The last couple of years have been pretty good for management games, but only the select few have made the cut for our list of best management games you can play right now. If you're looking for something to sink into over the holidays, check out our picks below.
]]>From our first years we know what it means to build. As babies we're given clacky wooden blocks and colourful Duplo bricks. We are architects long before we are capable eaters of raw carrot. If you're anything like the staff of RPS, you've not outgrown the habit of child-like town planning. Yes, building games often take a managerial approach (at least many on this list do), but a sense of play is always present. It's there when you draw out a road in Cities Skylines, just to watch it populate with toy-like traffic. When you brick up another hole in your mighty Stronghold to fend off enemy swordsmen. When you painstakingly dig a trench for water to flow in Timberborn, just like you did all those years ago on the beach, in an effort to stop the tide washing away your sandcastles. You'll find all these games and more on our list. So here you go: the best building games on PC.
]]>My body betrayed me last month, trapping me in my bed when it wasn’t sending me rushing to my poor, overworked loo. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t work and so I turned to management games to take my mind off the virus squatting inside me. Juggling budgets, disasters and production chains might not sound particularly relaxing, but there’s also a swathe of low-pressure sims that serve as a brilliant panacea for stress.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
I got my arse kicked by the readership when I reviewed Banished and made it clear I didn't enjoy myself at all. I don't mind. I'm glad.
]]>Every Moday we send Brendan to plough the fields of early access and see if anything nutritious grows. This week he mismanages a settlement of brow-beaten farm workers in Forest Village [official site], a placid spin-off from Life Is Feudal’s medieval sandbox.
The village of Scallyminster lies in ruins. I’d like to think I did everything in my power to help the last citizens of this dying village, but that would be a lie. They followed my orders, like good computerised serfs, right to the bitter end. The village is empty of life now, except for the bears, who have always been very pleasant. I don’t think the game will let them feast off the frozen corpses of the last six villagers. Which is a pity, because the citizens of Scallyminster murdered plenty of bears in their time, before the fall, that is. Before the 13th Year.
]]>Banished is, to hear Alec tell it, a desperate, painful, vexing experience, but in a (mostly) good way. Eventually, though, even survival against the brutal elements, creeping disease, and human nature gets boring. That's why we invented videogames, doncha know. Fittingly, then, developer Shining Rock is currently hard at work on an infrastructure that will allow Banished players to create even more videogames from the one they already put out. They call it "mod support," presumably named for British mod culture in the early '60s. Details below.
]]>Banished is an indie sandbox city building simulation, in which you have free reign to grow a nascent medieval town using only the resources gained from the land around it. You build and you harvest, and you keep your population healthy enough in order that they might breed and expand. It's out now, and I spent the weekend with it.
It made more sense once I decided that everyone in the town had tapeworm. Their prodigious appetites and the strange ease with which they would starve to death had more reason to it then. If I became frustrated, all I had to do was picture these weather-worn medieval folk shovelling endless amounts of fish, venison, potatoes, peppers, berries and mushrooms down their brown-toothed maws, only for the grim parasite in their guts to hoover half the goodness out of their rich harvest, leaving these peons hungry to the point of collapse.
]]>Things are going to get ugly in the intergalactic Milky-Way-orbiting RPS space pyramid when it's time to review splendid-looking city builder Banished. We've already divided into embittered, warlike factions in anticipation of the day we decide who'll do the honors. Those factions will, of course, splinter with time, rotting into sticky morasses of selfishness and treachery. The Smiths - made up of Adam, Graham, and Quinns' restless ghost - might be all buddy-buddy now, but even they will fall into disarray when push comes to shove. Mark my words. And that day will arrive... oh hey, in a few weeks. Banished is coming out in February. Wahey!
]]>If you are a connoisseur of modern-ish culture like myself, you'll no doubt remember a moving, soulful ballad by the Backstreet Boys entitled "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)." I can't help but hear it every time I find a new trailer for splendiferous-looking rural city builder Banished, seeing as a) each brief glimpse feels like a cruel game against my heart, because b) my heart desperately wants to play this game, and c) na na na na na I should've known from the start na na na na baby oh. So, good news and bad news. The good news is that Banished is in its final stages of development, and Shining Rock has released a spiffy new video to celebrate. The bad news, however, is that there's still no firm release date.
]]>A few months ago, Adam said he'd was keen to see more of Banished. LOOK OVER HERE, ADAM! Banished is a game of city-building, where you take a tribe of exiled folk and start over, and it looks absolutely charming. It's about what happens when you take the scale out of urban planning. You'll know the names and schedules of every little person pottering about your lovingly laid-out homestead. You'll watch them get up and go about their day. You'll mourn when Emile the Woodcutter is chopped down in his prime, but be glad that it's Arlyle who replaced him. The video below shows developer Luke Hodorowicz planning a town expansion with the magic of agriculture.
]]>Banished is an independently developed settlement simulation, with a survivalist backbone. It's about heading into the wild and building to live rather than sitting on top of a casino and living to build. If memory serves, I haven't actually played a Settlers game since the second but Banished looks like it may well tap into the same part of my brain, absorbing hours of my time in peaceful construction and careful management of tiny people. The latest video suggests that access to and movement of resources will be significant, even in relatively compact colonies, which should put a pleasing emphasis on layout and individual needs. I am keen to see more.
]]>I love being alive right now. Admittedly, there are many reasons for that - getting to see humanity clumsily barge its way into a new stage of evolution, being able to have pancakes pretty much whenever I want them, etc - but mostly because I get blindsided by amazing-looking new games on a nigh-daily basis. Banished, like so many others, has crept seemingly out of nowhere, set up a nice little settlement on the crisp loam of YourTubules, and proceeded to look utterly brilliant. In short, it's a small scale city builder, but that doesn't really do it justice. Money, you see, has no sway when starvation, disease, and the elements are the ones you're bargaining with. People are precious, and Banished is a game about cherishing every last one you've got.
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