Banished

A fun city builder game with many of my favorite management features!

tl;dr: great game

Banished revolutionized city builders in 2014 deviating from the sim-city formula of ploppable buildings and bringing it back to the likes of The Settlers or Knights and Merchants where all the materials have to be collected and all the buildings have to be built instead of placing them on the map. 10 years later it still holds up and is a very enjoyable game. The graphics are a bit dated but still very functional and as a bonus this game runs incredibly well until you have around 1000 citizens and start spamming farms/orchards all over the map. Aside from a small graphical bug where the wheelbarrow wasn't always properly attached to citizens everything just works and haven't encountered a single crash.

The production trees aren't all that complex and there is a lot of micromanagement involved in keeping your town alive, with probably the most problematic being leather and wool eventually clogging up your storage as it's very easy to overproduce while the consumption of clothes is fixed with your population, at some point you'll just have to trade them away since productivity of farms falls off a cliff if the nearby barns are full. There are certainly a couple of "death spirals" in the game where if you don't keep close tabs on your production, you can very easily get into a unrecoverable positive feedback loop.

The difficulty seems insane until you realize a couple of things: walking distance matters a lot so instead of building a large town, you should spread around the map keeping stockpiles/barns/houses and workplaces close together, production spread out, markets are incredibly important and the penalties for not having enough tools, clothing and education is severe. Also most workplaces are most efficient with just 1 or 2 workers, not maxing it out.

I wish there was a bit more granularity in the difficulty settings: disasters are a single checkbox so while managing fires is fun, managing a tornado that absolutely destroys everything in its path is not and there is no option to turn them on or off individually. It's also a shame that the terrain isn't really deformable: any hills or mountains are permanently not buildable so your nice town will eventually end up with paths that randomly stop but the citizens are still able to walk where you can't build.

To play a complete "vanilla" game you'll spend around 40-50 hours on a single map, maybe 100-150 hours to complete all achievements and there are tons of mods that can easily extend the playtime to 1000 hours.

In summary an excellent game and I really hope we get a Banished II, but I haven't seen anything about the developer in a while now, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

Addictive, engrossing resource management that's challenging and scaleable for various playstyles. Once you've played a bunch of the base game there are also quite a few well crafted mods to try.

when the popullations is bigger than 800, no matter if you have the best computer in planet, it will lags. And the dev who created the game doens't cares about this. I love the game and know the potential, but it is impossible to play

Very confused by all the positive reviews. This is a basic city builder with tedious mechanics and very unbalanced resources / demands. I played the game for several days in Easy mode to get the hang of it and it is already boring.

You start with a few people and some resources. Also some starter homes in easy mode. There is usual stuff like homes for the people, food, storage, resources for building like lumber and stone. All the possible buildings are open, there is nothing to level up for. There are many games just like that, Land of Vikings is the first that comes to mind.

Tutorial explains well the mechanics but doesn't cover people health and happiness. These stats, however, were mostly unaffected in my games except for one random disease outbreak. Education is also not covered. I tried building all the town buildings just to see what happens. School seems important as some forums noted educated people work better (not sure though how to measure this exactly). Chapel raised happiness by half a point. Town Hall provides statistics (this should be just available for free) and also can accept "nomads".

All the buildings require significant amount of building resources, some I felt were unreasonable. I understand this is a resource management game but it just sets you up to fail eventually. While you can grow trees, stone and iron are scattered around the map in limited quantities. You can build a quarry and a mine but they take a lot of space, can be only built in very specific locations (there is no terraforming), get depleted quite fast and after depleted, cannot be destroyed.

Trade is virtually non-existent. I started 3 towns. In one, I've not seen a single trader the whole game. In the other, a trader would appear only once in a few years and would neither have goods I want nor wanted to buy what I had. You're only given 1 animal type, 2 vegetables and 2 orchard seeds. If you want more variety, you'll need to wait for a trader to offer that (which can take decades) and then they will only trade for tools and clothes that you need yourself. (Btw if you don't get sheep, might as well just restart because otherwise you can't have reliable supply of materials for clothes.) So if you run out of a resource, you can't trade for it either.

There is no way to get new people either. The said nomads never arrived for many years. Maybe I had to wait longer but this brings me to the next point: there is nothing to do when you get your basic town going. No decorations, no new buildings to look forward to. I built a tavern that kept cranking up ale. I'm still not sure what for. It didn't improve happiness and no one wanted to trade it.

I've seen worse games and it was fun for a few hours but even on sale it's way overpriced for that. I liked that it didn't have any fighting / attack aspect like Land of Vikings and some other games but that's about it.

Half-finished sandbox. Has maybe 10% of the gameplay of a game like Anno. I can't believe I paid for this. The UI is from the 1990s and so bad it hurts. There is no point to this game.

I really wanted to like this game but the AI is just too terrible. I don't ask for perfect altruism from my citizens, but the inability to set up simple supply lines from a dock to a storage barn to 4 houses, when they are all right next to one another is honestly pathetic.

Challenging city builder, amazing at wasting time. Hard to master. Put buildings down and yell at your screen waiting for the people to get educated so they finally build your town!!!

After many years still my favourite town building game, the perfect combo of tracking population graphs and deforestation

It's an older game that is no longer being supported... so buy it when its on sale. It's a fun game to play if you like city builder games, but there is no "end" eventually you will get to a point where you just want to start over again. There's tons of potential for more but it will never come. But I still pop in and create a new settlement from time to time because it just works.

This is a poorly made and executed game by a team who clearly have no user experience or testing reviewers. So many glitchy issues that it is, unfortunately, entirely unplayable. Menus scroll to the bottom so you can't select anything - even gameplay options. No tutorial, no instructions, there is a compendium of material you can get to if you'd like to read a white paper on it, but guess what? It also auto scrolls to the bottom so you can't even select the chapters to look at your specific questions. There is no learning curve. People will just start dying. The menu is poorly laid out and hard to figure out what needs to be done. Where does a mine go? I guess you can just pick something that looks like a mountain. Roads are limited to solid increments of 90 degrees, which makes very awkward building especially because the game likes to smack you in between lots of mountains or obstacles, which you must build around. Hard to do if you only get directly up or down options - the auto build, if you try to stretch a road out a bit - will only do straight and 90 degree angled turns. It's really just awkward all the way around. Bummer.

Great little game but vanilla its kinda like vanilla ice cream mods on the other hand makes this game so great. Tons of things to do and min max but the AI needs some help for the most part. you wont be disappointed if you like games like this.

Villagers love to do nothing even after repeated commands to clear resources or build structures.

Banished offers a city-building experience that promises deep strategy, but unfortunately, it falls short in several key areas, making it a frustrating and ultimately underwhelming game. The premise of managing a group of exiled travelers to build and sustain a growing settlement is intriguing, but the lack of meaningful progression and the steep difficulty curve can quickly sour the experience.

One of the game's biggest flaws is its micromanagement-heavy gameplay. While resource management is essential in city-building games, Banished takes it to an extreme. The constant need to monitor each citizen’s needs, supply levels, and production is tedious and repetitive. The game offers little in the way of automation, leaving players constantly juggling tasks rather than enjoying the creative aspects of building a thriving city.

The AI also doesn’t help, with villagers often performing inefficient or illogical tasks, which can quickly lead to resource shortages or unhappy citizens. Furthermore, the limited scope for expansion and the lack of clear direction makes the game feel aimless, with little reward for the effort put into managing your settlement.

Visually, Banished is serviceable, but its lack of detail and charm fails to compensate for the gameplay frustrations. The soundtrack is minimal, adding little to the atmosphere. Overall, Banished feels like a missed opportunity in the city-building genre, offering a clunky, punishing experience that lacks the depth and polish of better alternatives. It’s a game that might appeal to a niche audience, but for most, it’s a forgettable and exhausting experience.

Good and complex game (or simple sandbox city builder).
Like a less beautiful, but more complex version of Manor Lords without war

It's a fun game but man is it hard. I don't know if it's a skill issue on my end or what but I seem to fail once I start getting to about 40 people. Every time without fail!

Highly addicting! I was looking for a game similar to AOE only without the "battle" aspect. This game delivered. I found myself playing until 1am the night I bought it & man oh man is it fun!

fantastic game, although a little skimp in content. I wish the creator made more

Coziest little simulator

I wish more city builders leaned into survival and out of combat like this.

My only negative is that we can't even out the ground, & I do not mean like mountains, I mean small hills we can barely see. We still can't build anything on them & they mess up my plans and it annoys me since it's so small of a difference between buildable slope and not buildable slope.

The AI is terrible. Builders refuse to build so you're settlement starves and freezes while they do the job of laborers or just idle to death.

Its an ok game. But very slow, population is ever so slow to increase, you just dont have enough workers to keep up with the demands of food, tools, labourers etc. Then they start dying from starvation. Vicious circle. Any tips would be appreciated?

Expect to invest hours just for the AI to go rogue and nuke it all. Your workers will just suddenly stop producing tools or food until your population of 1000+ tanks to <100 in a single year, and then you will never be able to recover above 150 before your population crashes again. Would only be good as a free, one-time play. Hot ahh trash

its a great game but i wish i don't get so much lag after getting 1000+ population

Fun game but addictive and time consuming. A more realistic juggling act of resources vs profit. I love this game.

Oldie but goodie! A comfort pick for me. Even though there are now many games like this one out there, I find I always come back home to Banished for a spell.

Still the best resource-oriented town building game I've ever played. Love this gem.

there is no real progress after u get the hang of it and unlocked everything by trading. citizens dont upgrade like in anno. its fun at first but after 8h i have everything unlocked and dont see a point in further play. all i can do is just incease my population and production by building the same things over and over. i played on medium, maybe increased chance of random disasters is more fun but it seems like it simply would slow down progress

I've been playing this game for many years now and, after checks notes 285(!) hours, I finally decided to turn off my mods and subject myself to vanilla Banished once again. And honestly? It's not too bad. I'm going for the achievements right now (you can't earn achievements with mods on) and it's tough but worthwhile, I think. Top tier game. I play it in my downtime and it's really easy to just sink hours into it without realising.

Absolutely love this game. Bought it upon release and still come back to it once a year or so for a play through.

One of a kind game, and can't quite find anything else that matches the gameplay. Lot's of fun, very relaxing, highly recommended.

Terrible game. Very difficult to guide the townsfolk and they seem to consume more than they produce. A fairy pointless game ending in disappointment time and again. Little to no pay off. Absolutely not worth playing if it were free and since I payed, I certainly feel i was robbed.

This game is a good balance of fairly difficult and easy to master as far as city builders go. No matter how long its been since I played, I find myself drawn back to it - making unnecessarily large villages. Its challenging and requires focus but calming and helps me sleep at night. Great fun.

I've played a lot of city builders and all have more features. Banished is so much more simple and a balancing act where need enough tools clothes and houses and especially food for people. As it grows outward until if mess up the balance and the houses are to far from their jobs and not enough tools to speed them up everything implodes and a death spiral of starvation kicks in. They all to busy starving to bring in the crops and eat them. Sounds bad i know, but it totally your fault for not planning ahead properly and not keeping an eye on production. Not that every merchant for years only had seeds you already had and really needed to trade for food

Having said that can see the DNA of banished in so many games that came after and a good game should get harder as you get further in. Plus so hooked there so many things i should be doing than restarting Banished, but i probably will XD

I still come back and play this one whenever I am looking for a city builder. AI on the workers can be iffy, but you know, real life people too.

I love this game highly recommended if you seek time to kill, there are plenty of mods and tutorials around to get what you want.

I love this game. One of my favourite builders, a bit old (would love to see a remake/remaster), can get very challenging in the late-game.

TLDR: It's a casual city builder but it still holds up in 2024 as a cozy, low system-requirement timesink.

PC Review + Steam Deck Impressions

Great game! Challenging at times, but not too hard to get started. Decent workshop content to keep things fresh.

Hi, it is very awkward, tricky game, noticed that over 15 years of living the game unexpectedly begun eliminate your tough gained citizens (workers) and this is main problem, this game is not easy, tricky and unstable, I try to cope with that but how long...? Any game should be enjoyable.

fantastic; manor lords but 10 years earlier and much more intimate (one city to rule them all instead of a bunch of cities and such)

This is one of the greatest civilization building games out there. It's so easy to pick up because there are no complicated rules. Your people are easy to keep happy (I assume it's because they're recently banished from their home). It's so easy to lose hours in this game and love every second of it.

OK foundation but limited. Single developer so only as much effort as one person can put into it and eventually abandoned.

Short of it is that there are only like 15 building types, a couple of crop and ranch options, no tower defense against bandits or wildlife ... just sort of plain. Got old, super fast. Way better and deeper titles and builders just like this, such as Stranded: Alien Dawn, Ixion, Endzone, Frostpunk, Surviving Mars, etc.

A far more casual take on the management/city builder type of game. Its fine I suppose but I found it extremely limiting. Once you build every building there is not much more to do besides watching the numbers go up like some sort of clicker game. Personally, the game needs more events similar to its natural disasters to have it go beyond that casual relaxing hole it is in. Again, if that is what it is going for then this is a good one of those but it just got boring really quickly really fast. Still, on sale and if you are looking for casual city building then this one is for you.

Banished 2.0. The only game better than this. Kiwiportraits

One of my fist settlement builders. Great game.

Great, simple game. The replay value can be somewhat limited when you figure everything out, but it is a beautiful and peaceful game.

Played since release day - never got around to posting a review but I have enjoyed it. It's a relaxing game with a little bit of mild panic when you first start - must feed the people!

This is still a fun game to play, if you like survival/farming games, thanks to the many mods that add fresh content.

Relaxing game, really enjoyable to play. The gameplay is logical and smooth, but also requires constant attention, especially at the beginning of a new save. After 200–300 inhabitants, the game becomes quite repetitive, especially after buying every seed type. But since it is possible to mod it, you can add content for the late game and correct that issue. For me, that's one of "If I had to keep only one videogame while on a desert island" type of game.