Banished

   Banished is one of my all time favorite city builders. You're put in charge of a group of people cast out from their medieval society, forced to start a new life in the randomly generated wilderness.
   Unlike other city simulators you have no direct control over your citizens, as you can only assign jobs to them. This makes it hard to get things done hastily (not that anything in Banished is accomplished with anything resembling speed) and makes the game much more difficult than most others in the genre, since the goal is less about building a sprawling city and more about keeping your populace alive and kicking. Maintaining a careful balance of jobs and resources is crucial to avoid having your town fail before you can get it off the ground. Each new home you build allows for a new couple to move in, and since your villagers breed like rabbits, it's crucial to not expand too quickly, as you'll soon have too many mouths to feed and not enough food to go around. It's incredibly easy for a town to crash and burn, and once famine or hypothermia or disease begins to decimate your populace the domino effect will make it hard to recover.
   Eventually, all towns will fail. Even if you manage to dodge famine or plagues or anything else the game throws at you, at some point you'll run out of room to expand and your population will become too old to have more children. There's a constant feeling of impermanence to the game as a result, and that's okay! Everyone gets bored of their town at some point in every city-builder. Banished is a lot more about seeing how long you can last, rather than how expansive and impressive your city can become.
   The difficulty (which can be tweaked, either through settings or mods) makes the game much more intriguing as a light strategy game. However, once you've "solved" the game, no matter how hard it's been made, the difficulty becomes almost trivial from that point on. There's a lot of crop and animal types to collect through trading, but after a certain point they're mostly for breaking up the monotony of the fields rather than providing any real tangible benefits.
   The trading system might be the weakest part of the game. After a trading post is built, boats will start showing up from time to time with a random assortment of resources to barter for. On the harder difficulties, towns start without any farm animals; crucial for the development of a town. Sometimes they'll offer up sheep (or cows, or chickens) to trade on the first boat, but I've gone for in-game decades before finding them before. It's one of the most aggravating parts of the game, as a city's growth can be hampered by nothing more than bad luck.
   Banished might not have the same long-term appeal as games with cities that can last forever, but it's the one I've returned to the most over the years.

It's just one of the most awesome Games on the survival market! Just something else. You start your Village with 5-20 People, some Of them children, and first try to build Them friends for the Winter, as well as to collect Raw Materials. Fire for Heating and Building, Stones for Building. Then you build a Field and plant it so that you have Food for the Winter, when the stored Supplies run out. The Game starts very leisurely and quiet. The Farmers are busily doing their Jobs, as are the Children. For my Part, I had started too slowly to build Houses for the Couples of my Village so that they could live There alone (who likes to proliferate In a Homeless Shelter with 20 Inhabitants?). After a few Years, 20 of my 40 Inhabitants passed away at old Age and 10 froze the following Winter, as workers were not enough To Collect Wood. Of the remaining 10, 5 were in the Working Age who starved to death a short Time later. So I started again and expanded faster. The Problem now was that I built houses too quickly and so quickly came into the World Descendants who didn't work but ate for them. After a few Winters I also exrotated the Village. These are the first Problems you face in this Game. In Addition, there are diseases, poor Harvests or general Scarcity of Raw Materials. So all in All, this Game doesn't make it very easy. These Problems are further expanded with the Individuality of the Characters. Because if a Parent Couple loses all three Children in a Winter or because of Illness (and best of all, there is no cemetery), then they are more likely to stroll across the Marketplace or through the Village than work what turns out to be catastrophic Could if you don't have enough free Workers available to do their Jobs. In Contrast to Sim City, the Inhabitants have their own Houses and their Family and do not go arbitrarily to a House where "there is still Space." The Atmosphere this Game creates ranges from melancholy to peaceful and happy-all just through the hustle and bustle of The Workers and the-absolutely ingenious-music. I'm just realizing I should have made a Plan for myself, which is what I want to write ... Well, never mind. If you are still reading now, and want to have a Buy recommendation, you should get it: KUT YOU THIS ABSOLUT GELUNGENE MEISTERWERK! It is not important to generate money as in other City Development Games, but to really keep everything in Order! And compared to other survival games, your only Enemy here is just nature-so the Weather, Diseases (only take in Nomads if you have enough Pharmacies!) and the (not always abundant) raw Materials. There are no Murders, no aggressive Animals or Cyborgs, no Russians, Amis or Nazis who want to kill you, apart from the Merchants who sometimes demand unmetered goods as an Equivalent! So far, I have only once managed to build a City in over 100 Years, which has 800 Inhabitants and which-except for small Corrections every now and then-works completely for itself. 10/10 Points for this Masterpiece!