Banished

Banished is a strategy game based on building and maintaining a steady population while continuing to have your village grow and prosper. With influences from SimCity both on the strategy genre and on gaming in general, has immensely helped to create this game. Banished is the latest in that line, elaborating on the intricate, small-scale design of recent games like Tropico and creating something unique in the process of creating your very own settlement.

 Banished is a series of small goals that can be played in a never ending loop. Every game starts in the spring, and before winter hits, you need to get enough firewood, gather a decent supply of food, and build some houses to keep your citizens from freezing to death. Just getting enough food is tough, because you rarely have enough time or free land to get a proper set of crops growing. Instead, you'll be chopping down as many trees as you can before getting a fishery going in a nearby lake or river. Then you hunker down and hope nobody dies. Banished also has a number of natural disasters that could strike your settlement. They serve as a kind of random "boss fight" in the sense that they will often test one aspect of your infrastructure. Diseases test the health of your population, fires test your city planning, and tornadoes test your ability to rapidly rebuild before winter comes again.

 If you're reading this, it's safe to say you have a computer or cell phone. But what if you didn't? What if you were forced out of your home as you know it, to live in the wilderness? How do you think you'd survive? Banished asks those questions, opening with a dozen or so outcasts looking to create a new life in the wilderness. It's a humble setup, but the game is masterfully constructed with dozens of interlocking mechanics to make the start the perfect foundation for an emergent prosperous new settlement where ever, with whatever you can imagine.