So this new game launched on Steam recently:
Life is Feudal Forest Village.
Some negative reviews claim it's a clone of Banished. On the surface, it does look similar as far as its settings and maybe graphics. Still, I've always been interested in this concept for a sim game. I've considered buying Banished in the past and this game looks similarly interesting. I think
@GasBandit put a lot of hours into Banished. What say you, Mr. Can of Beans?
I like Banished a lot, but be warned, it is CHALLENGING. Punishing, even. You have to build and expand, but not too quickly, but definitely not too slowly! If you expand too slowly, your villagers age and die and there aren't enough trained, educated new people there to replace them. If you expand to quickly, the populace outbreeds their capabilities of growing food, and then there's starvation and deprivation. A balancing act that makes my nards clench. Banished routinely goes on sale for more than 66% off, and I'd recommend picking it up when it does.
From my gaming blog, back when it was relevant:
If you think you're good at management sims, you should step up and try Banished. It will humble you. Unless you do everything right and provide for about 17 different needs for all your people at all times without fail or delay, people are going to die.
A lot of people. The game's resource generation vs consumption is incredibly tilted against you. Unless you have fully educated villagers using the best tools and wearing the warmest clothing and in exactly just the right amount of houses (not too few, not too many), it's a long slow slide into starvation and desperation. My village has been going about 43 years, but because villagers apparently age at 4 times the normal rate (I started off with 10 villagers in their 20s, and within 5 years the oldest ones in the village were in their 40s easy) there have been generations of turnover, especially due to all the starvation. You can't farm enough. You can't forage enough. You can't mine enough, you can't quarry or herd or smith or log enough, fast enough. At my peak, my village boasted almost 100 residents. After about a 20 year recession that worsened into depression (not helped by the frequently completely useless merchants that came to call, no I don't want to buy your stupid pumpkin seeds, I already grow my own, why the hell didn't you bring iron), I'm back under 30 residents, mostly from starvation.
The game plays very similar to Tropico or Gnomoria in that instead of controlling individual villagers you simply order the places for them to live and work built, and manage as a taskmaster/city planner. It starts off kind of easy because a new map will have abundant resources just lying on the ground around you... but once you use that up, it's much slower and more expensive to mine it/cultivate it/quarry it. There are no goblin attacks, no rebels, no hurricanes or zombies... just your silent mental wail as you watch people under your charge wither and die because your skills at management were a single iota less than divinely perfect.