Banished

 PC
User Score
8.1

Generally favorable reviews- based on 728 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 522 out of 728
  2. Mixed: 162 out of 728
  3. Negative: 44 out of 728

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  1. saz
    Mar 17, 2014
    4
    Pretty fun but done after 6 hours. There are no enemy's only disasters which aren't fun. The maps aren't that great. Rate of consumption seems to awkwardly eat in big chunks probably because I spent the whole game at 10x speed. Land should have some production rates for crops/hunting. It sucks waiting for trade boats. Trade could be improved by factions that are on the map and you have toPretty fun but done after 6 hours. There are no enemy's only disasters which aren't fun. The maps aren't that great. Rate of consumption seems to awkwardly eat in big chunks probably because I spent the whole game at 10x speed. Land should have some production rates for crops/hunting. It sucks waiting for trade boats. Trade could be improved by factions that are on the map and you have to explore to find. Would like to have knowledge based upgrades. I don't see any depth to the game.… Expand
  2. masc
    Mar 17, 2014
    4
    The ideas behind Banished are nice and the game even plays nice until your city exceeds a certain size. At this point you have build everything there is to build at least once and the only motivation left to expand any further is to reach new personal high score for the number of citizens that live in your town. So my biggest complaint with this game is long term motivation. The secondThe ideas behind Banished are nice and the game even plays nice until your city exceeds a certain size. At this point you have build everything there is to build at least once and the only motivation left to expand any further is to reach new personal high score for the number of citizens that live in your town. So my biggest complaint with this game is long term motivation. The second issue I do have is that it is just far to easy even on the highest difficulty setting after you figured how it works. One last thing so, the after sales support and the communication of the developer is to say it nice "very slow".… Expand
  3. Kragmire
    Dec 31, 2014
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This game has potential, but the way it currently stands you will find yourself bored with it within 4 to 6 hours of gameplay. Modding it will perhaps double the enjoyment time.
    As others have pointed out, one main problem is that the beginning of the game is relatively challenging, but once you survive the first few cold winters, you will find that you spend the rest of your time micro-managing tiny details that have no direct impact on the outcome of the game. Sure it is fun to see your village grow, but it feels very hollow once you realize there is no reason to grow it. There are no other cultures or factions. In fact there is no contact with the outside world at all with the exception of a random trader that wanders through your map with random frequency. The game feels lonely and hollow.
    There are still bugs within the simulation. On occasion you will find that you hit a choke point in your development when you HAVE to build a certain building. You may have all the supplies, idle workers, foundation laid… and the builders will refuse to build it. You will watch their activities as they decide to go gather resources from the far side of the map, etc, while your village starts to wither and die because they refuse to build. This can sometimes cause cascading problems where you can actually lose the game… for no reason you can understand.
    There are some bugs with some of the population mechanics. One year you can fill a field with 5 cows and watch as they slowly wither and die off. A few years later you can fill the same field with 5 new cows and they suddenly reproduce up to a healthy herd of 30. Why? Who knows?
    There are only two non-renewable resources in the game – stone and iron. Because of this you will find yourself thinking the game should be called “Stone and Iron Manager” because once you get past the first survival stages almost all your time will be spent managing these two resources. Of course most of your buildings require stone, and most of your tools and production houses require iron, so the second you run out of either, you can find yourself in a negative spiral that may be difficult to recover from. This might be all fine if it weren’t for the fact that iron and stone are almost prohibitively expensive to mine, and to purchase from traders is based on random chance, so you feel the “luck” requirement to the game is overly high.
    The trading mechanic is underwhelming to say the least. Initially traders are exciting because they offer the key to future upgrades – new crops and livestock. However once you unlock these new features, you suddenly realize that the traders become less and less important. Nothing you will do will influence which traders show up at your dock. You might refuse to buy from one trader… and yet he will keep returning. You might buy out one trader’s entire stock, and he will return no sooner or later. As your village advances, you have more and more advanced goods to sell and your demand will shift to selling high value goods for raw materials. The traders never change and you soon find yourself dismissing 90% of them without purchasing anything.
    I would have been done with this game quickly if I had not modded it, which doubled the content and added a lot of additional depth – including some dwelling and building upgrades, decorative city options, and other features. However it did not address the emptiness, or the feeling of “why am I growing all of this stuff when I can’t sell it and it serves no other purpose in the game”? Forget an end game. This game even lacks a middle. Maybe in the future, after it has been heavily modded? Otherwise I would wait for version 2.0.    … Expand
  4. ericchrishoover
    Apr 12, 2015
    4
    I really loved the game for the first day or two. I was constantly playing it. But somewhere along the line, you'll come across game-breaking glitches that completely destroy whatever you've spent 10-15 hours building up. Disasters, harsh weather, uneven building space is all fine. But people that idle when you tell them to build, builders that gather materials when they should beI really loved the game for the first day or two. I was constantly playing it. But somewhere along the line, you'll come across game-breaking glitches that completely destroy whatever you've spent 10-15 hours building up. Disasters, harsh weather, uneven building space is all fine. But people that idle when you tell them to build, builders that gather materials when they should be building, and people teleporting to the edge of the map and dying on their way back make this game not worth playing.… Expand
  5. DoctorFoxhound
    Mar 1, 2014
    3
    I am shocked by all the 10 score reviews. I love city builders and this one looks good and feels good but there are way too many issues.

    Bottom line, this game feels like a beta. Constantly, I assign builders to work on a building but they just scamper off to chop wood. I'm having to try to find work arounds to get workers to do what i want them to do. I look forward to updates    I am shocked by all the 10 score reviews. I love city builders and this one looks good and feels good but there are way too many issues.

    Bottom line, this game feels like a beta. Constantly, I assign builders to work on a building but they just scamper off to chop wood. I'm having to try to find work arounds to get workers to do what i want them to do.

    I look forward to updates because the game has loads of potential but is so frustrating to play at this point.    … Expand
  6. VoxPaladin
    Apr 9, 2014
    0
    Very bland and generic 'city builder'. Some UI elements are confusing, no signs of challenge other than trying to redirect the horrible NPC A.I. which just walk around and starve to death.
  7. Cyclocosme
    Feb 25, 2014
    3
    Based on the fact it has been done by only one person, this could be a good game, and this indeed have its qualities and its strengths. But i can't base a critic on this basis, as this would mean i'd rate one of the less finalised gestion games i have ever saw... Let's be serious, i explored the possibilities of this game in only a few hours, which let me build all the existing buildings,Based on the fact it has been done by only one person, this could be a good game, and this indeed have its qualities and its strengths. But i can't base a critic on this basis, as this would mean i'd rate one of the less finalised gestion games i have ever saw... Let's be serious, i explored the possibilities of this game in only a few hours, which let me build all the existing buildings, and led me to understand that the mechanism of population reproduction is not even thought : people just make babies by the will of Random Gods, placing them eventually in the same house or not, and this cannot work if you have too many houses that you thought you built in the purpose of, that is, making room for the next generation. Old people stay in the houses and the younger can't reproduce... Or, you make too many houses, and people just forget to leave together to do it... That's so annoying that it's forcing you to build just in time, just the right amount of houses, and then you have literally to pray so that people of the opposite gender inhabits one same house, because if this doesn't happen, there's a chance that you can't even destroy the too many houses you built : your population decrease, then it's impossible to destroy the overnumeral houses AND managing to have sufficient people working in the necessary jobs.

    I tell you : this is not a good unforgiving game. It's a bad unfinished game with some mechanics that weren't even thought or made. There have to be an algorithm for the people making couples and having their own house for growing their children, but there's not, it's purely random, and all the "difficulty" of the game goes from there. All the remaining is far too simple to constitute a decent gestion game. I gave up on my first day, after having easily understood all the mechanics, because they're basics, and they seem to work in the first few hours, but in the end, they don't, or they do by pure luck, or by pure exercise of mathematics. It's not gestion, it's probabilities and randomness. Quite sad, because the game, as i said earlier, has its qualities, but it's nor enough for me, by far. Unless there are very important patches to the major problem i tried to explain (i'm not an english speaker), I'll simply never play it again. Admitting i would, what would i do with this game ? When you have built you're huge town, you have nothing else to do. No real threat, no real depth beyond that, no real depth in the gestion itself which is essentially driven by randomness... Enough said. Avoid it for now, and hope that a Banished 2 comes one day to overcome all of this.    … Expand
  8. Yosa
    Aug 24, 2015
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. So I have played this city builder a few times and just noticed I never got rid of it after the last experience.(it was not a good one)

    I decide to see again why I downloaded it. I loaded up an existing city that seemed well off and saw that a school could help. I build a school then I wait,..... some town members die even though this is a good setup. I figure the education thing is somewhat important so I make it a priority, years later no school.

    I have now the capacity in resources to double my village size, I have every
    thing maned to a degree, 8 spare worker, lots of housing and everthing they need, and yet, death, oh and the school is still not built.

    The game is inconsistent in the extreme and bugged when building, im aware of the time delay over distance mechanic, was coded as a bad script; aaaaannd, delete.

    This is a game that has a pretense of logical settler then just gets rediculous with is game mechanics.
    secend and last time I bother with this game?, Made me play twice, hence the disapoinment.    … Expand
  9. Seola
    Apr 7, 2014
    0
    I really want to like this game. However, it's unplayable for me and my husband. My husband can't even access the game without crashing. My gaming computer (4 months old) can access it but constantly has save game crashes that have been known since release with no update in sight. The problem is, I can sometimes save it on my own. The autosave feature can crash the game. If I set theI really want to like this game. However, it's unplayable for me and my husband. My husband can't even access the game without crashing. My gaming computer (4 months old) can access it but constantly has save game crashes that have been known since release with no update in sight. The problem is, I can sometimes save it on my own. The autosave feature can crash the game. If I set the autosave out as far as possible, I have to remember to save often and 7 times out of 10, this causes a crash and reverts to the last save state losing much time and work in the process especially if I haven't saved in a bit. It's clear according to Steam, the numbers are dropping off fast for a game so recently released and there is radio silence from the dev on when these bugs will be fixed. At $20 a pop, it's almost unconscionable to have such glaring errors be in the game on release, but further - this long after it became a known issue.… Expand
  10. theNILE
    Jun 2, 2016
    3
    Sadly lacking. To give you an example, you get two types of houses, one which uses up your precious stone, and the other which uses the easy to replenish 'logs'. There are no tents, no mansions, but good news, there is a homeless shelter! And yes, they called the wood resource logs, and there are no planks! This game sorely needs the ability to upgrade structures and add more diverseSadly lacking. To give you an example, you get two types of houses, one which uses up your precious stone, and the other which uses the easy to replenish 'logs'. There are no tents, no mansions, but good news, there is a homeless shelter! And yes, they called the wood resource logs, and there are no planks! This game sorely needs the ability to upgrade structures and add more diverse buildings.

    There are no enemies, not even wild ones. Even though I had natural disasters on, nothing happened after hours and hours of play. Nobody even got sick! My herbs sat in storage until a trader came along who valued them at 4. Yes, things have value in this game, but mostly either traders don't want a lot of things, or the price is simply static. Trading in this game is pretty lame, since I just made hundreds of wool coats and stored thousands of venison - which stayed fresh forever - trading was just a matter of letting people do their jobs and then waiting for it to transfer to the trading post and trading it off.

    Everyone except young children are workers in this game, and 12 yo's seem to just help out with whatever they feel like doing (unless they are a student), even if it's working in the quarry... Now the thing here is every worker is a part-time labourer... I had my tailor walk all the way through my town to cut some wood when they weren't busy, because I wanted to remove the resources in the area... Now, the trees behind the building the tailor works at really wasn't good enough, yet for some reason, they wondered off to do something when I may be relying on them to produce as many of a resource as fast as possible if it's an emergency.

    When someone isn't healthy... What do they do? They keep on working and getting less healthy... But it seems they don't actually need anything. If I needed to assign them to simply labourer, then it wasn't obvious and it's a pain in the ass in the first place. So... What do they need? You're never told.

    Labourers will pick up resources to place them in depots. If somebody is chopping down trees so someone can build there, they have to move the resource.... So they walk to the nearest depot, even if it's miles away... Why not just move the resources to the side of the building site? This just forces you to drop a depot down and then remove it.

    Why don't hunters and foresters live in their buildings out in the wild? And why don't they need fuel for fires? It makes no sense    … Expand
  11. Bitwiener
    Feb 27, 2014
    4
    The game is not rewarding at all. You can spend plenty of hours building your village just to have it destroyed by starvation or disasters. I would not recommend this game.
  12. Tovenaar
    Oct 27, 2014
    2
    This is supposedly an all new game but in fact uses exactly the same (attractive) graphics as the Settlers. It also has the same failings but with a lot more bugs. It needs a lot more coding to make it work.

    First of all there is no object or "goal" to the game - nothing to achieve and no sense of progress or attainment of any targets. The main problem however is the characters. No    This is supposedly an all new game but in fact uses exactly the same (attractive) graphics as the Settlers. It also has the same failings but with a lot more bugs. It needs a lot more coding to make it work.

    First of all there is no object or "goal" to the game - nothing to achieve and no sense of progress or attainment of any targets. The main problem however is the characters. No wonder they are "banished". It's almost impossible to get them to do anything. In the classic Age of Empires II (for example) you click on a villager and then give them a task - build a building, gather resources etc. In this game you cannot do that - you can only select that a building should be built - a house or food resource, then the villagers just stand around doing nothing until they die of starvation or cold (Duh) !! Very exciting !!! What the game needs is an electric cattle prod to push into these lazy buggers to force them to do what you want them to do...but, of course, as there is no aim to the game then (as the villagers must think) what is the point ???    … Expand
  13. MyStupidName22
    Dec 31, 2014
    4
    This game is pretty average. There are much better colony games out there like RimWorld.

    The game gets boring pretty quickly. I'd definitely give RimWorld a try over this if you're thinking about this game.
  14. Tomaso
    Jun 9, 2019
    4
    Ok, ok - I get it - a game created by 1 person. And it may feel like a very good product/showreel of this person's skills.

    I really can't agree with people saying it can compete with strategies created by bigger developers. IT CAN'T. Games are not about quality/people involved ratio, games are about overall final product. Banished has decent game mechanics and the game is simple    Ok, ok - I get it - a game created by 1 person. And it may feel like a very good product/showreel of this person's skills.

    I really can't agree with people saying it can compete with strategies created by bigger developers.
    IT CAN'T.
    Games are not about quality/people involved ratio, games are about overall final product.

    Banished has decent game mechanics and the game is simple enough that these few rules give a clarity that can really engage the player. It's a breath of classic-style strategies - no rocket science complexity, just some basic rules to follow and master.

    The thing is - there is not much to master, and the game lacks any objective and does not give sense of fulfillment. First few hours may really feel good as you have to learn how the settlement works, but then - it's gone. You only have to expand, rearrange buildings a bit, get new territories so you won't run out of resources to create tools (needed for people to work) and so on and on... Not really much of a challenge left.

    I enjoyed it for ~12 hours, first 2 settlements were a trial and error playground, and with the third one I got everything right... And in any solid strategy game this is the moment when your base prospers well and you expect some kind of milestone or next Tier buildings/mechanics/challenges to come up, but... nothing's gonna happen here.

    Apart from these gameplay aspects, the game looks... not really appealling, sounds and music are only correct.    … Expand
  15. LT_Gruber
    Dec 13, 2022
    3
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Beautiful, relaxing game that failed miserably.

    Banished has a really good concept but is poorly executed. In the core, it is just a town building simulator where you start a nice quiet village where everyone lives in harmony, or at least, so I thought. The game goes on forever, until you quit, or everyone starved to death, and in a moment, you will read that the last option is the way to go.

    The graphics in Banished are not that special in terms of realism, but they are made in a way that the game feels very calming and charming. It is hard to explain. This, added with the calm forest music playing in the background and I was all set. Ready for my digital vacation.

    I love the build system, the resource collection, and the overall atmosphere of the game. It is all very good, and I finally thought that I had found my new relaxation game in which I can empty my mind and watch my humble citizens build a nice place for themselves and each other. But then, anarchy, or better said, bad game design, kicked in..

    It all comes down to one simple problem that ruined the whole game. The balancing of the collected resources. Every home in your cute little village needs food, wood and other basic needs to survive and keep them fed and warm. All collected resources are placed on the general stockpile that you build first and citizens go to this stockpile to collect the resources for their homes. The big problem is this:

    Your citizen noticed that it is out of wood. It walks to the stockpile, grabs ten logs and walks back to his nice and comfortable dwelling. But ten logs are not enough, it comes back to the stockpile and takes another ten logs, rapidly decreasing the supply. When the humble villager collected more than forty logs, his freezing neighbour walks to the stockpile, only to find that there is nothing left in store. Shivering with cold and misery, he waits for the woodcutters to bring more logs. It is his lucky day; the woodcutters return with five fresh logs and place them on the stockpile. The neighbour walks towards the stockpile, only to find out that his greedy neighbour, who lives closer to the stockpile snitches the last five logs from the pile. After taking the logs, he spits into the freezing neighbours face and walks back to his home to add his five logs to his collection of forty that he already has. The poor man cries in defeat and dies of frostbite.

    I can make another story, but it is clear. The game has no balancer, no options to say to the greedy son of a b** that he has enough wood and need to leave some resources for the rest of the town. Whole neighbourhoods die of starvation and cold, the big piles of resources in the home of the greedy sh!ts gets larger by the minute and their hunger is never satisfied. And there is nothing you can do about it. The game runs slow as a snail too, so you can see your citizens die in slow-motion because the last apple has just been collected by another villager, who’s house almost explodes from the number of resources stuffed in it. It is just unbelievable that this issue exists in this kind of game.

    Sadly, this is the boner killer for me, and it ruined my whole experience. And it is such a shame, the game could have been so perfect for me with all the positive aspects that I mentioned at the beginning.

    So in short, if you want to watch a slow, digital version of The Purge: Anarchy and watch your villagers do whatever the hell they want and not giving a damn about each other, than this is the game for you.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

34
#34 Most Discussed PC Game of 2014
58
#58 Most Shared PC Game of 2014

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
73

Mixed or average reviews - based on 32 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 32
  2. Mixed: 14 out of 32
  3. Negative: 1 out of 32
  1. SpazioGames
    Jun 8, 2015
    75
    A city builder with small maps and a limited number of buildings that manages to be a great game thanks to the extraordinary balance of all its elements required to make big settlements: basically has everything a game of this kind must have, and also something more.
    Read full review
  2. Pelit (Finland)
    May 11, 2014
    80
    A classical city-building game where you help a group of settlers to build a new home for themselves. That's Banished in a nutshell. In a surprising twist, the game doesn't feature any combat at all, but I personally didn't even miss it because after all it's a peaceful game where the main focus is planning your town's future and not fighting against evil aliens. Even though Banished was made by just one man, it feels really polished. In particular, the interface is really well done. Of course, no game is perfect and Banished has some issues. The biggest of them all is that there are no objectives or end goals so you can never really win or lose. [March 2014]
  3. Riot Pixels
    May 7, 2014
    60
    Banished, as it stands now, looks like a game from Steam Early Access rather than a finished product.
    Read full review
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