- Exceptional Early Access quality
- Outstanding music and sound design
- Highly praised cozy city builder
- Unique voxel art style and atmosphere
- Flexible, stress-free gameplay
- Limited terrain manipulation
Emotions
Players are highly satisfied with the game's overall quality, especially for an Early Access title, noting its polish, engaging mechanics, and charming aesthetic. The game's cozy, relaxing city-building experience, creative freedom, and perceived value for money are frequently cited as key contributors to this positive emotion.
Joy stems from the game's fun, addicting, and low-stress gameplay, coupled with its adorable visuals, wonderful music, and cozy atmosphere. Players particularly enjoy the creative freedom, the ability to watch citizens interact, and the overall pleasant experience of building and decorating their towns.
Excitement is driven by the game's engaging and addictive nature, often leading to extended play sessions. Players are also highly anticipatory of future content, updates, and the game's full release, especially after being impressed by the demo and recognizing its significant potential.
The game consistently provides a non-stressful, calm, and therapeutic city-building experience. Its cozy atmosphere, chill pacing, and lack of demanding mechanics allow players to unwind and find a serene escape, making it ideal for relaxation after a long day.
Players appreciate the developers' passion, excellent work, and responsiveness to community feedback. The game's beautiful Mediterranean aesthetic, unique design, and perceived value for money also contribute to a strong sense of gratitude and admiration for the effort put into the title.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 98% · Negative 2%. Score: 2 / 100
Positives:
- The game is remarkably polished and content-rich for an Early Access title, exceeding player expectations. Many feel it's already at a full release quality, with minimal bugs and a significant improvement over the demo.
- The game's soundtrack is consistently highlighted as wonderful, charming, and relaxing. It perfectly complements the cozy atmosphere, contributing to a serene and immersive experience.
- Players overwhelmingly describe the game as a relaxing, engaging, and therapeutic cozy city builder. Its unique charm, beautiful aesthetics, and non-stressful gameplay make it a standout in the genre, often leading to long, enjoyable play sessions.
- The game's distinct voxel visual style, set in a 19th-century Mediterranean village, contributes significantly to its cozy and charming atmosphere. The graphics are praised for being beautiful, detailed, and unique, enhancing the overall experience.
- The game offers a forgiving pace, allowing players to build and manage their cities without pressure or complex min-maxing. Its depth is surprising, yet it remains easy to learn and never feels like a grind.
Negatives:
- The game lacks features for building on varying elevations, such as ramps, bridges over water, and general terraforming. This restricts creative city design and verticality.
- Players desire more game content, including wildlife, deeper resident interactions like weddings, and Steam Workshop support for community-created assets. Some feel the current content doesn't justify the price.
- Players frequently request an undo button (Ctrl+Z) for actions like placing roads or fences, as current mistakes require demolition and rebuilding, which is inefficient.
- Drawing smooth curved roads freehand is difficult, and the game lacks a dedicated curved road building tool, making it hard to create non-square city layouts.
- There are reports of small graphical bugs, such as strange shadows without Lumen lighting, overlapping pixels, and issues with flower textures switching.
Gameplay:
- The game offers extensive freedom in city design, allowing grid-free placement, detailed decoration, and freeform road drawing. This encourages players to create aesthetically pleasing and unique layouts, focusing on 'scenery creation' and personal touches.
- The gameplay loop is described as relaxing yet addictive, balancing casual play with deeper layers. It features a robust progression system with meaningful advancements, unlocking new buildings, decorations, and technologies gradually, which keeps players entertained without feeling overly stressed.
- A core mechanic involves satisfying the needs and demands of the population to ensure their happiness. Players manage resources and develop their economy to meet these requirements, with the ultimate goal of maintaining high citizen happiness.
- The game is in Early Access, with content like decorations and facilities unlocked gradually through a research tree. While there are many existing options, some players noted potential gaps in content variety, particularly for decorations.
- The construction system is described as easy and smooth, offering flexibility to pause and make changes or build in real-time. Players also have control over resident placement.
Performance:
- Player experiences vary, with some reporting frequent freezes and FPS drops, while others note smooth gameplay after initial issues or restarts. This suggests inconsistent optimization across different systems or play sessions.
- Some players experience high machine load, leading to increased PC noise and performance demands, even on powerful hardware. Lowering the FPS cap can mitigate these issues.
- The game's demo was noted for its instability and high GPU temperatures, which seems to have been largely addressed in the full release for many players.
- One player found that enabling Vsync and disabling the frame limit resolved their performance issues, suggesting a potential workaround for others experiencing similar problems.
Recommendations:
- Players overwhelmingly recommend this game, often giving it perfect scores and calling it a 'must-buy.' Many highlight its relaxing nature and appeal to fans of city-building and tycoon genres, noting its ability to hook players for hours. The positive demo experience frequently leads to immediate purchases.
- Reviewers are impressed with the game's current state in Early Access, suggesting it has strong potential for a full release. They express anticipation for future content and believe it's a title worth watching.
Miscellaneous:
- The game is in early access (version 0.1), and players acknowledge its current state. Developers are noted for being communicative and invested in the player experience, indicating a positive outlook for future development.
- Some reviews included external links or mentioned how they discovered the game (e.g., via YouTube), which is not direct feedback on the game itself but rather its promotion.
- There is a specific request for Steam Workshop support, indicating a desire for community-created content and modding capabilities to enhance the game's longevity and variety.
- One reviewer feels the game leans more towards a 'drawing game' than a traditional management game, suggesting a unique or perhaps unexpected gameplay loop.
- A player expressed interest in a feature allowing them to walk through their city from a citizen's perspective, suggesting a desire for more immersive exploration.
