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. TheDizzation
    Feb 18, 2014
    10
    Amazing game for me. This type of game is really rare, and hard to make it good. It has some deficiency, but the game is combined perfectly. The fact is that this game is made by one guy is making it more amazing! I mean SimCity is made by a big company, compared to this they made nothing. I mean it. Anyways this game is a must buy if you like RTS and city building games!
  2. Blackadar
    Mar 5, 2014
    9
    I think people lament what Banished is not rather than enjoy what it is. It's not Pharoah. It's not Zeus. It's not SimCity, CotN, CivCity Rome, Caesar, Emperor, Anno, Cities XL or any other number of builders. It's not meant to be. Banished is a rather simple premise executed beautifully but without embellishment. It is simply about growing and sustaining a viable village. Not a town, aI think people lament what Banished is not rather than enjoy what it is. It's not Pharoah. It's not Zeus. It's not SimCity, CotN, CivCity Rome, Caesar, Emperor, Anno, Cities XL or any other number of builders. It's not meant to be. Banished is a rather simple premise executed beautifully but without embellishment. It is simply about growing and sustaining a viable village. Not a town, a city, an empire or a dynasty. It's just about keeping a nondescript village going and in that it succeeds totally. I love the pace and game environment not because it is simple but because it is focused and it is challenging. My first village in Banished failed. It was the first time that I can remember ever losing a town in any city builder and I've been playing them since the original SimCity. I was delighted.

    Now I didn't see in any previews that suggested anything different or more than what I got in the game. What it doesn't do is have talent/building trees or progression - but then again a small rural village in the 1700s or 1800s wouldn't expect to progress much from a technology standpoint. It doesn't have monuments, castles, combat or beautification projects. Are these limiting factors? Yes and they could have been included but they're not necessary for the core game to succeed. I wouldn't mind DLC or mods that include larger construction projects or the ability to create flower beds and other beautification projects. I think we'll see those things and I think that may make the game feel more "complete" for some people.

    Personally, I like the game for what it is. I find it relaxing but challenging and I enjoy seeing my little hamlet survive and grow and perhaps even eventually thrive. It also reminds me of a different era of gaming, where resource limitations required games to stay focused on their subject matter without becoming bloated. To me, Banished has a soul unlike some modern city-builders (Cities XL I'm looking right at you) and that makes all the difference.    … Expand
  3. TenchuuKhan
    Mar 2, 2014
    7
    Here's what the game is all about:
    Get your peasants to survive the first winter by providing the most basic resources they need such as: food, shelter, fire wood
    Move on to acquiring iron and letter so you can produce tools and clothes for your peasants. Get more food, build more houses. Build mines, a quarry, a forestry guy so you have a steady income of the most basic resources    Here's what the game is all about:
    Get your peasants to survive the first winter by providing the most basic resources they need such as: food, shelter, fire wood
    Move on to acquiring iron and letter so you can produce tools and clothes for your peasants.
    Get more food, build more houses.
    Build mines, a quarry, a forestry guy so you have a steady income of the most basic resources
    Build more food, build more houses.
    Get medicine, build a hospital, a church, etc. so your peasants are happy. Try to get all available resource types for the hell of it.

    And that's about it.

    Where's the fun in that?
    It's very challenging at the beginning and that's what makes this game so much fun. But once you got your head around it it gets really, really boring.
    For a building game it only gave me around 15 hours of entertainment - which just isn't good enough. And there's no actual goal once you got everything working besides having more citizens which again, has no payoff whatsoever.

    All in all, it's fun, but the price tag just isn't fair. It defends itself as being a "one guy dev" game but it charges you like there was a whole indy team behind it.
    Currently it goes for 19 bucks on Steam - a proper pricing would be 5.    … Expand
  4. 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
  5. demondred79
    Jul 21, 2014
    6
    After 10 hours you'll be all done with this simulator. All the buildings you can make will be built....all the challenges you can face will be faced. Quickly you'll punch up the speed to x10 and it just becomes a trivial rinse/repeat "groundhog day" adventure.

    I ruined my first town trying to figure out how the game behaves (despite going thru full tutorial), which was to be expected.    After 10 hours you'll be all done with this simulator. All the buildings you can make will be built....all the challenges you can face will be faced. Quickly you'll punch up the speed to x10 and it just becomes a trivial rinse/repeat "groundhog day" adventure.

    I ruined my first town trying to figure out how the game behaves (despite going thru full tutorial), which was to be expected. The second town I built very carefully, and apparently I more or less mastered the game because all it devolved into was a series of moving numbers up and down on tiny GUI buttons. Assign peasants to tasks, unassign them......raise building quotas....lower them. There's no end to this game that I am aware of. No upgrading of buildings. No new "era" to be born into. The game is all about creating an equilibrium and trying to maintain it while people either die of old age or from (more often than not) dying in a quarry or mine.

    That's it. That's the game.....

    It had addictive qualities but ultimately it's a time waster of a game. Do NOT buy this for full price ($20) wait for it to go for $5 and then it's a fair purchase.    … Expand
  6. drmirf
    Feb 21, 2014
    10
    Great game, on of the best I have played. Unique, hard but joyful. I recommend it to all players that like Civilization like games and for those that are patient.
  7. BatFat09
    Feb 21, 2014
    8
    This is a pretty good game, albeit impossible to win! I like it, I really do, I went in with low hopes and was extremely surprised, I must say this is way more than I thought it would be!
  8. Ninjapixel
    Mar 12, 2014
    7
    Banished is the type of game that makes you lose sense of time.

    Strategic sandbox titles often fail when it comes to balancing the in-game stats. However, Banished doesn't fail. As a matter of fact it seems to work pretty well. Sure there could be a few more features and sure it is not the best looking game out there. But the music, the feeling and the fun this game brings makes it    Banished is the type of game that makes you lose sense of time.

    Strategic sandbox titles often fail when it comes to balancing the in-game stats. However, Banished doesn't fail. As a matter of fact it seems to work pretty well.

    Sure there could be a few more features and sure it is not the best looking game out there. But the music, the feeling and the fun this game brings makes it worthwhile. I like it!    … Expand
  9. Helmenkalastaja
    May 5, 2014
    7
    Another city build game with some new perspectives. I did get bored pretty quickly, as there is lot of just waiting for resources to be gathered still i play this game occasionally. Fun game still and worth to buy. Also i wanted to support one-man project.
  10. versionbest
    Mar 2, 2014
    6
    I thoroughly enjoyed this game, however my only gripe with it is the randomness mechanics (or so it may seem, perhaps it assigns by the last placed house?) of assigning villagers to replace a recently dead one. If you have a small town and everything is in close proximity to each others then assigning villagers at random (or from the last placed house?) is not a problem. However, if youI thoroughly enjoyed this game, however my only gripe with it is the randomness mechanics (or so it may seem, perhaps it assigns by the last placed house?) of assigning villagers to replace a recently dead one. If you have a small town and everything is in close proximity to each others then assigning villagers at random (or from the last placed house?) is not a problem. However, if you have a large population of over 300 villagers and you're playing on a large map just think of the distance the villagers have to walk to get back to their house for food. Some will go to the nearest Market or Storage Barn to eat but not all. I've noticed that for the most part they will most likely return to the house they were born in to eat. They can't eat from a house that is already occupied that is not theirs because that would make things so much easier. This here is where lies a major flaw in the design of this game. The way this game was design you can only play on a small map. If you play on a large map and planned on inhabiting every nooks and crannies of the map then it will most likely end up in failure.

    The design flaw is the assigning of villagers at a random location from a random house (or the house that was last built?) to replace a recently dead villager. Let's put things into perspective. For example, if I have a farmer from one location on the map and if he happens to die he will be replaced by the next available laborer (wherever this laborer may live). However, if this laborer lives on the other far end of the map, he must trek a super long distance to the farm land to replace the dead farmer. Then when he gets hungry he must trek back to his house in the far distance but often times he will never make it even if he is walking on Stone Road. You see how this can be a problem?

    And this was exactly what happened to me. I had a population over 300 villagers and everything was going fine until a chain reaction of hunger occurred. Since every laborers can be from any house any where on the map, when they get hungry they must trek back to the place where they were born to feed. If you're playing on a large map, the randomness of villagers being assigned as replacements to the dead ones will throw the whole game out of whack. My population hit a critical mass at 300+ villagers then everyone started dropping like flies down to around 125+ villagers because of death by starvation. This all happened literally within 5 minutes. You should have seen the looks on my face as I glared at the monitor thinking to myself WTF just happened? It's not the scarcity of food because I was banking on 50K+ (I built a lot of farms and focus heavily on food production) and I made sure I had a few houses at every work sites. I had everything built perfectly and there was no shortage of supplies of any kind. As a matter of fact I had a surplus of supplies.

    The mass starvation deaths was caused by them trekking super long distance that they couldn't make. Here is what I would like to see changed in a patch if there ever will be one. Have the Storage Barn and Market be a central point where any villagers can come to eat regardless of where they live on the map. This way even with the randomness mechanics of villagers replacing dead ones, they will always be guaranteed that they will be well feed if they have to work far from their homes. Thus you can build Storage Barns and Markets anywhere on the map as a place to come to feed, therefore not relying on trekking back to their homes.

    Yes I was pretty pissed that over 41% of my workforce died in a chain reaction within 5 minutes. I wanted to see if it was a bug or what if I had tried something different then that won't happen. I load an earlier saved and did a few things differently but once my population hit that critical mass of 300+ villagers, they started to die in a chain reaction due to starvation.

    I would have given Banished a perfect 10 had it not been for this fatal flaw (literally) that prevent you from expanding to the far corners of the map. This game is almost there but not quite yet. Patching the dependent on homes as a food source will allow for a far more fulfilling experience.    … Expand
  11. Firepro316
    Mar 15, 2014
    6
    The first 15 hours or so of Banished are brilliantly addictive. The challenge of building a thriving town that will survive the winter and boom in the Summer is at times stressful but very rewarding when it comes together. Once you have a working town, that's consistently providing supplies (food, coal, wood, iron, stone), you can then start building some of additional buildings thatThe first 15 hours or so of Banished are brilliantly addictive. The challenge of building a thriving town that will survive the winter and boom in the Summer is at times stressful but very rewarding when it comes together. Once you have a working town, that's consistently providing supplies (food, coal, wood, iron, stone), you can then start building some of additional buildings that whilst aren't a necessity but add some value, such as churches and town halls.

    However once all this is done, you begin to realize there's not a lot left to do. There feels little point or purpose is expanding your city further as there's no further reward for doing so. There's no new buildings or benefits. Just more to manage. I had one incredible city working with 300 people with every building and supply done.

    So in summary, I loved my 15-20 hours game play, but I can't see myself playing it again anytime soon. Worth £5-£10    … Expand
  12. Hellygator
    May 5, 2014
    6
    The game starts out interesting but the learning curve is pretty flat. If you are experienced in city building games you figured out what works well pretty quickly. After that there is no endgame, no quests, no motivation to continue playing. I have spend a few hours building a decent city but never bother to create another.
  13. Demonidze
    Feb 19, 2014
    10
    Finally a great city builder type of game that doesnt filled with always online DRM and other non sense.

    although its not like Sim City where you build an utopia, a dream city .. here you build a village and not just a village it has to be very balanced village, with everything thought out. there is rogue like element here, where you have to restart over and over until you using trial    Finally a great city builder type of game that doesnt filled with always online DRM and other non sense.

    although its not like Sim City where you build an utopia, a dream city .. here you build a village and not just a village it has to be very balanced village, with everything thought out. there is rogue like element here, where you have to restart over and over until you using trial and error method find your way to build a proper village.

    this is sort of survival city builder game, the only game i've seen that is some what similar to this one is dwarf fortress.

    I would recommend this game to anyone who likes the city building genre.    … Expand
  14. Muuvinki
    Feb 19, 2014
    8
    Really addicting city building game which you might definitely wanna try out.
    However when you get a hang of it, you'll notice that there really isn't much to build anymore after all necessary buildings. I kinda hope for some kinda decorative items which would make village look even more beautiful than it already is. Also sometimes there seems to be so little time to do stuff and you are    Really addicting city building game which you might definitely wanna try out.
    However when you get a hang of it, you'll notice that there really isn't much to build anymore after all necessary buildings. I kinda hope for some kinda decorative items which would make village look even more beautiful than it already is. Also sometimes there seems to be so little time to do stuff and you are struggling even with food, although you have multiple villagers getting food. Other than that Banished is a brilliant game with lots of potential in it.    … Expand
  15. Jaskkro
    Feb 19, 2014
    9
    This game is challenging, charming, complex and captivating. I played it for 6 hours in one sitting, and though it has a few flaws (like the sometimes buggy AI running to their death in the cold), the game provides an incredible amount of freedom. Then when one considers it was made by a single person, it really gives you a sense of awe.
  16. Thoto79
    Feb 20, 2014
    9
    Did one guy make this? Amazing. The most unforgiving and hardcore City (Town) builder i have ever played, and i have been through most of them. Good fun and higly addictive!
  17. frugal_frogger
    Feb 26, 2014
    8
    This is like SIMS but for grownups! Very challenging - at first you will be disappointed because you must make mistakes in order to learn to do it right. It requires lots of thinking ahead and trial and error. Highly recommended.
  18. LD9000
    Apr 20, 2014
    7
    An Ok game, held my interest for a couple days. After you learn how to grow enough food, all you do is expand your settlement. Once in a while, a trader arrives, and once you get your chickens, sheep and cows, there isn't really that much excitement about the trader anymore.

    It does not seem like villagers have any particular skill focus, the same guy can be a woodcutter one day, a    An Ok game, held my interest for a couple days. After you learn how to grow enough food, all you do is expand your settlement. Once in a while, a trader arrives, and once you get your chickens, sheep and cows, there isn't really that much excitement about the trader anymore.

    It does not seem like villagers have any particular skill focus, the same guy can be a woodcutter one day, a farmer another day. This is important because of the route villagers take to their job site from the houses. Unfortunately this also means that if you have a large agricultural population, you have to reshuffle your population every year once the harvest is done. In the course of doing so, it's possible to end up with a population that has to go all the way across the map to their job site. Fixing this gets tedious and kinda boring after a while.

    Overall, an OK city builder, although Tropico 4 is so much better.    … Expand
  19. Muts
    Feb 22, 2014
    10
    Great game. Got my population to 300+ people and then disaster comes over and over to challenge you to keep the town growing while tons dead by a tornado, fire, disease is hard.
    For anyone having trouble, like user Jordach545, where people are not doing what they were supposed to do, use Priority Tool at F2 Menu. I see people complain about this **** every day on forums and they still    Great game. Got my population to 300+ people and then disaster comes over and over to challenge you to keep the town growing while tons dead by a tornado, fire, disease is hard.
    For anyone having trouble, like user Jordach545, where people are not doing what they were supposed to do, use Priority Tool at F2 Menu. I see people complain about this **** every day on forums and they still dont get that this game works like a queue system. You create a To Do list every time you assign something, and they will not finish taking resources to a house to be built if they must finish collecting resources first. The Priority Tool just get things done and I think 90% of players dont use that and have trouble with Banished.    … Expand
  20. RazgrizGT
    Feb 24, 2014
    10
    Banished is definitely one of the great games to come out a recent memory. It has a very low learning curve and great game mechanic the keeps the game interesting. Designing and managing the city requires planning, expanding the quickly and you will find yourself in trouble. Graphics and Sounds are simplistic and yet provide a great backdrop for the game. Re-playability is decent as itBanished is definitely one of the great games to come out a recent memory. It has a very low learning curve and great game mechanic the keeps the game interesting. Designing and managing the city requires planning, expanding the quickly and you will find yourself in trouble. Graphics and Sounds are simplistic and yet provide a great backdrop for the game. Re-playability is decent as it is a sandbox structure with randomly generated map. At the moment of this review, it has minimal structures and their functions. The game plays simple but it has a great potential to expand into more depth and scope. For one guy who developed the game, it is definitely a 10 that beats all the other big-name title out of the water. Highly recommend!… Expand
  21. CpuCzar
    Feb 22, 2014
    9
    Banished is the anti SimCity, no extra costs, only 300 mb download, you only need 512 mb of ram to play it. This is a great city builder game. Only $20, and worth every penny!
  22. 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
  23. suneater
    Feb 16, 2015
    7
    Banished is a fantastically atmospheric, albeit barebones, city builder set in pseudo-colonial times. You start off with a handful of ragged outcasts thrust into the wilderness with a mission of building your own civilization from the landscape. Because of its small scope, Banished is also much more personable than more robust city builders; instead of managing multiple cities or even aBanished is a fantastically atmospheric, albeit barebones, city builder set in pseudo-colonial times. You start off with a handful of ragged outcasts thrust into the wilderness with a mission of building your own civilization from the landscape. Because of its small scope, Banished is also much more personable than more robust city builders; instead of managing multiple cities or even a nation, you start with four to six families and grow to a few hundred people (or more, depending on how long you wish to play a map). This isolation combined with little charming touches, like knowing each citizen's personal info, excellent ambient sound design, and a slower paced game speed, makes Banished the most atmospheric fictional city builder I have played.

    Although there is a rough "progression" to what you can build via resource requirements, any building can be built at any time depending on what your city needs. Real strategy comes in properly timing and planning your construction; While Banished is a pretty laid-back game, a sudden influx of nomads can bring diseases or cause starvation if your city isn't prepared and construction takes significant manpower and cross-profession coordination. This flexibility can be overwhelming for a new player trying to survive their first winter but thankfully Banished's tutorials are well constructed and actually worth playing through even for veterans. Your city's growth (and essentially the game's difficulty) is tied to how much or how little you want to build, leading to a more relaxed game than most city builders.

    Even though I loved most of this game, I spent a lot of time fighting with the villager's AI. While Banished strictly doesn't have win/lose conditions, it is heart-breaking to watch your citizens die from starvation while they are harvesting crops or gathering fish. Other AI issues emerge much earlier in the game, like farmers acting like laborers and not tending their fields during the summer. Laborers also seem to act erratically; when you assign multiple removal tasks, they seem to work in arbitary priority. Constructing multiple buildings is a huge pain with trying to coordinate the laborers with the builders; I eventually resorted to laying down a "building plan" and mass-pausing construction, unpausing one building at a time to be built. Maybe I don't understand all the intracies of the AI but 50 hours in and I'm still frustrated and often resorting to using the "Increase Priority" tool.

    Banished is also missing many things that add challenge and depth to other city builders. This is essentially the "kiddie pool" of city builders with no crime, polution, budget balancing/taxation, or non-essential buildings. With 31 construction options, everything you build is for managing food, housing or supplying citizens, or transportation needs. There are some minor trading elements but its mostly there to keep your city growing once you run out of certain resources. Once you have a stable city running all there is to do is make it bigger while avoiding starvation or disasters. The same could be said of many games but I always look forward to building a sports stadium in SimCity... here it feels like it's just food, food, and more food.

    If you haven't played a city builder before, Banished is a great place to start. Veterans looking for a more laid-back experience will get a few dozen hours out of this while alt+tabbed with something else. Nothing here is groundbreaking but what there is is a great change of pace from playing certain other sims at Cheetah speed.    … Expand
  24. TheVino3
    Feb 28, 2014
    6
    Could be good. Not there yet. A large amount of things are left completely unexplained. Things like the way food is produced and consumed make little to no sense, and require a lot of reading just to understand how not to completely starve a population of 10 people that are sitting in the middle of thousands of units of food.

    It feels like you are constantly babysitting villagers that    Could be good. Not there yet. A large amount of things are left completely unexplained. Things like the way food is produced and consumed make little to no sense, and require a lot of reading just to understand how not to completely starve a population of 10 people that are sitting in the middle of thousands of units of food.

    It feels like you are constantly babysitting villagers that should be able to work out some things for themselves - such as: Food goes in mouth.    … Expand
  25. XBenedict
    May 13, 2014
    6
    I like the look of this game and it works reliably and presents a challenge. However, once you have built a successful city of reasonable size you feel like you have solved the game and that there is little point in starting a new map. The lack of specific challenges and development options (a big city contains the same things as a small city - just more of them), makes this game a bitI like the look of this game and it works reliably and presents a challenge. However, once you have built a successful city of reasonable size you feel like you have solved the game and that there is little point in starting a new map. The lack of specific challenges and development options (a big city contains the same things as a small city - just more of them), makes this game a bit pointless fairly quickly and so, in my opinion, expensive given the limited number of hours you will play it.… Expand
  26. HeirOfIsildur
    May 25, 2014
    6
    Banished, whilst simple at a first glance, is both a relaxing and enjoyable game. The slow paced village life will perhaps lull you into a false sense of security before disaster strikes. It could be considered a difficult game as, though on the surface it is simple, the micromanagement - which is a key part of the game - is sometimes hard to manage. Despite the fact that I enjoy BanishedBanished, whilst simple at a first glance, is both a relaxing and enjoyable game. The slow paced village life will perhaps lull you into a false sense of security before disaster strikes. It could be considered a difficult game as, though on the surface it is simple, the micromanagement - which is a key part of the game - is sometimes hard to manage. Despite the fact that I enjoy Banished very much, I give it only a six out of ten because it can sometimes get boring. Once you have a knack for the game there is little left to do than watch your village just carry on life as usual. I'm not sure how it would be incorporated, but the lack of multiplayer is disappointing as this is, in my opinion, an important feature of games today. Additionally, the absence of an endgame can make playing Banished feel rather pointless and times, though not having a set objective might be considered a good thing for some. For those who like action games, Banished is not for you, however, city-builder fans should enjoy Banished immensely.… Expand
  27. arruu
    Nov 3, 2014
    6
    It is very addictive.. just as any other city builder, imo. Though it lacks depth, and soon you'll realize you've built every single construction the game offers, and there is nothing left but expanding in the same fashion... The graphics are nice, the technical requirements are very very forgiving, and I hope a sequel comes out soon... But this original game ends up being repetitive very fast.
  28. 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
  29. FlaviusAetius
    Nov 22, 2017
    7
    A fun game that, for a few hours, can satiate any fan of the building sim genre but loses its appeal soon thereafter. The act of building up a town to allow them to survive is exciting but once your town becomes self-sufficient there's not much to do but wait every ten minutes for another trader to arrive.
  30. timsplace0
    Feb 18, 2014
    10
    This is one of the best game I have played in a long time, spent about 12 hours lost in Banished today.

    Only complaint is your wrists and hands may hurt from overplaying, seriously.
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Awards & Rankings

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

Critic Reviews

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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.
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  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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