Banished vs Before We Leave
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.
Before We Leave
Before We Leave is a strategic city-builder that sees the descendants of the survivors emerge from safety to reclaim the world, like their predecessors, after years of huddling in underground bunkers no thanks to a galactic disaster. In this game, you’ll need to manage your colony of Peeps by making sure their needs are being met and producing enough resources for them to explore the planet and exploit the resources present.Besides exploring and keeping your Peeps happy, the gameplay also consists of optimizing production lines, unlocking new technologies and upgrades, and trying to offset challenges that will buffet your production systems, sometimes reducing productivity to almost zero. Eventually, as you progress, you can even colonize other planets!
All in all, Before You Leave is simply a brilliant and strategic village builder that is a whole lot deeper than it looks. You can spend hours building and rebuilding your villages just so you can hit that sweet spot of being completely optimized, and then to do it all over again once you’ve unlocked something new.