It’s reeeaaally good imo, but also a freaking time machine. You start to play it, and 1 hour later you traveled like 10 hours into the future.

To be a bit more serious, the game has a very nice and cozy vibe, an interesting construction system with buildings on top of other buildings and intricate road and energy transmission planning, great water mechanics, and a good economy and survival loop. You can spend hours trying to figure out an optimal way to stack and connect certain buildings, and you have to be really careful about when to expand, cut back, or build more production and storage, because the next drought or bad water season could very well be your last!

One thing I really don’t like is that you kinda have to play it with the time sped up, because many things just take a ridiculously long time to build. It also gets much easier once you manage to get your water supply under control, almost nullifying the survival mechanics.

This is not simulation game, it is city builder/survival game. And if you like the genre, yes, it is good. One of the best to be honest.

I have about a hundred hours in it. Here’s some scattered thoughts:

–The devs clearly care a lot and it’s a labor of love. They communicate well, provide updates, listen to feedback, engage with the community. They’re lovely.

–the game has a fun series of mechanics, good visuals, good music, fun vibes. It’s a bit… Sandboxy, towards later in most runs. I don’t know what to do with my settlement come cycle 12-15 (cycle is 12-20 days or so). I wish there was a little more of a goal for it, like scenarios

–good mod support and map making. People have made some dope maps for it

I’m gonna continue to revisit it as campaign/scenarios evolve, as mechanics are added, and as I want to get my beaver vibe on

My favorite city builder in decades. A few notes.

Pros:

• Easy mode is relaxing and quite easy.
• Medium mode is a fun challenge at first, eventually becoming fairly chill as you advance in skill and confidence.
• Hard mode is always fairly hard, especially on harder maps.
• There are many resources to manage, but none that feel burdensome.
• The game is extremely thematic, it feels alive with charm.
• Graphics are excellent, though sometimes graphical glitches can still be encountered.
• The water. It’s so hard to explain to someone who hasn’t encountered this system before, but water is life in this game, and it’s both beautiful graphically, and extremely well simulated by physics. Learning to control the water, and see the shortest paths to end water scarcity with beaver engineering is an amazingly fun and unique aspect of the game.
• Mods are well supported and the community is vibrant.

Cons:

• Not a ton of content. They’ve been very good about adding new mechanics (badwater, extract, etc) but there’s still just 2 races of beaver and a dozen or so maps.
• No directed experience. In similar games I’ve enjoyed a campaign, challenge maps/scenarios, weekly challenges, a deeper progression system, just… Something to optionally set your goals. There’s nothing of the sort in the vanilla game. It’s fully open ended and there’s only one unlock outside of your progress though the resource tree in a map.

All in all, I highly recommend it, especially at the modest asking price. If you love city builders, charming and beautiful art, thematic settings, dynamic challenge, and solution engineering, this is a fantastic game for you.

Other games I’ve enjoyed that scratch similar itches:

• KSP
• Cities: Skylines (but Timberborn has been far more compelling)
• Factorio
• Mindustry
• Planet Zoo (Timberborn has less of a directed experience, but is otherwise completely superior)
• Gnomoria
• Banished
• Tropico series (though I view this as more casual)

Get it and have fun is my recommendation.