Recent reviews by Cloft

Shoot bug, shoot bot

beat sony

TLDR: Banished, but emphasis on Tower Defense
Warcraft and Starcraft gem TD players of yore will enjoy the challenge

This is a quite fun little almost-idle game. It's got a feel to it akin to Kingdoms, but with more focus on town building and population needs management. It has several moveable windows to allow you to watch what your villagers needs, what buildings you can build, graphs of villager's needs and town income, a log of events, and a list of the individual villagers themselves. The villager window is a bit memory hungry, so use it only when you need to, otherwise the rest of the game runs on a potato.

With the new free DLC you can level up your character across the campaign levels if you'd like to join in the combat or use the resources to throw festivals and summon defenses instead. I haven't beat the campaign yet, but I am looking forward to the DLC content after I do so.

The price feels a little much for what you get, however, so I recommend picking it up on sale.

This is one I've been waiting a long time for, and I'm glad it's finally come and it's as good as I hoped.

I've played 10 hours since the game was released and I'm having a blast. This game is definitely a labor of love. The graphics are beautiful between the simple city designs, the detailed Onbu and terrain, and the overworld full of points of interest and the anticipation of what you're going to jaunt into next. The music is great, setting the mood for the village you're creating and the dangers you face. The different biomes, hazards, and places to explore as you travel on the back of your giant friend are unique and have some good surprises when you think you're sending someone out for a simple scavenging mission.

City planning in a limited space causes you to think a lot more critically in your building placement and what and when you tear down certain things. Certain buildings can only be placed in particular locations of the Onbu to either feed it, gather its dung, or drill into it to gather resources, or inject it with better food at the cost of its trust in you.

Management of your villagers is key. You have to keep a close eye out on what's going on and make decisions to swap villagers from task to task to keep the gears running smoothly. Sometimes you need an all hands on deck approach with workhouses filled with builders and carriers on a prioritized construction to get an important building in place before you swap out those workers to balance back out the economy. There's no individual worker RPG stats to worry about, just keep your people healthy and happy and they'll work harder.

The interactions with the Onbu itself are easy to learn and cause you to think carefully about how you treat it and how you command it. Will you let it sleep in the middle of the desert so you don't have to worry about poison in the biomes to come while your crops whither from lack heat and lack of water? Do you think it has the energy to run past that thunderstorm's path before it comes back around and destroys your village? Will it even listen to you? Toss some food in its mouth, give it some pats, and take good care of your buddy and it'll take you far. Or decide to sleep in the middle of a highly poisonous jungle while your doctors scramble to keep everyone healthy.

Everything in this game comes together very well. In its current state, from what I've seen, it's already almost complete. The roadmap gives me hope for even more things to explore and build and ways to interact with my 6 legged friend. I have yet to come across a bug. The only thing I've used the bug report button for is to suggest QOL adjustments or ideas I think might help the game look a little better (I'm looking at you, villager eating with your torso).

Easily 8/10.

I enjoyed the first game many years ago and I still enjoy this second (Third?) installment 4 years after it was released. A very good game if you're into tower defense, and town builders. You need to focus on building walls, towers, and recruiting an army to defend against and eventually strike back against the Greed while balancing your economy to continually expand your kingdom and recruit more people. All through commands you give through horse(or lizard, bear, moose, and more)back through spending the money in your purse.

These coins are also your health should you be attacked directly. Out of money? Out of luck, the next hit sends your crown flying and if you don't retrieve it you lose your reign. At least you have heirs to take your place...

The game has challenge modes to conquer as well as two free campaign settings and one very enjoyable DLC that shake up the look of your kingdom and the way you play. Even 4 years later, more content is in the works. This game is truly a labor of love.

Edit: After spending some time in the discussion boards and discord, I've found a dev who is very dedicated to his game, his community, and the feedback they receive, followed by swift changes to QOL and bugs fixes. I recommend it much more now.

A fun island resource manage colony sim game with a neat Prison architect style to it. It's fun to set up supply chains between your islands and the tech tree is neat if a bit small.

Tentative thumbs up because the game could use a bit more polish. Villagers and haulers only pick up one thing at a time, so you need a swarm to pick up stacks of two/three items that drop from a tile at a time from large fields etc, but if they're organized in chests they'll carry a lot from one place to another that way. Not a lot of techs, just takes a long time to get them up and running because of the amount of resources required to research them and how it can be difficult to produce enough on one island to satisfy the needs of multiple islands and still have enough to research.

There's probably more minmaxing in managing your workers to this game than I'm realizing in my few hours of play time (I'm at late tier 2 out of 4 tiers), but it feels a little clunky just looking at it.

Story is a bit simple and goofy, which isn't really a bad thing. Story's not the main focus of the game, just a little flavor as you progress.

Finally, the tutorial and learning curve is fairly well laid out. It teaches you how to set up a few simple supply chains and start researching then lets you have fun in your sandbox with just a guide window to show you towards your next progression goal.

All in all, a good 6/10. Grab it on sale if you want a nice colony/trade sim that loves to remind you that someone starved to death because they couldn't find a shirt. Or your crops withered and you have to manually command them to cut down the withered crops. Or it takes you 4 hours to try to get some beer to your main island to finish a research because those bastards are too drunk to deliver it

Become the gatekeeper of Limbo.
Meet lost spirits, find out what they like to eat. Give them lots of hugs. Become close to them.
Find and fulfill the last wishes keeping them in Limbo.
Cry as you bid them a final farewell and send them to the afterlife.

A+, will cry again

Aesthetically pleasing but mechanically frustrating. Crafting system doesn't flow well, and any wrong steps cause materials to be flung everywhere.

I could also not find the recipe for a plain iron bar for the life of me. Do the recipes spawn randomly or is this one as obtusely placed as one of the blue mushrooms that I spent looking for for nearly an hour after getting 4 and finally finding it tucked away in some bushes?

It's cute and has potential as a crafter/decoration game, but it's just not enough to bypass the hurdles shown in this preview.

I hate this game. I love this game.

One more run.

*Accidentally lets item fall into the customer's basket without scanning it, giving it to them for free*

"Look what you did to my car!"

A+

Oh, and don't to play broom hockey with the cars to get them out of the way.