.Age: Village Survival Sim

Town builder sims have a special appeal. You watch your hard work and dedication pay off as the little virtual lives under your careful watch grow and blossom into self-sufficiency and prosperity. Fewer genres let your decisions have as much an impact as this classic one does, and fans of the genre have sunk extensive time into not only the games themselves, but into their communities, wikis, and forums surrounding them. Curiosity Killed The Cat Games is taking this in a somewhat new direction by having a wealth of random events to disrupt your plans in their Steam Greenlight hopeful .Age.

Billed as the merciless village simulator, .Age hits on all the right notes for the town builder fan. The game is quick to learn mechanically, and never really deviates from traditional formulas of the genre in terms of the actual town building. You grow food which feeds villagers who work and build so that you can continue the cycle, researching new and better buildings to make the cycle more efficient as you grow. Where it deviates is the event system.

In game a "balance" system influences events in the game. Whether they be related to the weather, illness, or the earth itself rejecting you, you need to keep a steady eye on the balance of your village. You can build up defenses against them (fire to keep warm if things are getting too cold, for example), and the game will let you know a few turns in advance if something's coming thanks to the power and wisdom of your oracle character, though you won't likely know what exactly is coming, just what sort of event is about to begin.

In a particularly sinister but certainly merciless stretch of luck, I barely managed to get out of the first few parts of the tutorial thanks to a string of illnesses befalling my burgeoning village. Starvation and sickness quickly set in and I nearly started losing my very small number of villagers before I managed to right the ship. The game is unforgiving and this will probably appeal to a fair number of players. It certainly worked for me.

Visually the game has a simple pixel art look to it. Buildings are fairly well detailed, while the villagers look a bit generic. I think it's a clever choice, as the villagers themselves are far more expendable than the resources used to build, so having the buildings better detailed not only keeps the screen looking nicer as you play, it also emphasizes what you need to think about more. The music is unspectacular in the current build, but it's not bad either. It exists in the background and personally I found myself too involved in the gameplay itself to be concerned with it.

The game isn't complete yet, but it certainly has a solid foundation going for it. It promises thousands of events and several different balances to manage, as well as an in-game encyclopedia that you can consult to learn more about objects and events in-game. A detailed and accessible source of information is essential for this sort of game so I'm glad to see that is planned.

.Age has the potential to be a very solid village simulator. Its random elements keep the game from getting too repetitive, a common stumbling block of the genre, while it manages to be approachable to fans of the genre by keeping the conventions of the genre intact. Recently starting its campaign on Steam Greenlight, I heartily recommend anyone who enjoys the genre to keep their eye on it, and I think it could also appeal to people who are looking for something to invest a lot of time in and deal with various, unforseen challenges.

Source: IndieGames.com