Timberborn, the tried and true of a city builder starring post apocalyptic beavers
Timberborn
The human race has finally destroyed itself by transforming planet Earth into a playground for the wind. However, life on the planet has survived and some species have adapted, evolving into intelligent creatures, capable of building and exploiting residual resources to grow their civilization. A game with post apocalyptic beavers, what could possibly be complicated? We said to ourselves. It will be a light production, aimed at an audience looking for carefree, almost casual video games. Who else would deign a look at it? We repeated to ourselves.Then we tried Timberborn and we had to change our minds, because we are more on the side of Factorio than a city builder for mobile devices.
Give us a tutorial
When mastering the game system, superb constructions can be made The first thing you notice, once you start a game of Timberborn, is the almost absence complete with a tutorial worthy of the name. We know it is still in early access and therefore there is time before all the features are added, but for such a complex game the lack of a sensible introduction to the gameplay is still a serious matter, which could discourage many potential buyers. Basically what is called a tutorial consists of a handful of pop-up messages that give us some objectives, but that do not explain anything at all about what we are doing. They just say: build this and build this other, leaving us in the dark about most of the game mechanics, and then, when it is still not clear how the interface works, they give us the well served leaving us completely to ourselves. . More than a tutorial it seems like a joke. Of course, experience compensates for the lack of explanations a little, but some characteristics remain obscure, so much so that one ends up committing gross errors during construction not knowing how certain buildings work.Let us give you an example that should be clear to everyone: one of the first requests is to build sheds for lumberjacks and indicate which trees are to be cut. In any other game of the kind built the building the collection would be automatic, here instead you have to use a special button to trace the work area.
Not bad, it would be said, if someone had explained something to us ! Now, project yourself forward in the hours of play and imagine how frustrating it can become to study the behavior of each single building, whose function we may have understood, but which we find difficult to use in the game. Why are certain connections not possible immediately? How does science work? When do beavers reproduce to increase the number of citizens and, consequently, of workers? These are all questions that remain hanging, at least until the player fails to give the right answers by trying and trying again. Which translates into a terribly slow and at times annoying entry into the game.
Building
Another Timberborn City Having overcome the immense initial stumbling block, Timberborn begins to show its best face , that of a complex and multifaceted city builder sandbox, which requires a certain shrewdness in the management of resources and which poses interesting problems such as the fight against drought or the rational growth of our urban agglomeration, which from a small village can be developed into a real city, complete with distinct neighborhoods between them. As desired, the player is initially called upon to stock up on basic resources, such as wood and food, then he can build homes for the beavers (who otherwise sleep outdoors), rather than think of recreational areas.When the situation has stabilized, it can begin to develop more ambitious goals, such as creating a fully automated area, with one eye on production and one on ecology. The possibilities, from this point of view, are enormous, and it is up to the player to indulge themselves.
The world now belongs to beavers The construction system is designed to allow for the most varied urbanization possible, including buildings that can be built on several levels, stairs that allow you to exploit hills and cliffs, as well as some buildings themselves, possibility to modify the environment to adapt it to our needs and so on. Already in the absence of all the promised contents for the final version, we are faced with a complex title that allows the creation of exceptional cities, in their impressive verticality, whose subsistence function soon fails to take on an aesthetic value. Of course, for now there is really a lot of flab, but the maps present (if you want you can also generate new ones via the internal editor) allow you to vary the construction style a lot, giving Timberborn a fairly long life.
Graphics
Graphically it certainly does not scream a miracle From a technical point of view Timberborn is not too surprising. The found of the beavers is only exploited in a superficial way to characterize the game world from a visual point of view, which however always remains leaden and aseptic. The buildings themselves are nothing exceptional either, and in most cases they merely resemble something that defines their function. On the other hand, some animations, in some cases really deficient, are very bad, such as those of depositing raw materials in the construction site or the movements of the beavers themselves, not exactly natural. To save the title of Mechanistry from this point of view is the possibility of building bigger and bigger cities, which automatically become beautiful just for the fact of proposing impossible architectures. There is time to improve, fortunately ... otherwise what good would early access be?Timberborn is a particular game that doesn't give too much faith in its assumptions. If it weren't for the initial tutorial, which can be really daunting, especially for newbies, and for other budget-conscious decisions, it would still be a good city builder, with some features yet to be studied. Developer advice is to make entry into the game less of a hassle.
