Month: July 2022

Game Review: Banished (Steam/PC)

7/10/2022

Ban­ished is a city-build­ing game released Feb­ru­ary 18, 2014 by Shin­ing Rock Soft­ware for PC. You direct a group of exiled peo­ples as they strive to sur­vive by gath­er­ing resources, build­ing dwellings, farms, and oth­er struc­tures.

Rat­ing: 3 out of 5

Price: Paid $6.79 out of MSRP $19.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: No

One Word Descrip­tion: Stag­nant

  • Pros: Good bones, good tuto­ri­als, intu­itive, ini­tial­ly fun, many mods to sig­nif­i­cant­ly help
  • Cons: Frus­trat­ing build­ing sys­tem, dif­fi­cul­ty, slow game speed, sound effects

Game Review

Before I start, I need to admit that it was not clear to me until I start­ed writ­ing this that the game was released back in 2014.

OKAY, so, after about an hour of game­play, I found myself need­ing to com­plete all of the tuto­ri­als. That did the trick and the game flowed smoothly…at least for the next hour or two. For the record, I played on the eas­i­est mode. My first city was going swim­ming­ly until I real­ized I was miss­ing some very impor­tant build­ings and then every­one died, and I was left with no work­ers, doom­ing me. I then tried a sec­ond game/city which I restart­ed a few times to get a more favor­able map. For that playthrough I was para­noid and would save con­stant­ly in case cat­a­stro­phe struck. I did have to load the save once. There is a flow you have to fig­ure out time­wise to avoid wide­spread death. First, estab­lish­ing sev­er­al (real­ly, all of them) food sources is nec­es­sary, then make sure you don’t clear-cut too much because the work­ers just do what­ev­er, noth­ing in a par­tic­u­lar order as far as I could tell. Then, a trad­ing post is nec­es­sary for emer­gency low-food times (which is often), and then quick­ly estab­lish­ing a black­smith before every­one’s tools are bro­ken and things go even more slow­ly. And then as the resources start to dwin­dle, you have to quick­ly build a quar­ry and a mine. How­ev­er, the return on that isn’t too much and not only that but the death rate is high and mys­te­ri­ous if it was­n’t from star­va­tion. Even­tu­al­ly, things go smooth­ly, though, and some­times nomads will appear at the Town Cen­ter (if you’re able to afford build­ing one) that you can allow to join the set­tle­ment or not. They pro­vide much need­ed labor until they ran­dom­ly dis­ap­pear or demand hous­ing even though there are already hous­es.

Just like any city-build­ing/­sur­vival game, you need the basics: shel­ter and food. Ban­ished suc­cess­ful­ly illus­trates the sig­nif­i­cance of these two ele­ments to sur­vival. Every­thing else is just a side thought until those are tak­en care of. Graph­ics are fine, not the best or the worst. The music starts out good until it–and espe­cial­ly the sound effects, damn cows–grate upon the ears. In fact, that about sums up the game in a nut­shell: Enjoy­able ini­tial­ly before becom­ing aggra­vat­ing.

My gripes are many.

  • Build­ing any­thing is supreme­ly frus­trat­ing. Build­ings are best built one by one because it is unnec­es­sary to have all of the resources before set­ting the build­ing plots. This in and of itself is not the prob­lem. The major issue is that there’s no way to pri­or­i­tize any par­tic­u­lar build­ing. For exam­ple, if you set the plots for 2 hous­es and a farm and in total you’d need 40 wood amongst the 3 build­ings, the builders will allo­cate the wood slow­ly amongst the 3. They will still build the first house you set first, but not until the resources are spread apart. Apart from remov­ing the plots, you can’t tell them to go build that farm first. And then, when they are final­ly build­ing the house, it takes sooooo loooong for them to fin­ish because they have to go get food or rest or get more items? Even though they already have the items there?
  • That brings me to anoth­er gripe: it’s con­fus­ing how the vil­lagers oper­ate. Say that Jack­ie is the black­smith and there’s an option to fol­low a par­tic­u­lar vil­lager around the map. Well, then lat­er, Jack­ie is a min­er and Lem­my is the black­smith. Why? As I men­tioned pri­or, the builder will ran­dom­ly trav­el around the map instead of final­ly build­ing that bridge that’s been in the works for the past 3 years.
  • Hous­ing is a prob­lem, too. Each house as sev­er­al slots in them for inhab­i­tants. So, say that each house has 8 slots and there are 8 hous­es for a total of 64 open­ings. Even if there are 55 peo­ple, sev­er­al peo­ple will com­plain of no hous­ing despite there being 9 avail­able slots.
  • Mys­te­ri­ous dying. If there is a “low food” alert that’s been going on for too long, or “too cold” com­plaints, then peo­ple will die. You are alert­ed to their deaths. How­ev­er, some­times, peo­ple will dis­ap­pear, but you get no noti­fi­ca­tions except that a farm plot has no work­er all of the sud­den. Do they leave? Do they die? UFO body snatch­ers?
  • Unex­plained ele­ments. I guess the mys­te­ri­ous dying goes under this head­ing, too, but there are oth­ers like a pas­ture will get an infec­tion. The game tells you absolute­ly noth­ing about how to fix it. The work­er there will just dis­ap­pear and then appear and then dis­ap­pear. It nev­er explains how to get more vil­lagers. They have chil­dren, but it is not a con­trol­lable ele­ment. I can’t encour­age or dis­cour­age growth. When there’s an excess of sup­plies, there seem to be no chil­dren born, but when there’s hard times, there seems to be way too many babies who end up dying.
  • Mines and Quar­ries vs. Gath­er­ing resources with labor­ers. Both the quar­ries (stone) and mines (coal and iron) are both expen­sive to build but seem to not be worth the effort. The pro­duc­tion from either one is by far slow­er than gath­er­ing in the wild with labor­ers and seem to yield much less, too. Per­haps they are last ditch efforts after exhaust­ing the map.

Max play­time before quit­ting and unin­stall: 5 hours.

Over­all, it feels like a frac­tion of a game. The bones are sol­id, and the core mechan­ics are good. How­ev­er, by the time all build­ings are built, it just…stag­nates. There’s noth­ing left aside from watch­ing the vil­lagers scur­ry about com­plain­ing of bro­ken tools, the tem­per­a­ture, and hunger. I found myself wish­ing I could build a mil­i­tary or have some ene­my come so that I could fight them. It need­ed an upgrade ele­ment to keep it going. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it does­n’t have that. The replay val­ue is extreme­ly low. I under­stand that it is now an 8‑year-old game, but games like Age of Empires have been around for 25 years and offer much more! There­fore, I can­not rec­om­mend this game. I’m glad I bought it on sale because it is def­i­nite­ly not worth $20 MSRP to me. The ini­tial allure quick­ly fades into frus­tra­tion and soon into dis­sat­is­fac­tion.

Game Review — Deiland: Pocket Planet (Switch)

writ­ten 7/06/2022

Dei­land: Pock­et Plan­et, released April 15, 2021, for Switch by devel­op­er CHIBIG, is an adventure/simulation/RPG remade from Dei­land which released for PS4 and Steam in 2018, which was also a remake from the orig­i­nal Dei­land: Tiny Plan­et which was released for iOS and Android in 2016. Pock­et Plan­et is a farm­ing adven­ture on plan­et Dei­land where the pro­tag­o­nist, Arco, is the sole inhab­i­tant. The young boy must care for the minor plan­et through farm­ing, craft­ing, build­ing, fish­ing, min­ing, and pro­tect its heart crys­tal from mon­sters and those who seek to use the pow­er for them­selves.

Rat­ing: 2.8 out of 5

Price: Paid $8.16 out of MSRP $19.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: No

One Word Descrip­tion: Bor­ing

  • Pros: Throw­back to Sum­mer in Mara (if you played that first), good initial/basic game­play, smooth begin­ning advance­ment
  • Cons: Time, ran­dom events, RNG mining/drops, wait­ing, lack of clar­i­ty, bor­ing, fish­ing mechan­ics, fight­ing mechan­ics, minor glitch­es, pun­ish­ing hunger meter, lack of pause fea­ture

Game Review

The begin­ning of the game shows a young boy drift­ing down to a small plan­et. All he has ini­tial­ly is a tent and you get to run around a lit­tle to see that the plan­et is a sphere that rotates (kind of like Mario Galaxy) as you move. This made my ini­tial­ly wor­ried that I might get motion sick­ness because I’m real­ly bad about that, but I found that the more I plant­ed trees, the less I noticed the move­ment. Imme­di­ate­ly, a space trav­el­er appears, intro­duc­ing her­self as Mun from the inter­stel­lar troop­ers. I was excit­ed because hav­ing played Sum­mer in Mara first, I antic­i­pat­ed see­ing char­ac­ters I rec­og­nized. She gives you recipes and quests to start you off. The begin­ning smooth­ly push­es you into the building/farming aspect. I was busy plant­i­ng trees as I saw fit, their place­ment lim­it­ed by water sup­ply which required mate­ri­als. Build­ing new con­structs unlocks fur­ther recipes. Min­ing is heav­i­ly ran­dom in what is mined. You could get rocks, or gold/silver ore, or crys­tals, or in the win­ter, ice. New characters/merchants arrive, and you have 30 sec­onds to decide where to land the space­ship before they give up and go away. Then, when they land, they only stay for about 60 sec­onds.

After the ini­tial excite­ment of plac­ing trees, build­ing, upgrad­ing tools, etc, came the frus­tra­tion that would plague the rest of the game: ran­dom chance and time.

Every­thing is ran­dom, which isn’t ini­tial­ly bad until it is.

  • The fish­ing mechan­ics are just mud­dy and plain obnox­ious and espe­cial­ly in the begin­ning I kept wast­ing the pre­cious bait from hit­ting the wrong but­tons which are com­plete­ly ran­dom.
  • The arrival of vis­it­ing char­ac­ters does­n’t seem to fol­low any par­tic­u­lar order unless it’s to sat­is­fy a dia­logue quest. Giv­en that the quests and gath­er­ing of items spe­cif­ic to each character/merchant are depen­dent upon their vis­its, this gives a sense of help­less­ness to the play­er. There are only 2 char­ac­ters able to be called to the plan­et on demand and even then, they won’t come if cer­tain vari­ables are not in line such as storms, or anoth­er char­ac­ter is there, or some­times I have no clue why they won’t come.
  • The min­ing mechan­ics are just ter­ri­ble. Com­plete­ly ran­dom rate of drops which is super frus­trat­ing if you need a par­tic­u­lar min­er­al. There is a min­ing cave in the game where Arco can mine for crys­tals and then uncov­er some­thing in the back of the cave. To do so, you are allowed 4 mines before the cart is full and now you have to wait for Goliath to ran­dom­ly come so that it can be emp­tied, and you can fur­ther mine. (*spoil­er* it’s the crys­tal heart and adds noth­ing to the game and has no pur­pose)
  • Mete­orites or items will ran­dom­ly fall on the plan­et regard­less of what you’re doing. You could be fish­ing where it strange­ly changes the view, or even sleep­ing. If it hits your plants, they will burn
  • Ene­mies ran­dom­ly spawn. The num­ber ranges from 1–3 and what appears is ran­dom, too. Their drop rates can also be ran­dom depend­ing on the ene­my. For instance, you need insect wings for a quest, but the bees can drop either hon­ey or wings.

Time’s flow was an issue for me. It is unclear how the game tells time because there’s no clock show­ing, just the sky will change col­ors sort of. Each sea­son lasts for 7 days with win­ter being the worst because very few things grow and it’s just bor­ing to wait it out. Sleep­ing only advances time some­what and even stand­ing still did­n’t seem to advance time much, either. Oth­er times, time appears to move too quick­ly, and I’ve lost the oppor­tu­ni­ty to plant a par­tic­u­lar crop that is nec­es­sary for a quest, or that character/merchant has already left the plan­et. Towards the end of the game, there’s noth­ing left to do except wait for time to advance and it became unbe­liev­ably bor­ing. Also, time nev­er stopped. There was no pause fea­ture at all. I’d have to hit the Switch’s Home but­ton to pause.

The sto­ry advances via the main quest line through Mun. Sim­i­lar to Sum­mer in Mara the game is heav­i­ly quest depen­dent. Each com­plet­ed quest will unlock new items to buy from the mer­chants. It was real­ly nice to see Brram from Sum­mer in Mara and see his sto­ry when he’s clear­ly old­er (even at one point try­ing to woo females on his plan­et). Not only was his music nice, but he had the fish bait and food nec­es­sary to sat­is­fy the hunger meter. Even­tu­al­ly, the sto­ry allows move­ment to Anko­ra which was nice because final­ly, some oth­er place than the tiny lit­tle Dei­land. Final­ly, the end boss bat­tle shows up and the game is over unless the play­er wish­es to com­plete­ly fin­ish out the side quests.

The RPG ele­ment — the lev­el up sys­tem — seems com­plete­ly use­less with some­what appre­cia­ble upgrades to sta­mi­na, strength, intel­li­gence, and agili­ty. How­ev­er, the illus­tra­tions are eye-pleas­ing.

That brings me to the fight­ing mechan­ics. Well, it’s prim­i­tive, and many times phys­i­cal attacks would miss the ene­my alto­geth­er if Arco was juu­u­ust turned the wrong direc­tion. There seemed to be a best weapon to use against each ene­my, but I end­ed up either just whack­ing them to death or using mag­ic. Fire mag­ic would burn all of my plants or chick­ens, the light­ning did­n’t seem to work well on the mon­sters I tried, the ice spell seemed use­less because it encased the ene­my in ice but then made them impos­si­ble to hit. The frog spell was prob­a­bly the fun­ni­est one, but I received that too late in the game to real­ly take advan­tage of it. Heal­ing was hard because the heal­ing potions are set all the way at the bot­tom of the item list and since paus­ing is not an option, I was killed a few times try­ing to use a heal­ing potion. The game is by no means, hard, though. Heal­ing was only nec­es­sary for the last boss and the demon mon­ster that dropped horns. Speak­ing of the last boss, that bat­tle was plain obnox­ious. There was lit­er­al­ly no way to get out unscathed and you had to direct Mun to fire oth­er­wise she would­n’t.

The lack of clar­i­ty was frus­trat­ing. I turned to the inter­net a LOT in this game. How does the mine cart get emp­tied? How to get sheep­’s wool? Where is the plant­mu­tate seed? How does one get dan­de­lions? Who the hell is Bom and why do I keep hav­ing food stolen? How to get chick­en for Goliath (OMG you have to BURN the wild chick­ens????)? There’s just too much that’s not obvi­ous or explained. I can’t imag­ine try­ing to play this game before the inter­net made it easy to look things up.

Over­all — I, unfor­tu­nate­ly, do not rec­om­mend it. If you played Sum­mer in Mara it could go either way, but I’d still like­ly tell you to skip it. The game does flesh out Mun and Brram a bit, and does men­tion the pirate races and Ereti, so if that’s what you’re look­ing for, go for it, but def­i­nite­ly don’t pay full price. Ulti­mate­ly, its flaws out­weigh the sim­plis­tic charm of the game (name­ly, time pro­gres­sion and ran­dom chance) and it’s almost like the devel­op­ers want­ed to make a game that has a lit­tle bit of every­thing. I under­stand that it’s 6 years old and was orig­i­nal­ly a mobile game. I mean, it cer­tain­ly plays like a mobile game hop­ing to push micro­trans­ac­tions. Regard­less, I felt like I wast­ed my life play­ing this (took me 2 full days) game that left the taste of BOOOOORING (I even texted that I was bored out of my mind to my broth­er while wait­ing for the rest of the char­ac­ters to vis­it so I could 100% the side quests) in my mouth, which is not how I feel about Sum­mer in Mara, and don’t wish that on some­one else.

Glitch­es

Thank­ful­ly, there weren’t too many glitch­es in this game, but here are 2 that I found, both late in the game.

When try­ing to land in Anko­ra

Attempt­ing to put a track­er on Goliath’s ship. Mun, who isn’t there at all would appear. Lat­er, when she was on the plan­et and tried to talk to her, the dia­logue that Goliath would have spo­ken pops up instead.