8BitMMO vs Banished
8BitMMO
8BitMMO is quite a different sort of 2D MMORPG mainly because it is a giant sandbox set in a persistent streaming world and partly because of its eye-catching retro look. Being a sandbox game, you can literally build anything you like be it your own city or a magnificent castle; a simple humble home or an expressive voxel art. You can even build dungeons for other players to raid in! To make things more interesting, the game also has a fun zombie mode in addition to the plethora of hats, clothings and other accessories to customize your character with, and the tons of enemies you can battle against alone or with a group of friends. You don't need to worry about griefers as well, since the game has a robust anti-griefing system in place to prevent the same, bad thing that had happened to you in Minecraft's multiplayer game to occur again.8BitMMO is completely free-to-play and is still under active development by its one full-time developer (hats off to you my friend), so if you'd like to show your support, be sure to buy some of the stuff in the game's in-game shop or simply submit your feedback and ideas. Either way would help!
Banished
Banished is a medieval-themed city-building simulation that can be pretty difficult to get into at first mainly due to its many nuances and lack of a comprehensive tutorial. But once you get the general idea of how things work (we'd recommend starting with easy mode), you'll start to truly appreciate the game as the challenge that it is. In some way, this game is quite similar to SimCity in many ways with the obvious difference being the themes and the lack of piping, waste management or electricity. Different maps will pose a different challenge and of course, the bigger your village is, the more stuff you'll need to manage. Although it does have some strategy elements to it - mainly in the form of village management, the game is not a war game. There is no fighting involved but your villagers will die from natural causes or disasters like illnesses or famine.However, once you've gotten the hang of the game, Banished becomes less of a punishing game and a bit more boring due to the same-y looking buildings and the soundtrack. When it comes to replayability, we'd say that the game has maybe tens of hours in it before you'll get bored and move on to the next game... and this play duration may be drastically reduced if you happen to be a pro SimCity player.
So, in short, Banished will appear to be a somewhat frustrating game at first, but once you've gotten the hang of it, the game might gradually becomes boring mainly because there is nothing else to do except to expand, expand and expand! However, we can't say that we didn't enjoy playing the game, and even for the shorter play duration it has to offer, as opposed to triple A city-building titles, the game is worth the money it costs.