In a recent Quick Thoughts, I had said that due to Farthest Frontier, I had mostly stopped playing Banished. And at that point, it was true. I did have a Banished run going, but it had probably been seven or eight months since I had touched it. So “going” isn’t really a good term to use. I did play it a bit after that, but my town…did poorly. If I had a plan before the gap in play, I’d forgotten it, and if I didn’t have a plan, well, I suppose the tool death spiral would have happened anyway. Tools are crazy important in the game, if you’ve never played. While I did manage to semi-stable myself, the amount of youngling deaths would have lead to some painful following generations. So, I tried anew.

Starting from scratch kind of lead to some of the learning that I had done, however many years ago I had done it. Even more so because of, well, Farthest Frontier. The speed of food and firewood consumption, as well as the buildings you need to put up first, are not the same in both games. My dusty game was about half a century in, while the last time I played a new game was…well, I don’t know. I can make an educated guess though of mid-November 2023, since it was what got me all my first ever achievements. Based on the speed I play stuff, it had probably been 13 or 14 months since I had started playing, never mind finished. That would be right around the time I started playing Farthest Frontier , but before I got more into it (I probably started the run because I understood it better that FF, honestly). At any rate, it had been a while since I had played a day one game, and most importantly, my mind had been turned to a similar but different game.

So what did that lead to? Death. Despair. Dying. Mostly from the children, which is terrible in its on right, but the stability I got when things finally got stable was not one to last. You see, in Banished, everyone ages five years per year. That’s actually what got me losing on my later playthroughs when I was learning the game. The first couple times, I was playing it a bit like you’d play a modern-themed city builder: build houses to get population. Thing is, you have to feed those people, so especially early game, you need to hold back on the house building until you have buildings that can fill those tummies. To “fix” my problem, I built houses very slowly until I held a huge amount of rot-free food. Of course, this lead to a bunch of people waiting at death’s door, and about half a dozen toddlers. Oops. Things weren’t quite so bad this time, and it probably could have been saved once the aging started to take its toll, but I still wanted not have a time in the future where there was no one reaching a working age. Death can snowball like crazy in Banished, and in my restart, it was going to.

One of the greatest things about Banished is its mixture of simplicity and complexity. Once you’ve figured out some of the basic stuff, primarily growing your population fast enough that you can progress, but no so fast that you burn away all your food and firewood, you can pretty much coast indefinitely. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Just looking at the achievements, the top two of 36 both require having at least 100 population for a decade, with high happiness and health. Fourth in line, acquired by 14.6% of players, is for having a population of 300. And keep in mind that the “real” number is probably higher than that, because the percentage is being dragged down by people who played for an hour and never touched it again. So, a decent number. The last achievement, meanwhile, is for having a population of 500 after two centuries. That’s not a huge leap from 300, and the achievement for having 900 citizens has a record of 2.7x as much. There’s still a low record on that, but it’s a good example that getting a big town isn’t the hard part, it’s getting a big town well that’s hard.

And that’s amazing. I love a game that can have a strong mix of hard and easy. Especially if it’s easy to jump into. The tutorial for Banished is…kind of meh, once you play “getting started” you’ve probably got it, you’re going to learn a lot more from actually playing the game. But easy to start is nice. Farthest Frontier has a lot more complexities in it, and while that’s good in some regards, most people will be playing in the beginner stage for longer, rather than getting into the depths of the game. But if you want to play Banished slowly, you can. If you want to play it fast, shoot that population up in 200 years without losing a bunch of people to starvation and freezing, you can do that, too.

Another thing I love about the game is just how great it looks. For game with such simple artwork, the buildings can be really great to look at. The forests especially are beautiful, and I always smile a bit when a dead tree falls down. The fact that you can watch it, you can hear it, not many games will show something so basic. And the water–I had never noticed it until I was taking a closer look at the game, but it’s amazing graphically. The fact that it fits in so well with the simplicity of everything else is even more impressive. Finally, it has a really strong community That isn’t exactly due to the game, other than people still wanting to play it in 2025, but it’s always nice to see gamers talking about it.

Now, I’m not saying Banished is the perfect game, no perfect game exists. One of the biggest sorta problems is the trade. It’s entirely a barter system, there is no currency. Which, for a game where steel exists, is kind of weird. Steel tools are a lot more recent than money. I don’t think that’s bad, but I would like it if it were part of the difficulty settings when you create a new game. If you want currency to hold you over between traders, rather than stocking up your multiple trading posts (each trader only visits one, so you have to hope the right one goes to the right place, another annoyance), you could do it. If you wanted to play like it is now, with a little more luck, you could do that, too. The food system is frustrating, as well. It never spoils, so once you’ve gotten into the groove, your food you’ve set aside is going to just keep growing and growing. You’ll probably hit your stock cap and have to raise it, your town’s growth held back by the amount of resources you have to build houses rather than the ability to feed the people inside those houses. Or at least I do. It can get a it boring to toss thousands of fish in a trading post because you simply have no other use for them.

My last big thing is that tools are way too over powered, or probably more accurately, over valued. “Tool” is a catch-all for anything a worker uses, from a saw to an pickaxe to a fishing rod. Those are all going to have importance, but it’s the pickaxe that’s less important to the immediate survival of your town, and the fishing rod that won’t need to be created by a blacksmith for your medieval town. With the huge death spiral a lack of tools can cause, like with my mid-game restart, they’re almost more important than your food. If you hit zero tools, so even your blacksmiths don’t have any, bye bye.

Banished is just a great game, and I’m super glad I looked back into it after thinking I was going to step away semi-permanently. I’m not going to going away from other games because of it, and in fact, I’m probably going to be moving more into its genre. Farthest Frontier? Keep playing, especially as it evolves more. Foundation? I have the demo, have played it a bit, and will probably get the full game at some point. Lords and Villeins? Going to get some more into, and probably going to write about it. Manor Lords? Actually, I don’t know about that one. It tickles my fancy, but only slightly, and I can never decide if it’s continuing to tickle that fancy. Point is, I think 2025 is going to be the year for me that’s not about city builders, but about town builders. And Banished may very well lead that, both in vanilla, and once I’ve finished my current run, whenever I decide that’s happened, with a few mods. I definitely suggest checking it out if you’ve never done so, even if it’s just watching a let’s play. Maybe with a few extra crossed fingers, the sequel will finally come out. It won’t, the developer’s pretty much quit on it despite saying it was coming in the past, but we can dream.

What about you? Have you played Banished, or a similar game? Are you still playing? What makes you enjoy it? Tell us in the comments below, or on Facebook!