An interesting article just popped up over at rockpapershotgun.com about a new (and exciting) game.

Banished.

“In this city-building strategy game, you control a group of exiled travelers who decide to restart their lives in a new land. They have only the clothes on their backs and a cart filled with supplies from their homeland. The objective of the game is to keep the population alive and grow it into a successful culture.”

“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.”


You can see some Alpha footage here: http://youtu.be/bBGX0dl5Ziw

This game looks very exciting. I'll keep an eye on it and I hope GOG picks it up.


http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/03/22/simsettlement-banished-is-about-survival-and-life/

It sounds great. Sort of like a strategy interface for a multiplayer Minecraft server populated by bots.

Sounds absolutely great. I love games where I can't/don't have to directly control the people.

So essentially it's like Dwarf Fortress but with a sensible interface? Sounds bloody good, if you ask me.

Show of hands: How many here though this thread was going to be about the new SimCity/people being banned from online play?

Me. The premise sounds interesting, though!

Be it for ideology or crossing the Electronic Arts guild, they have journeyed far to find a place called...home. They are the Banished.

Not interested unless you can use lava moats to set elephants on fire.

This could be interesting. Unfortunately the author of the RPS article is way too much in love with his own writing - the ratio of relevant information to semi-funny fluff in this article is deplorably low. But I guess there simply isn't much information out yet.

Hmm, seems pretty solid. I'll definitely keep my eye on this.

Looks very promising. :) I like the atmosphere, the setting, hopefully the controls are good. Finally a real-time strategy game without micro-management (i.e. commanding every unit) and without the need for war and fighting.

I enjoyed AoE 1 because of the base-building part. Was quite nice. I know, I had to build soldiers and rumble over the enemy, but that was just something I dealt with, in exchange to having a great settlement-building part.
I enjoyed also Populous 3 and Alien Nations where you did not command every unit but only gave order to build houses, chop wood, educate people. These were great games.

Maybe Banished can even be better. It’s the kind of game I wanted to play for so long. :)

Edit:
The comments on Youtube confirm it. I read things like “Meh - Age of Empires II is getting a remake, so I don't really see the point of this..” or “Almost like anno 1503 and AoE” or “More than anything it's like Stronghold.”, but that’s the point. In Banished there is no war or need to warfare. The life itself is the challenge. Unlike in Anno, Stronghold or AoE. That’s the game I want.

Haha, another comment: “i'd play this game if u could also do things like war” ^^

Sounds lovely, though i wonder if the finished game will treat every 'settler' as a jack-of-trades, whose occupation depends only on his assignment, not his own stats etc. I'm a bit spoiled after Gnomoria i guess.;)

Have you been reading Dwarf Fortress - Boatmurdered by chance? :D

I still dream of carvings of images of cheese.

Banished will be released on February 18th this year! Looking forward to this for months. :)

http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/?p=2066