In my first two years of ownership, I would have said this is easily the greatest city builder ever created. But in its current state and seemingly the direction it’s headed, I cannot recommend this game.

In the beginning, this game would have been comparable to rimworld or dwarf fortress. It was a great world/story generator that allowed you to play at your pace. Want to rp as a small fishing village? Do it. Want to rp as a giant empire with 9k residents and over 20 regions in your control? Do it.

Currently, the game now would be more comparable to factorio, in that it’s really only about min/maxing now. Instead of creating a world the player is free to make choices in, the game now forces you to rush and progress in the way the dev wants you to.

My current gripes with the game:

- Maintenance: when this concept was originally introduced, I saw the vision. It’s an interesting mechanic that would make sense in a city builder. However, the dev has genuinely #### this mechanic up SO bad it can destroy a run easily. They have decided that most buildings need a constant stream of building resources to be repaired (even at 100% efficiency). This now bottlenecks EVERYTHING, bc to build a new building you need to increase every industry that creates those resources, but now you need more people, but now you need more food, but now you need more people to work the farms… but wait… now you need more people to increase productivity of other products or your citizens will rebel and leave… but wait… and thus you’re in a never ending race between “oh my god my people hate me bc they are starving” to “oh my god my people hate me bc they don’t have furniture”.

- Technology:

I genuinely have no words to accurately put how much I hate the technology overhaul. The newest updates has made technology an Unintuitive micromanagement nightmare. It’s clunky, makes zero sense, and another element that now will randomly bring a run to screeching halt. BRING BACK THE OLD SYSTEMS.

- Upgrades:
Upgrades have consistently gotten pricier with each update, as well as making some of the upgrades less efficient. This does not add “challenge” to the game, it just removes the significance/feeling like the player can actually make any choices. At this point, you are forced to build in the order the “game” wants you to. The pricier upgrades, mixed with bs maintenance, and now a ruined technology system give the perfect storm for a cluster #### of bottlenecks and other logistical issues. Except unlike factorio, in this game a bottleneck for two minutes could end your run bc citizens have revolted and left.

- Dev vision:
It is seemingly apparent the dev has changed the identity of this game and what he wants it to be. That’s fine, I mean he IS the dev and it IS his game. Recently on the discord, he has mentioned that he wants this to be a game where players MUST utilize excel sheets, notebooks, and min/maxing. Yeah no, I’m out. I work in finance and stare at excel sheets all day, I want to play a video game to relax and have fun, NOT work 2.0. IMO, there is an extremely loud minority on the discord that has “highjacked” this game from the actual player base.

In the end, the game I bought has become tedious and moved away from being a fun, organic city builder to more of a math problem with animated values. I will likely still play the game (as you will probably see my play time go up), but only versions from 2022 and lower.

Yes

Should be avoided. The game was great until v67 which when I am writing this is the official version. However the developer is taking a different direction with the game in v68 which is mostly disliked by the community and the dev seems to be doubling down. v68 will become the demo when 1.0 is out, so wait until 1.0 is out and play the demo. Will revise should development take an unexpected turn.