

I like the whole idea of jumping between settlements on different maps and trading between them. Reminds me of the Caesar/Zeus games.

I'm guessing you guys didn't notice that someone made a Catch-All for Anno 2205. IMAGE(http://www.skype-emoticons.com/images/emoticon-00110-tongueout.png)

For god's sake don't link to it. We might start discussing things there. (I couldn't find it.)

GOG has a bundle of their classic Anno games (1602, 1503, 1701) on sale for the next two days.

And sold.

Not sure how much building will be involved, but here is a teaser for Cityconomy.

From the description on the Youtube page, and considering the developer's previous games, I'd expect that there won't be any city-building. It looks like another game where the player operates commercial vehicles.

MeatMan wrote:

From the description on the Youtube page, and considering the developer's previous games, I'd expect that there won't be any city-building. It looks like another game where the player operates commercial vehicles.

True enough. Though I'll remind you that prior to Cities: Skylines, CO had only done transportation simulators. Never give up hope.

Realistically, I'm not very optimistic. :/

I don't know if this is strictly a city-builder, but can anyone enable me on Mini Metro? It wast just released for PC on Steam. There's a browser-based demo, but I'm lazy and besides, I want the opinion of GWJers.

IMAGE(http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/287980/header.jpg)

I've had it since early access. It's a pleasant little puzzler. I'd say that it's relaxing, but when you have a dozen stations on the verge of overcrowding, not enough trains left, and you've run out of tunnels to draw the obvious route it gets kind of hectic.

I don't currently have it installed, because it's firmly in the I-was-only-going-to-play-for-fifteen-minutes-but-it's-two-hours-later territory for me.