Tag: simulation

Foundation

A City-Builder That You Just Might Dig

Developed by Polymorph Games and reaching full release on 31st January 2025, Foundation is a laid-back city-builder with a peaceful, pastel tone and a light-hearted approach. The game launched into early access on 1st February 2019 and, according to my Steam purchase history, I picked it up in March of 2019. It wasn’t much of a game back then – the UI was an ugly mess, the graphics were super-basic, the tech trees were incomplete, and much of the gameplay was totally unrefined. That’s the nature of early access, and it’s not something I mess with often, but something possessed me back in those care-free, pre-pandemic days, and now that the game is finally out, I definitely don’t regret buying it.

The main thing that Foundation does to differentiate itself from similar city-builders is its organic building placement. There’s no grid system, and the player doesn’t place roads, with paths occurring naturally on regularly used thoroughfares, just like the classic Settlers games. You can place any building absolutely anywhere inside your territory and your villagers will react accordingly once they’ve been assigned to the jobs there. Residential buildings are zoned rather than placed directly, with players using a paintbrush tool to highlight areas where the villagers can build their houses, and this same tool is used to highlight which resources should be extracted and even which areas your villagers aren’t allowed to tread.

Did you ever play with plastic farm animals and fences when you were a kid? This is that, but digitally.

Certain buildings are heavily customisable, from churches to inns to castles, and even the lord’s manor. When planning such works of architectural wonder, you’ll be selecting from various rooms, entrances, wings and decorations until you’ve got the layout you like, and once things are finalised your builders will get to work – if they’re not buying berries from the local market or sitting around on a bench, that is. The decorations will tend to increase your settlement’s “splendor” in one of three categories; labour, kingdom, and clergy, which will unlock new levels of building in these categories. Labour tends to encompass your market and your lord’s manor, clergy goes towards churches and monasteries, and kingdom grants you the ability to fortify your settlement and build watchtowers and castles. Fully upgrading these majestic works tend to be your end goal, and depending on whether you’re feeling regal, religious, or like a man of the people, you can choose an appropriate goal at the start of the game, or just do whatever you want and treat the whole thing like a big, medieval sandbox.

Foundation strikes an addictive balance between keeping things relaxing while still providing moderately challenging resource chains and progression requirements to get to grips with. It’s not difficult to get high level residential areas in your growing town, but it’ll take some time and provide you plenty to think about along the way. You might even need to partake in a bit of forward planning.

The higher-level residential buildings require nearby beautification, paved roads, and more. Fussy, these posh types.

The game’s visuals match its laid-back vibe, with cartoony villagers and brightly-coloured houses all nestled into a cosy, storybook countryside. At times, especially once I started to surround my settlement with a lovely palisade fence, Foundation’s visuals really took me back to my childhood days of lying on the sofa reading Asterix comics, and that’s a good thing. At the time of writing there is no day/night cycle, but you can manually change the visual ambience from daylight to rainy to night-time and to sunset, just in case you want to imagine the diminutive Gaul and his pals enjoying a lavish victory banquet under the setting sun right there in your village. There are enough boars in the forests to keep Obelix busy, that’s for sure.

While Foundation does enable you to build castles, erect defensive walls, and enlist soldiers, there is no combat in the game (again, at the time of writing), with soldiers instead sent out on missions, earning your settlement reputation and occasionally bringing back spoils. Your villagers will also appreciate feeling secure, with a decent level of local fortifications and patrols being prerequisites for higher density housing. If you want actual fighting, though, you’re probably better off with Manor Lords.

“If you find yourself riding alone through green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled, for you are in Elysium, and you’re already dead!”

Incidentally, the mighty Manor Lords, still in early access at the time of writing, is another game that I bought before its full release. While the two games go for completely different visual styles, and Foundation doesn’t seem to concern itself too much with historical accuracy, the two games have very similar mechanics. It’s not exactly fair to compare a game that’s fully released with a game that’s still in early access, but I will say that I enjoy Foundation more than I enjoy Manor Lords for now. Obviously, this could change drastically, but as things stand, I’d heartily recommend Foundation for those who’re still finding Manor Lords a bit short on content and goals, and don’t mind some cartoony visuals in lieu of Manor Lords’ historically accurate buildings and gorgeous rolling hills that look exactly like the views from nearby beauty spots here in sunny Somerset.

Foundation doesn’t go for this kind of realism, but if you like the idea of an organically growing cartoon village, customisable buildings and monuments, and a low-pressure, relaxing sandbox to lord over your bright-eyed little medieval peasants in, then you should definitely give it a try. It’s easy to pick up and quite difficult to put down. The gradual progress is addictive and the constant balancing act of keeping your villagers happy and your supply lines running makes it far too easy to just keep playing, even if you really need to be cooking dinner or picking up the child from her youth club or whatever. Yes, I am speaking from personal experience.

A sprawling monastery overlooks a developing town, and in the distance, the beginnings of a mighty fortress stand atop a hill.

If you remember playing the classic Settlers games, and occasionally miss its light-hearted, addictive style (and the way the roads and paths appear organically), then Foundation will definitely scratch that itch. If not, then give it a try anyway, you might find yourself fascinated by your organically growing medieval settlement, and become enthralled in the act of creating a beautiful little ancient Gaulish village of your own. Watch out for Romans, though, okay?

Terra Nil

The Power Is Yours

Visually resplendent eco-strategy Terra Nil kicks things off with a dry and infertile patch of land and a limited selection of high-tech equipment, and tasks players with creating thriving and varied ecosystems through both natural and artificial means. Wind turbines power soil scrubbers, and specialist buildings distribute grasslands, fynbos (which is a new word I learned that seems to refer to a biome found specifically in South Africa), and forests across the healing land.

The multiple rivers criss-crossing those woods are the result of me trying to attract beavers.

Matters are complicated by certain factors like soil fertility and humidity levels, and would-be terraformers are tasked with figuring out how to achieve specific conditions in order for specific biome types to flourish. For example, temperate forests need ashy soil, which requires the use of a special building to start and manage a fire. Once the inferno has done its job, lush pine forests can spring up from the ashes, and once those are established, you might be lucky enough to spot a bear or two beneath the canopy.

The ultimate goal of Terra Nil is to achieve full, natural reformation over four distinct environments, cause animals to return, and achieve various environmental goals that will cause beneficial effects such as rains returning or ferns growing along the sides of rivers. The reward for all this is the ability to watch adorable, cel-shaded critters explore your picturesque islands and valleys as you sit back and celebrate a job well done.

The island maps give you the chance to create beaches, reefs and rainforests. If you’re lucky you might even see some jellyfish.

Terra Nil’s visuals do a decent job of portraying nature at its most vibrant, while still maintaining a simple, grid-based style. As you progress through the building tiers your small patch of land will become rich with meandering rivers, lush wetlands, and flowering meadows. Later environments offer island rain forests, rocky, lichen-covered tundra and even reclaimed cities as rewards, and each environment type has a second map where you’ll have to figure out how to achieve the same eco-miracles using a different set of buildings and equipment.

The game’s goals and blocky visual style actually remind me of an extremely obscure, Japanese environment-’em-up that I picked up, tried, and traded in many years ago, named Birthdays The Beginning. That particular effort failed to grab me thanks to some obtuse gameplay and strict campaign rules. Terra Nil undoubtedly does a better job of easing you in and then making you feel comfortable for your stay, but currently falls down a bit in one of the areas where Birthdays actually excelled – its wealth of content.

Sometimes you have to make things worse before you make them better.

As mentioned, Terra Nil offers four environment types with two maps each. Each environment has a handful of challenges based on humidity and temperature that unlock various effects, and six animal species that can be introduced, and that’s it. Once you’ve ticked all these boxes your only reason for continued play is to redo the various map types and see if you can achieve your goals in different ways.

I’d love a huge map that I can just take my time with, terraforming as I see fit and finding ways to overcome challenges offered by the terrain. I’d also like more animals to introduce, with some requiring extremely specific conditions that require a lot of work, making them all the more rewarding. I want these things because Terra Nil is really, really good, but a little too short. It’s a great game to pass some time with, and even with its after-the-end setting and global climate crisis message, it has a peaceful and uplifting vibe. It gives you time to think, and rewards your strategic building placement with instant swathes of colourful flora.

There’s nothing like some ideal lichen to warm you up on a cold day.

The highlight of the game, though, is the way each scenario ends. Once every building is placed and the desired utopia is achieved, the final step is to remove and recycle every trace of technology. Strategic use of terrain is required to place recycling buildings around the map, and then a recycling drone or hovercraft will start the hugely satisfying process of gradually removing any sign that you were ever there at all. Once the last building has been removed, your quadcopter will pack up and fly away, and only a burgeoning, natural landscape will remain.

It’s a beautiful moment that delivers the game’s message in a tremendously uplifting way. It’s artfully done, and considering the developer’s other works include Broforce and Genital Jousting, it’s quite a departure in tone. You’ve got to respect the versatility. 

RimWorld – Impressions

The Harrowing Trials and Tribulations of the Potato People

I held off on playing RimWorld for years after it first started showing up in my Steam discovery queue and my suggested YouTube videos. In terms of gameplay and premise, it was right up my street, but the visuals always turned me off. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some shallow ingrate concerned only with aesthetics, but a large part of the appeal of sim games for me is the visual interest of watching your settlement, theme park, zoo or other grow, and viewing the interactions of the denizens within. I can while away hours watching a junction in Cities: Skylines, for example, just observing as the traffic builds up, then filters through, then builds up, then filters through. Edit a junction or change a stretch of road, watch how it changes the flow. Watch the traffic build up, then filter through. I have a full and productive life.

Anyway, it was the hilariously and informatively presented videos of a YouTuber called ambiguousamphibian that finally caused me to take the plunge. 30 hours of gameplay later, here are my initial thoughts.

I really don’t like the visuals. Nothing has legs or arms, and everyone looks like a little potato person. Sometimes a colonist will have interesting hair, giving them some visual character, but then they’ll immediately put a hat on so that they look like a little potato man again. When they get shot or stabbed or scratched by cougars, cuts and slashes appear on them, giving the disturbing impression that they’re potatoes that bleed. I understand that the graphics are representative, and that rendering arms and legs would be quite an undertaking considering your colonists can and will lose limbs and then replace them with bionic implants, but I find it difficult to get attached to the little potato people, probably more so than if they were represented by icons or text.

If you can’t make out the text there, it’s saying that Cauchois’ brain is a mangled scar thanks to a shot from a revolver. This has … slowed her down somewhat. She used to be my finest builder.

The environment textures are very lacking as well. I immediately downloaded a mod that sharpens up the textures but you’re still going to be looking at basic, bare minimum visuals for the entirety. It’s fine, it is what it is, I wish there was a more appealing visual solution for a million-selling game, but I signed up for the addictive progression-based gameplay, the situations that can arise, and the stories that can play out.

RimWorld nails all of that stuff, especially if you’re brave and play on the harder difficulties. It’s the sort of game that generates water cooler talk. If you’re lucky enough to have a pal who also plays the game, you’ll be regaling each other with tales of tribal raids, cold snaps, giant insect infestations and killer guinea pig attacks for months to come.

A few years back, my wife and I used to play The Sims 3 a lot. We had completely different play-styles. She would create the perfect Sim, take total control of their lives, get them to work every morning, and try to make them as happy and fulfilled as possible (that’s if she ever got past meticulously creating said Sim’s perfect abode with the infinite money cheat). I would create a household of three or four, give them a mixture of good and bad traits, give the AI the maximum amount of control and just let events unfold, only intervening if I absolutely needed to.

There was another guy in this colony called Hella, but he died when a cougar bit off his arm. Said cougar ended up as lunch for the other colonists. It’s a harsh world sometimes.

RimWorld really rewards players who are somewhere in between the two. You’ll have to be in control to ensure your colonists survive the raids, harsh winters and other such dangerous occurrences the computer will throw at you, but rolling with the game’s mischievous tendencies to throw seemingly insurmountable odds at you is essential to really experiencing what RimWorld has to offer. It’s a story creator, and sometimes said stories may be tragic or hopeless, but they’re always fascinating. If you’re the type of player who would quit and reload if your favourite colonist got his arm ripped off by a passing warg, then this game isn’t for you. You’ve got to accept the rough as well as the smooth to get the ultimate RimWorld experience, and you’ll probably need lots of time to spare, too.

At only thirty hours and three colonies deep, I don’t really feel qualified to review RimWorld. I’ve not come anywhere near the endgame, and have barely scratched the surface of what this indie gem has to offer. However, I can say some things for certain already; this game is meticulously crafted, addictive, near-limitless in breadth, often melancholic in tone, and chock full of little potato people. It’s definitely got a-peel.