Instead of just offering a standard easy, medium, or hard mode, Banished allows players to really tailor the kind of experience they want to have – and I think that’s something more titles in the city-builder genre should try to emulate.įor example, it’s tempting to use all the logs your citizens gather to construct new buildings – especially at the beginning of the game when you don’t have many. The number of families (and individual citizens) that the town has at the start, the harshness of the weather, and whether disasters (like fires breaking out) are switched on or off all make an impact, as does whether the randomly-generated map has more or fewer mountains. I’ve been playing video games for more than thirty years if I haven’t “got gud” by now, I’m not going to! But we’ve drifted off-topic.īanished offers several different difficulty options that can be combined in different ways to customise the experience. This should be the subject of a longer essay sometime, but as someone with disabilities, I really do believe that difficulty options are an accessibility feature that as many games as possible should include.
Particularly with fast-paced titles like action games and shooters, I find that I just don’t have the reflexes, reaction time, or just the ability to play those kinds of games at that level. I usually like to play games on the easiest mode available. I’d still include Banished as one of my all-time favourite titles even if it had been put out by an entire studio backed up by a major publisher, but the fact that it’s an indie game made by a single person is just mind-blowing.Ī market, crop fields, a mine, and houses. Maybe it doesn’t have the flashiest graphics or the most complex and numerous in-game mechanics, but it brings a lot to the table regardless.
Banished was a labour of love – and it shows. I think that’s absolutely incredible, and well worth taking a moment to consider. A single person managed to create this incredibly intricate and challenging game, one that exists in a pretty unique niche within the overall city-building game realm. What astonishes me about Banished is that its developer – Shining Rock Software – is actually just one person. The fact that I’m still playing it almost eight years later should tell you how I feel about it! The early- and mid-2010s were a mess for me for all manner of reasons, and my memory isn’t great even under the best circumstances! Suffice to say that I discovered Banished shortly after its launch, and for a relatively low price of admission when compared to titles in a similar city-building space, I thought it was at least worth a shot. Banished was released in 2014 for PC, and I honestly can’t remember where I first heard about it.
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