Settlement Survival

[h1]Settlement Survival has potential, but it feels abandoned and unfinished[/h1] [b]Not Recommended (unless heavily discounted)[/b] [b]Time played:[/b] ~30 hours (some AFK/alt-tabbed) The core loop is enjoyable and there is a good game here, but the experience is dragged down by constant friction, vague systems, and what looks like a stopped development cycle. [hr][/hr] [h2]Controls and keybindings are a constant fight[/h2] [list] [*]Missing keybinds for basic, high-frequency actions (canceling construction is a big one). [*]Several keybinds cannot be remapped at all (map location hotkeys, increasing/decreasing workers on a building). [*]This turns routine management into repetitive UI clicking. [/list] [hr][/hr] [h2]Early game balance leans too hard on RNG[/h2] Some starts are simply better than others because certain seeds/animals are crucial for an efficient opening while others are close to worthless. That is not difficulty, it is a dice roll that decides how smooth your first hours will be. [hr][/hr] [h2]Tutorials exist, but they do not teach the important systems[/h2] You learn by failing, not by being taught. Trading is the best example: it is extremely profitable and often the key to scaling without being trapped by early RNG, yet it took me around 20 hours to even understand how central it is. Factions are also helpful, but the timing is awkward: [list] [*]Getting in contact and leveling them needs a reasonably stable settlement first. [*]By then, many of the most interesting unlocks arrive after you already solved the problems they would have helped with. [/list] [hr][/hr] [h2]Tech points and the tech tree are too vague[/h2] Tech points are critical for a fast, stable start, but the game does not make that importance clear. The tech tree itself is also unclear: [list] [*]It is not obvious what is locked behind what (not just vertical locks, but hidden requirements and production dependencies). [*]Unlock descriptions rarely quantify what you get, so upgrades feel like blind guesses. [/list] Example: the "High-speed" unlock reduced my trade travel time by roughly 2%. That is negligible, and the game does not tell you the magnitude before you spend points. [hr][/hr] [h2]Autosaves and UI quirks add avoidable frustration[/h2] [list] [*]Autosaves are not frequent enough for a game where a small mistake can snowball. [*]Save timestamps are strangely formatted (not clean 24-hour formatting and odd leading zero behavior), which makes browsing saves unnecessarily annoying. [/list] [hr][/hr] [h2]Map resources can be misleading and poorly explained[/h2] Some randomly placed jade/gold nodes effectively require terraforming, but because placement is random and the game barely explains this, it is hard to understand early why a resource you can see is not realistically accessible. [hr][/hr] [h2]It should clearly disclose the development status[/h2] The version number is always on-screen like it is actively evolving, but it does not feel maintained. The developer statement below should be prominently on the store page: [quote=Developer]We are working on a new game. Due to some reasons, the old game can no longer be maintained. Thank you for your attention.[/quote] [hr][/hr] [h2]Conclusion[/h2] This is basically abandonware. If you like colony builders you can still get 20 to 50 hours out of it (I did), but learning it is rough: lots of quirks, vague systems, and not much community guidance compared to other games. I enjoyed playing more than learning. Buy on sale only. Not worth full price in its current state. [h2]Update at 50 hrs[/h2] It's pretty much as I expected. There is more in this game, but it's frustating, and limiting my experience. After my initial review I tried some more plays and some variations but it all feels the same. I want to enjoy it more but it's a burden to play. I'm uninstalling now and don't expect to ever return if I'm completely honest. For a couple Euro's it's worth my time, but did I really have a good time, I wouldn't say so.

I hate to leave a negative review, but this game is too tedious not to. Settlement Survival is a game going through the motions of being a colony sim, without seeming to care all that much about what specifically makes colony sim games fun. I would not recommend it to anyone that can tell the difference between a challenging game and an unpolished game. Which is a shame, because this game has all the raw ingredients of a great game, and falls just two steps short of polishing its way there. [b][u]Some specific complaints[/u][/b] - [b]Nothing really progresses or improves your settlement enough to make you glad you unlocked it.[/b] Progressing in any given direction tech-wish requires you to progress in 2 or 3 other directions, so you constantly feel like you're having to catch up to yourself to do anything you wanted to do in the first place. And the layout of the tech-tree does almost nothing to make these dependencies obvious. In isolation though, all this would be forgivable. - [b]You will always either be running out of something, or have a problematic amount of it.[/b] And finding a strategy to address one resource issue will only only be rewarded with (1) an unlock that invalidates that strategy and (2) the exact same issue in a different resource. Again, normally forgivable, but this game leaves enough little rough edges in resource management (see: small bugs and annoying design choices) to make putting in the effort more tedious than fun. - [b]The crop and livestock progression system is a bit disappointing, and can hold your progress back at various points [/b] without giving you very much agency to address it. For example, I unlocked geese four times in a row simply because I was content to only grow ducks (unused animals get un-unlocked for whatever reason). Fine, but I was waiting to unlock an animal I actually needed for progress. It seems sloppy that a mechanic could be derailed by such a simple gameplay choice. If, by mid-game, you want to trade your way out of the progress-holes the unlock system left behind, you better have saved up an insane amount of silver. - [b] Random events get repetitive pretty quick.[/b] Just my opinion on this one honestly. For as much as this game rides on the coattails of banished, you would be better off replaying that. 5.5/10

At first glance it's a 1:1 copy of the game Banished with more stuff. (which is good) Has a very cozy village building feel to it and I really want to love the game but.... As time played goes on all the little bad designs and small bugs adds up to the point where it's just not fun anymore, especially since the general consensus seem to be the games further development is abandoned. While the UI is working better then Banished and feels more modern, there is a lack of needed features. Generic small bugs on different parts of the game creeps up and gets really noticeable/troublesome later in the game. (buildings randomly stops producing, thousands upon thousands items just vanish, report maths that clearly is not correct etc etc) Translation from chinese to english is also not very good and makes certain parts a bit unclear With how much CPU the game uses I'm not entirely unconvinced there isn't some sort of cryptominer running with the game

This is Banished 2. More content and more features. A lot more complex and harder to settle, slower pace too. The graphic is simple, UI could be better but it works. Tech tree is a bit confusing but you will get used to it. It's an ok game. If you like banished and want more, this is a good choice. Sale or discount price is basically a steal.

It's Banished 2, and had a lot of potential, but the final balance of the game is terrible. 1. Citizens barely make enough food for themselves, and if you don't start near a fertile land or fishing bonus area, it's game over. 2. Half map worth of trees provide just enough lumber to build a few houses and firewood for winter. Same for iron and stone. 3. The tech-tree is quite ridiculous - to make some straw slippers, you need to first research how to extract clay, then use clay to construct straw farms (which needs to be unlocked), then research another technology to access knitting, then build knitting factories, and then finally be able to craft straw slippers. Meanwhile your citizens walk barefoot, straining their ankles and fracturing their foot, making 10-20% of your population useless (they don't work for 1-2 years while injured). And by the time you get there, combat comes knocking on the door. 4. Biggest dealbreaker - absurd combat balance. Weak military units are locked behind quite a lot of technologies and resources, and defensive towers cost a lot of resources, but do next to nothing. You will need half of your workforce trained as soldiers to deal early wild beasts. Walls do nothing, and bridges are meaningless - the beast can walk on water like Jesus. Your best choice is probably not to bother with combat and let wild beasts and bandits kill your villagers and destroy your buildings, and hope to deal with them in late game (if you can survive till then). 5. Trade numbers are unbalanced, and trading always make you lose resources overall. Unlike Banished, you are better off being self-sufficient and not rely on trading at all. However, it's the only way to access some unique technologies late game. It doesn't feel like trading at all - you can't use it in a meaningful way to get resources you lack. It feels more like a donation of your resources to some factions to build reputation, and finally one day they reward you with a unique building. It has some interesting concepts, but poorly executed.

I love city builders but this one is just not working well for me. My biggest issues is the tech tree. It's so confusing. Why can I unlock Luxury Housing only to find out I need to unlock 2 or 3 other things to be able to actually build Luxury Housing? That should be locked until the prerequisites are completed. I'm also not a fan of the random discovery to find animals, seeds, etc. Year after year my people are freezing because I'm waiting for the game to randomly discover sheep. I found myself just watching TV and letting the game run, hoping it would discover items I needed to progress. It really needs some fine tuning and balancing to make this playable.

After spending some time with the game, I have pretty mixed feelings. There are some interesting ideas here, but right now the overall balance feels off. My biggest issue is that it constantly feels like your settlers are lacking something. If it's not food, it's fuel. If it's not fuel, everyone is freezing. The seasons seem to pass too quickly, and food consumption feels overly punishing, making it feel like you're always putting out fires instead of actually developing and expanding your settlement. The tech tree is also a mess. Progression doesn't feel very intuitive, and planning ahead can be frustrating because the unlocks don't always make sense. Overall, many of the systems feel like they need further tweaking and balancing. The game has potential, but I wouldn't recommend buying it at full price in its current state. I'd wait for more updates and balance passes before considering it. For now, this would be an intermediate review rather than a full recommendation.

one single design flaw and game is ruined, theres special resources on the map that dont reappear or appear later in game. very important aspects of your econ will develop around them and for whatever reason they just disappear, your town design may even develop around them and all this takes tons of hours to set up. was a decent town building game until this occured