Before We Leave is a citybuilder in which you form settlements on a planet and then blast off to find new homes across a solar system. It looks extremely chill, it has space whales, and it just launched after a spell in early access.
]]>Matt and Nate have been playing Before We Leave, an aesthetically pleasing, non-violent citybuilder which nobody can seem to mention without also mentioning space whales. It's about little peglike people emerging onto the surface of a hexagon-covered sphere, after centuries living in a shelter underground. And it's also, inevitably, about gathering resources.
]]>City-builders aren't usually my jam, but Before We Leave has planet-devouring space whales. It's a "mostly non-violent" game about helping colonies hop between cute little planets, building wooden spaceships and salvaging ancient tech. It came out last week, and everything about it looks soothing.
Apart from the whales. Obvs.
]]>Over the break we had a chance to do some serious scientific study of this business we call games, and it turns out that games are actually good. 2020 in particular has a healthy mix of big budget bonanzas and smaller indie plates to suit everyone's discerning tastes. And, as you know, the RPS treehouse is the most discerning, so to make it easier for you we've got a big ol' list of the games we're most looking forwards to this year. It's traditional.
]]>City builders are neat, but they don't have nearly enough space whales. Fortunately, Before We Leave does. It's a freshly announced "nonviolent city building game" where you can eventually set up an interplanetary network of wooden villages, so long as you can deal with the celestial cetaceans that come along and try to eat your planets.
I got a sneak peek at GDC back in March, and the promise doesn't stop at the premise.
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