Let’s start by saying that while the game is still early access, it has been playable for years. It first released in 2021, and has been continuously updated since (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timberborn#Development). To be fair, with what is possible in the game now, I would consider it a complete game.

I’m not the best at game critics, so I’ll just try to tell what’s good, what can be improved, and whether I recommend it. Keep in mind I only started playing it this week-end, so I’m quite new, but hopefully this is still relevant.

For the context, I’m a very heavy Caesar III fan, and have been looking for a long time for a modern game that would give the same relaxing feeling of “solve one issue at a time” that C3 is (also, for C3 fans, check out Augustus, it’s amazing)

The good

• Cool concept and theme: beavers and water are refreshing compared to the usual city builders. The general art style fits the theme as well
• Building can be stacked vertically, allowing for more creativity for city building
• No too many “risks” mechanics: food does not decay, buildings don’t collapse. That’s usually a thing that I was not that much of a fan of in C3, seemed like it was there just to add an unnecessary layer of management
• the Districts mechanics allows you to expand your bases in a nice way, you have quite a lot of control of what is sent between districts
• the easy mode allows for a quite chill experience. Not sure how challenging the other modes are.
• the devs listen to the community feedback, they recently made a “you were right, we were wrong” announcement: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1062090/eventcomments/830458962613745838

The potential improvements

• I got a few hiccups running it on Linux using Proton. Nothing too critical, got one crash at some point, I just reloaded the autosave. It was a one time occurrence.

Should you play it?

Definitely a solid game for people who like this type of city/base-builders