1849

Quick Summary: This is a very enjoyable game! I love the different starting bonuses. It gives a range of how you want to play each scenario. Whenever I went into the red I knew why, and I was able to restart the scenario without being mad that I wasted a bunch effort. Very fun, engaging, and not stressful. 1849 has one of the worst soundtracks I have EVER heard. I sincerely endorse this game!

[Played with all DLC]

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very enjoyable

Randomly stumbled across this game while looking up strategy games. After watching some gameplay on Youtube, I knew I had to get this game and try it for myself. This game is amazing and well worth the money. It's like Sim City but in the western. There is a story with goals for you to achieve while also putting out fires and keep up with the towns folks. If you get ahead of yourself, they provide challenges along the way which repays you back further improving your overall experience. Highly recommended!

A solid little city builder with all the usual bells and whistles. I thoroughly enjoy this game for what it is. A relaxed wild west/gold rush era city builder. Your objectives can vary depending on your location, and each adds a nice challenge. This is not going to be on the size level as say, Anno. However, that is just what I wanted/expected. The game can be repetitive, like ANY game. I however, was never bored. There was enough flavor to keep me hooked.

If you enjoy little city builders, you'll enjoy this game. If you enjoy the wild west genre (no gunslinging), you'll enjoy this game. I do not regret this purchase in the slightest. Highly recommend to any of the other Western fans out there.

once you understand the dependency graph of housing and production chain, this game is addictive, DLC also brings a need of little different thinking. I had purchased earlier, but got to play recently, And I loved it. This is not a real city building nor a puzzle but, its somewhere in the middle, and thus keeps fun in a different way.

Decent minimalistic city builder/manager with few flaws.

Pros:
- easy and relaxing
- polished tutorial
- ok graphics and music. Feels very Wild Western-ish
- quite unique scenarios: each map makes you to use different set of buildings
- actually one of the few Wild West city builders

Cons
- manual trading (Imagine playing Anno, where you need to send each merchant ship individually every time) THIS ONE NEEDS TO BE FIXED
- despite scenarios having different goals and different sets of available buildings each time - they all can be beat in the same manner. You just check which good you can produce/sell this time and which ones you have to buy. That quickly makes entire game quite repetitive.

Devs:
I know this game is almost 7 years old at this point, so I expect no updates. But please keep in mind, that this manual trading is a big stopper.

Simple looks and small maps are the first impression, but they are eclipsed by the game strategy. Almost every map has a unique aspect of gameplay in order to win.

It took me 26 hours to clear the main game, DLC and acheivements.

Enjoyable for the price if you catch it on sale.

The economy is broken in terms of trying to trade for profit - you only make money by having at least half your population unemployed.

The chapter goals are easy to meet without real struggle, but meeting the commissions poses a little challenge that's fun.

Otherwise, a fairly relaxing play.

This is a city building game set in the 1800's California gold rush. This is kind of like the old Impressions city builder games (Zeus, Pharaoh, etc). This was fun and played through all the scenarios. Fun game. You may want to buy this on sale though because once you have played a few games, it can get repetitive. 8/10.

I played this game through 6 years ago when it was released, and I'm playing through again now. There are multiple campaigns with campaigns inside campaigns... So the game is much larger than you think!

It's all about building a town, trading etc. Think along the lines of all the Egyptian city builders like Cleopatra etc and you're on the right track, on a slightly smaller scale.

Very enjoyable, and something fun to come back to years later :)

Hello friends. I found another game i did not choose to review because i either forgot and moved on, or i never beat it. This is a city simulator game, but not a major one. This is actually more like a mobile port of a game, or feels like that. The basics of the game is that you make a town "profitiable" enough to be substainable and move on to more challenging levels. This takes place during the gold rush in the United States during the 1800's. Don't expect it to be historically correct. Just a small city simulator.

I recommend it if you like city simulators that are not micro management gaming all the time..more casual than others. Anways, i recommend it.

This game is more or less a shot-for-shot remake of the old Impressions City-Building Series (Caesar, Pharaoh, etc.), but set in the Wild West.

Which is good in theory, but there are a lot of good reasons that gaming's evolved past this since the last of those games came out in the early aughts. Resource management is a nightmare, houses will downgrade all the way from big mansions to little shacks because you had a temporary timber or alcohol shortage, non-renewable resources run out practically instantly, there are no options to automate the trade system to keep from running out of key import resources (or sell your resources you've set to export)...every place the designer had a decision to make about game flow, they made the wrong one.

Basically, this game would've been very good in 1999, but it's not 1999 anymore and there's no excuse for this kind of design even in a casual game. I wanted to like it, but it simply isn't very good. More frustrating than fun even for big fans of the genre.

1849 is a gold rush-themed city builder in the same vein as the classic Impressions series (Pharaoh, Caesar, Zeus, and Emperor). It's a little less complex than the aforementioned games, and the strategy is pretty much the same for each level, making it a little repetitive after a while. Still, it's a long game (20 hours in, and I still haven't finished it), and it's certainly worth picking up on sale.

The UI has some flaws; first of all, it covers up too much of the playing field. There are only two 'advisors': population and economy. The economics advisor doesn't give you nearly enough information about where your money is going. When buying and selling goods, you cannot set a purchase/sell level, where anything below/above that number is bought/sold. If you run out of a resource needed for your houses, they will devolve; thus, you must keep an eye on how much stock you have in your warehouse. You can tag items in the warehouse to 'hoard', but only food and alcohol, not resources such as wood and fabric.

As someone pointed out in an earlier review, when you start the game, you're likely to think, 'Wow! This is such a small map.' However, you really don't need much space to fulfill the terms of the missions. In addition, buildings can neither be rotated nor moved once placed. They can, however, be deactivated to save money. Also, there is no indication of this in game, butmines do eventually run out of resources.

Pros:

+ charming graphics.
+ multiple 'difficulty' levels (starting resources per level).
+ simple, straightforward gameplay.
+ sound effects and music are appropriate.
+ achievements.
+ trading cards.

Cons:

- the UI is too big for the screen.
- not enough detail about commerce.
- trading cannot set continuous limits to buy/sell.
- buildings half in/half out of firehall zone will burn down.

Meh:

~ strategy is basically the same for each level.
~ gameplay can be repetitive and shallow.
~ too simple for hardcore city builder aficionados.

Ephy Rating: 6/10

Summary: This would be a decent 'My First City Builder' game, assuming it's purchased on sale. Alternatively, if you're looking for a 'city builder lite', this is also an adequate choice. Personally, I enjoyed being able to use a similar strategy for most levels, but YMMV. If you want a more complex city builder, try Civ Rome, Children of the Nile, or Banished (in that order of difficulty/challenge).

If you are looking for amazing graphics and in depth city building and management, then this is not the game for you. If you are looking for an easy building game that can pass some time then look no further. I personally enjoy this game, even though some things can be quite annoying like; not being able to move buildings once placed or rotate them, buildings that are half in and half out of fire department lines still burn down, being robbed even with a sherrif building with the zone, building degrading back to shack and plenty more but I won't write a book... The difficulty does increase the further you travel, so a good strategy is needed.

All in all for the full price tag on this, I wouldn't recommend, but if you enjoy city building, regardless of the graphics and management system, then I would recommend grabbing this at a discounted price.

I really enjoyed this game. It was quick to beat though, and I am already wishing there were more campaign missions available because I really enjoyed the different challenges of each one. I played through both the base game and the DLC since purchasing a couple of days ago.

It has a nice balance of puzzle management elements, and city building for each scenario. It was super fun trying to figure out the best balance of things and also which starting opportunity to pick for each.

Again, my only lament is there are not enough scenarios to play through even with the DLC. I thoroughly enjoyed this not too brain exhausting little game, and will reply it again in the future.

Teal Deer

• Developers: SomaSim
  
• Publishers: SomaSim
  
• Initial release: May 2014
  
• Genre: Simulation
  
[*]#Worth/NotWorth: #NotWorth

Exposition, Concurrence and Summation

1849 is something that at first glance looks to be nice, quaint, relaxing little affair. Build a simple western town from a single isometric perspective. No pesky angles and rotation to get in your way. It turns out 1849 is anything but relaxing.

In 1849, you are tasked with building a city to support trade, commerce and the oncoming onslaught of tourists ready to strike it rich and find some gold.

Look, I thought this game looked fun, a nice distraction. But to be brutally honest, its bad. Its unbalanced, its tedious, its unfair.. for no reason. I started in on the campaign a bit hoping to get a grasp of things, sure enough I did. I figured it was more directed in during that type of mode so it was a bit tougher on you but it turns out that even in free-play its awful.

I will attempt to explain, there is an economy of resources that your city can make and export or import with money you've earned through selling your products. The thing is you must first establish a trade route, so far so good, however there is no way to make trade routes for anything other than what 4 other cities want. As in the seed you generate at the starting of your map, should it not have lumber per se, you are completely left out in the dust. There is no way to make lumber and therefore no way for your city to expand.

You need to collect rent from houses, you need to create jobs for the residents of those houses, However the cost of running the businesses to employ them is generally higher the the amount of rent you get from low income housing. So, what do you do to keep your city afloat? The short answer is sell any and all goods not needed for your people to whoever and anyone that will by it. You'll need food obviously, you'll need lumber for houses and expansion, and you'll need some variety of alcohol to satiate the peoples boredom.

And because production and running costs are at a premium you'll need to import something most likely being lumber. Which in my experience costs three times as much as anything I was exporting such as shoes made from animal hides and brandy made from grapes. Without selling the goods I was losing money on production costs and even after I sold them any disasters like earthquakes or random fires and rampant crime do to unemployment made my cost of importing lumber even higher. Bringing me and my city down further and further. A cycle I could not break and in fact saw fit to make me bankrupt.

I should mention that even though this is a city builder; it makes no attempt at any point to become automated. As in every time I needed to sell my exports I had to do it manually making it even more tedious. It's come to my attention this is also a mobile game and I have nothing inherently against those however I do know they are in general designed to be played in very short stints which this game does indeed evoke that sentiment maybe TOO quickly. It doesn't seem very in depth but its not shallow. Its just not worth your time, money or effort.

THE GIST
All in all, I just can't recommend this game to anyone.. for any reason. Play Cities: Skylines. I honestly thought the throwback to static isometric camera angle would make things a bit easier to grasp but the game seems so tilted towards your destruction its just not fun on any level. No.. just say no.

[quote]More here — Station Argus[/quote]

I'm not in the mood to attack other civilizations after building my own city from scratch and I like a little more of a "story" when I build up my things, so I thought 1849 was going to be a nice panacea to my City Builder Sim illness.

Not the cowbell I needed.

1849 is very slow and frankly easy to win each level. However, it is time consuming. The majority of the time you've built the required number of buildings and you're waiting for them to accumulate the needed number of supplies to move onto the next section of California to colonize. The plot of land you're given is relatively tiny, given how much you can really move around.

Each game I was given an "edge" from completing a previous round. There was no right or wrong answer to what helps you, just whatever helps you in how you finish the objectives in the time alotted. This, I found helpful. It benefitted my playing style which is very kind because I have a certain way I like to set up my time management games. It also allowed me to experiment each level.

What drove me relatively bonkers was that nothing really changed from level to level. Usually there's something new introduced that makes a very significant impact, but this never happened in my course of playing. I had to use multiple important buildings because the reach was impossibly short and your town/settlement will go to hell in a moment's notice and you will not salvage it unless you can accomplish a few key things in the first few moments of establishing your settlement.

But once you figure out your pattern of play, you generally just sit there, wait for your settlers to upgrade their houses, and just keep refueling things.

It's perhaps the worst city building sim I've played and I was highly disappointed. Wasn't worth the price I paid. I've honestly just sat still most of the time and done absolutely nothing. It's also a bit dated-looking as well so there are prettier games out there for your money.

Maybe this could be a game to teach small children about areas of California during the Gold Rush, but I don't believe this could keep their attention too long. This likely plays better on a tablet or a phone, as well. Personally, I'm not a fan and even after forcing myself to give it a good go, it wasn't meant to be.

I spent a snowy weekend playing this game and I doubt I'll play it much more (if ever again.) In general, I am a huge fan of city builders and after reading the mostly positve reviews I was psyched to give this a try. It is probably one of the most limited and frustrating games I've ever played.

The type of resources you can create/gather/mine/farm are pre-selected from the beginning and sometimes make no sense. I hda one game where I needed to export stone bricks, but couldn't build a stone quarry. so I would have to buy stones, then turn them into stone bricks, then export them for less than the cost of the original stone.

Also, you can't tell the quanities of anything (this is a pet peeve of mine in city builders.) How many vinyards do I need to make how much wine, how much wheat makes how much bread (and how much bread is needed per citizen?)
You can't unlock new trade routes. You can't unlock new buildings. Sometimes getting off the ground is incredibly difficult, other times, building a massive city, that can quickly become unweildy because for instance, the lumber cycle, lumber -> boards -> furniture, is extremely slow, so you may for instance, run out of room to put lumber yards.

Anyway, overall, disappointed. Graphics were cute but you can't do anything more than zoom. You can't rotate the view or objects. If you're looking for an afternoon time waster, maybe try this. Otherwise, go check out Tropico 4.

1849 is basically a miniture city-building game where each game is 10-25 minutes, perfect when you have a short time to burn. The mechanics are not very deep but it works and you usually get to make meaningful choices during each game when you are given optional objectives which could be difficult but rewarding.
Again if you are bored and want a city game, this 1849 is quick and stress-free but still provides decent challenge.

As a fan of old Sierra style sim games such as "pharaoh", I really enjoyed this game. Of course, this game is very easy to handle and it really does not offer any challenge on economics, trading etc.

But then again, 1849 is a very simple and fun game to play, it offers the experience of building city, trading for recources and so on without hours of learning and failing. It does just what it promises.

If you are new to these type of games, I really recommend to start with this one.

Pros
- Things happen quickly
- Randomized trading partners

Cons:
- Too simple
- Feels like a 99c iOS game
- Radomized Trading partners are some times nonsensical or inaccessibile (wants a resource you cannot easily make)
- Limiting city space

As city-builders run short these days, i decided to have a go at this game. When i first started it i had in mind all the older city building game i already played such as SimCity, Cities XL, the Anno series and Sierra games (Pharaon, Zeus, the Caesar series...), the last which apparently served as the main inspiration for this game.

Thus, i was not surprised of the game mechanics which mainly consists of starting from scratch with three objectives that need to be filled. You then start to build some houses and production buildings, and the way to proceed is as i said above based on Sierra's mechanics: citizens need a certain resource/building in order to upgrade their houses, and therefore increase the rent income. Run short of any resource and the houses will shortly degrade to the highest level it can attain with the remaining ones.

Production on it's side consists of running a production chain which may consist of one up to three buildings in order to well... produce resources. These resources can be either used to satisfy citizen's needs, be sold at trading routes or given to the few events (up to three per mission from my experience). Some other elements have been included such as crime or fire, with respectively the sheriff and fire brigade in order to fight against them.

At this stage of the review you are probably thinking "Well that doesn't look so bad, does it?". And unfortunately it does. Let me explain you why, in the same way as i described the game above:

You start each game with three objectives: there is absolutely no time-limit or constraint of any kind. There is no other way to lose the game then through bad management, which is nearly impossible after a playing for a few hours. You can start from three "difficulty" options at the start of each mission, but it does only impact the first few minutes of play.

The resource management of this game is very simplistic: The raw resources are produced at a steady rate, never influenced by seasons (grapes, grain and cotton all the year! ) nor resource availability (hunters producing without animals, lumber mills without forests...). Stock management has been dealt with by giving your warehouse an unlimited storage capacity. You cannot predict as well the resource supply and demand of your city easily, as no production and consumption summary is given, which means that you will have to over-produce all goods required to avoid stock shortage.

Trade is the simplest form that could be included. You pay a "fee" to open the trade route with a city, and then after you can import or export goods from there. Goods are imported/exported at a fixed price, with unlimited quantity. This means that you can sell the town next door 100k logs of lumber at the same price, and import 100k crates of beer, without any impact on future trade or product price. Production capacity and demand are simply not taken into account in this game. This lead to a "give me money" button that can be pressed once in a while, without thinking any further.

Wages and rents are also fixed, population satisfaction is simply not taken into account, and unemployment's only impact is the color of the total population indicator. Hazards like crime and fire are solved by having the relevant building, effectively leading the risk to 0%. Other natural hazards likely never happen, or even if they do their impact is so minor that you do not even need to take them into account.

One back side of this game simplicity is that a resource shortage (non-anticipable as said before) can lead to total mayhem. A house degrading can mean worker shortage (which has no proper indicator), and this shortage can escalate to a complete desertion: some buildings required by citizens are shut down, leading to further house degrading, leading to further work shortage... A simple feature to give work priorities could eliminate this issue but it has not been implemented.

To sum up, this game is simplistic, terribly easy, and becomes quickly repetitive. I can say without any risk that after playing this game for 2 hours like i did you will have gotten all that this game has to offer. The only difficulties that can arise are not part of the intended gameplay but are the result of a lack of management tools and features that are included in most other city-builders.

Despite having the full california on the main menu and a large map when starting a game, you are confined in a tiny square without any opportunity to expand. That shocked me first but after playing for a while you understand that this space is all you need to have a working untouchable, steady producing money-farm.

To finish this review i wanted to say that i understand that this a new indie development studio, but i just took a look of the game description of this store page. "complex cities" and "deep simulation games" are not the words i would use to describe this game. On this opposite i would use the words "simplistic" and "casual". This is typically a game you could run on social networks or mobile phones, but in no way a city-builder simulation or resource management game.

Recommendation:
- For new players discovering the genre: This game could be an interesting first city-builder to play, but you will soon outgrow this game and regret buying it in the first place. If you want to start with a city-building game you should look for classics such as the ones i listed in the first pagagraph.
- For experimented city-building games players: Do not buy this game as you will feel robbed after playing for a few hours. Used to more complex management games it will feel like riding a car on a carousel after being used to drive a real one.

Sorry for the long review, but i didn't want to freely throw a bunch of critics without explaining why i came to these conclusions.