Outlanders Review – No Need To Settle

Despite my love for large-scale simulation games like Cities: Skylines as an adult, I was not a SimCity player growing up. SimTown, which is more easily manageable, was my choice. I was drawn to SimTown’s zoomed in town management. This allows you to micromanage all aspects of citizens’ lives, without having to use SimCity. Outlanders is a simple but challenging settlement builder that has been able to hook me twice across its two platforms.

This simulation simulates small-scale management. You play the leadership role in a threatened settlement and can choose from dozens of different scenarios. One scenario requires you to repair a damaged boat in order to escape an island. Other scenarios require you learn about farming mechanics and build large statues made from bread. Don’t be fooled by the simple visual style; these scenarios grow in complexity as you unlock more structures and jobs, like a farm to grow crops, bakeries to generate bread, and breweries to give your followers the gift of beer.

Every time I added a new structure, it was difficult to keep up with the addition of another moveable part. But eventually they became part of my toolbox and provided a more enjoyable simulation experience. This toolset comes in handy in Outlanders’ sandbox mode, which lets you customize the biome, map size, starting stockpile, natural resources, and plenty of other variables before creating a settlement without needing to worry about objectives or restrictions.

Outlanders uses simulations to its advantage. Although your followers can act on their own, it is up to you, the town leader, to assign roles and priority. To adapt and accommodate the changing needs of my community, I moved followers all over. Sometimes I needed to have wood so I assigned four lumberjacks. But it’s more often the lack of food, that causes my settlements to collapse. So foraging and agriculture have always been my focus.s. I love calculating which of these areas to invest workers in since foraging provides instant food but depletes quickly,Although farming requires time, but can still be grown from seeds. You need to not only coexist with nature but also learn how to avoid depleting its resources before you have the means to replenish them. Failing at this seemingly simple task results in the death of your civilization nearly every time.

If all else fails, you can issue decrees to your followers, like rationing food oThe “hands off” decree You can ensure there are no new babies. It is possible to tell people to stop working to increase happiness or encourage a boom in population. Although these decrees can help you fix any problems, they also have unique effects on your happiness and productivity. These decrees were a great way to maximize my settlements.

Each scenario includes a primary objective that needs to be completed for success as well as an optional mission; these side goals add an extra wrinkle of challenge, like accomplishing the main mission without exceeding a certain number of followers, keeping your followers housed and happy throughout, or harvesting enough resources to repair other structures following a storm.These were the goals I set out to achieve, and often I succeeded. However, they are trophies that I keep on my shelves. I don’t feel disappointed if some side goals I didn’t reach.

It’s great that Outlanders don’t have many unrelated elements. There are no tornadoes that can ruin your plans or cause crop failures. No droughts to wipe out your crops. And no invasions to your stocks. All it takes is planning and managing resources in the given situation. My failures were all my own fault. This led to several angry outbursts as I helplessly watched my settlement’s predicament snowball out of control due to poor planning; all it takes is a couple of followers to die – whether of old age or hunger – for the well-oiled machine to crumble. My 16 adults were perfectly distributed, however, when one died from old age I had to redistribute one of my plant foragers in order to take his place as a lumberjack. Sadly, that led to a chain reaction where not enough food was being gathered, and before I knew it, four followers died of hunger, and the spiral had begun.

Although I saw several settlements fall to pieces due to the poor start conditions, I kept going with the game and incorporated the lessons I learned into my next endeavor. I’ve never loved trial-and-error gameplay, but Outlanders never feels unfair – just unforgiving. You start to see the signs that these issues are coming soon. It was my habit to anticipate the downfalls of each settlement’s, and I managed to prevent most of them. This progression – not in the game mechanics but rather in how you think about the gameplay and the domino effects of various in-game actions – is ultimately what kept me coming back for upwards of 20 hours across both PC and iOS. 

Outlanders is available for iOS via Apple Arcade starting in 2019, but I prefer to use the PC version. I still sometimes have difficulty selecting the correct settler or structure in a crowded area, but not nearly as much with a mouse as I do with a touchscreen. Also, the widescreen format suits the gameplay and art style, and the well-translated navigation keyboard controls feel more intuitive than the Apple Arcade version, which is surprising, seeing as how that version came out years prior to the PC release. Both versions are great ways to enjoy this sim. However, if you don’t mind portability, then the PC version is your best option.

Although I was frustrated at times by the way my followers dropped like flies, I enjoyed how every scenario forced me to manage all these variables to achieve a goal. Outlanders can be challenging and frustrating, but I rarely felt overwhelmed. Outlanders does not have the same grand-scale city simulations as other genres, but it appeals to your task-oriented brain. This made Outlanders a very satisfying experience, which brought me back again and again.