Timberborn

Rating: 9/10 industrious beavers 🦫🌲 Timberborn is the kind of game that says, “Build a cute little beaver village,” and then six hours later you're frantically redesigning an entire river system because your population accidentally drank the last drop of water and now everyone is one bad drought away from becoming decorative lawn ornaments. The premise is simple. Beavers survived humanity. Nature is healing. Unfortunately, nature is also trying to kill you every few weeks with droughts, heat waves, and your own questionable city planning decisions. Gameplay At first, life is peaceful. Your beavers are harvesting wood, collecting berries, and building cozy little homes. You feel like a competent leader. Then the first drought arrives. Suddenly you're staring at reservoirs, floodgates, pumps, and irrigation systems like you're preparing a master's thesis in hydraulic engineering. What started as a colony builder quickly evolves into a full-scale war against the laws of physics. The water mechanics are the star of the show. Rivers flow realistically, dams actually matter, and every construction project feels meaningful. Few things are more satisfying than watching a massive reservoir fill for the first time. Few things are more devastating than realizing you accidentally flooded half your town because you moved a floodgate one click too far. The vertical building system is fantastic. While most city builders spread outward, Timberborn encourages you to build upward. Before long you've created towering wooden skyscrapers, elevated walkways, and enough staircases to make your beavers qualify as mountain goats. And then there are the bots. Once you unlock mechanical workers, your colony transforms from "cute woodland settlement" into "beaver-run industrial revolution." Nothing says progress quite like replacing half your workforce with machines powered by giant spinning wheels. Visuals & Vibes The art style is absolutely charming. Everything is colorful, detailed, and full of personality. Watching dozens of beavers carry logs around with complete confidence makes every colony feel alive. The soundtrack deserves special mention too. It's calm, relaxing, and perfectly suited to the experience. That is, until a drought begins and you're desperately calculating how many days of water remain while the music politely pretends everything is fine. There's something oddly therapeutic about watching your colony function. Water flows, crops grow, machines spin, and little beavers hustle around carrying materials twice their size. It's city-builder comfort food with occasional moments of absolute panic. Final Thoughts Timberborn is clever, addictive, and surprisingly deep. It takes the familiar city-builder formula and transforms it into a fascinating puzzle of water management, engineering, and survival. You'll spend hours creating magnificent dams, elaborate irrigation systems, and efficient industrial districts. You'll also accidentally flood your farms, forget to stockpile water, and watch an entire district collapse because one critical staircase was removed. But every disaster just becomes another lesson for the next colony. Mostly because you're convinced this time your giant mega-dam definitely won't turn the entire valley into a beaver-themed Atlantis. 🦫💧🌲

I am sorry. I bought the game in early access in 2022 as it was promising. It really was a cute city builder with the novelty of drought threats. I played a lot in the early versions, then less and less. Indeed as the patches released, the devs kept adding features that made the game easier. The addition of badtides was nice but it is not challenging enough. It really just is a drought on steroids. They added more and more buildings, crops and leisure for the beavers, but never more gameplay. As a result, the game is boring. You understand pretty fast that you need to build big water reserves early on to survive droughts and badtides. Once you have them, the game is over. There is no real incentive to build all those buildings and to make bots. Adding automation was surprising as it does not feel needed. The game needs a bigger variety of randomized threats to keep the players on their toes and get them to adapt their cities. Storms, snow, heatwaves, you name it. It also desperately needs endgame perspectives that are more complex than "build big city".

Pretty chill game overall. I've caught myself staying up till 3 am just tending my community and beavers lol. Once you start stacking up food and water, the real fun begins as you begin crafting new buildings, resources and leisure spots for the beavers. Decorating is also a fun aspect of the game, setting up each housing building is cool. The droughts can get a little stressful when they start hitting 7 or 8 days lol. Carrots is the way to go for food honestly, bread is good too. Throw some lofi or oldies music in the background as you make your own lil beaver world. 10/10 vibes.

It's a relaxing game to play after work It look simple yet alot is going on Water mechanic is awesome Building not only houses and production but also dams

PROS - Unique water management and engineering mechanics. - Deep and rewarding city-building gameplay. - Creative vertical building system. - Charming art style and relaxing atmosphere. - Highly satisfying progression. CONS - Can become overwhelming in the late game. - Requires a lot of planning and micromanagement. - Slower pace may not appeal to everyone. VERDICT Timberborn is a brilliant city builder that proves a unique concept can completely reshape a familiar genre. The combination of water physics, engineering, and strategic planning makes every thriving colony feel like an achievement. If you enjoy management and city-building games, this is an easy recommendation. 8/10

I wasn't interested on playing this game till a random guy on TY... district hall named the Thorn Breakers convince me to make a move... and here am i... with 30 hours of play... recommend 10/10

[h2]TLDR:[/h2] Timberborn is a solid (but not complex) city builder based in a whimsical post-apocalyptic world where beavers have outlasted humans. Gameplay is fully sandbox and very fun, focussing on creating your own buck-toothed utopia in a challenging environment. While a great game, it has a lot of room to build (pun intended) and not recommended for players who like complex city builders (I'm looking at you City Skylines fans...). Timberborn is a great city builder based in a charmingly whimsical setting. The premise of the game is clearly set out from the start and the tutotrial, while somewhat slow and clunky, does a good job of introducing you to the basics of the game, but those accustomed to city builders will quickly move beyond the tutorial (or like me, forget it exists only to be yelled at later down the line). Controls are (broadly) intuitive too. The game offers a range of starting challenge based on the player's choice of map (and of course difficulty level). There are very few challenge factors beyond this. The ability to choose between two types of beaver clans is a nice choice by the developers, offering two different play styles. That being said, the difference and variation between the two play styles is minor and once you adjust to the minor changes (and some different buildings, mostly in 'wellbeing') the difference matters little in the end. You can play as: [b]Folktails:[/b] The original (vanilla) beavers focussed on their traditional love of nature, food, comfort, and of course wood. [b]Iron Teeth:[/b] Industrious beavers who abandoned the Folktails way of life and embraced the technology of the 'hoomans' and love nothing more than metal and efficiency. Going as far as reproducing using external vats (and even able to skip 'childhood' stage. [h3]Pros:[/h3] - Solid, comfy, whimsical city building experience with a diverse range of maps offering a range of challenge. - A comfy whimsical setting that encourages resource and population management while balancing this against the happiness of your beavers and creating the efficient and aesthetically pleasing city that you and your flat-tailed brethren crave. - The 15-layer freedom to build vertically is incr.edibly fun and allows for huge Warhammer 40k style hive cities (massive tower cities) - The district-management system, while not unique, offers another layer of management for those who want to make their city more efficient and have a more distinct character between the sections of their city. - Automation (Yes/No logic based) circuits offer a good opportunity to both manually and automatically manage your city to move away from extreme micromanagement and potential mistakes. - The soundtrack really matches the whimsical vibe of the game. - The option of two different tribes of beavers to play as, offering a variation of play styles. [h3]Cons:[/h3] - Provided you keep an eye on food and water reserves and your population growth, there is very little mid-late game challenge. - Access and scalability to mid-late game buildings barely exists. Provided you focus on research point generation from the start, there is little barrier to accessing the ability to reshape the terrain by mid-game and with it the power to completely remove the risk of droughts and badwater spills. - There is no campaign or 'mission' format seen in similar games such a Frostpunk (although there is a mod that emulates this to a degree). - The soundtrack is limited and after enough time can become tiresome. This is not an unusual problem for smaller (or even larger developers), but is worth noting. Just put on music in the background outside the game. - The game lacks graphic optimisation, which means that when you begin reaching larger cities it's difficult to achieve decent FPS, especially at X3 speed. - District management is a good addition, but if not consistently reviewed it is possible for an entire district to die out because the import/export space is being kept by other materials rather than prioritising food and water. [h3]Recommendations: How can the game improve?[/h3] 1. Introduce a campaign/mission-based format to the game so that all gameplay isn't sandbox. These missions can also introduce fun limitations/restrictions that force the player to tackle problems from different angles (e.g. reliance on wind turbines only or no badwater stores to create explosives when the mission is to redirect riverflow etc). 2. The game's graphics/CPU optimisation should be improved to allow better fps for larger cities. 3. Additional resource and building types should be introduced to increase variety, game play styles, and additional challenge of resource management. 4. Add different world events beyond 'drought' and 'badtide'. [b]Note: I ran out of time writing this review so it is not as robust as I would like, but should give a good taste of the game! - I highly recommend it and hope the developers continue to add more content and updates.[/b]

[note 1: this is a review of base game, without mods; if you're willing to spend tens of hours to mod it, you might get a fun, playable and challenging game... until an update breaks the mods and/or one of the authors stops updating his mod] [note 2: I played most of my time either offline or on another account; I was able to get all the cheevos and played the game for more than 100 hours in total; BTW getting cheevos by itself is trivial once you realize you can get them on any custom difficulty setting, even one that has no drought nor badwater] After many years of being a Timberborn supporter, I think I'm done. I had really high hopes when this was announced, was really stoked when badtide update came... But then, the game is basically dead, left as a proof-of-concept for streamer sandbox midwits and people who are addicted to it, not seeing the actual game and problems it has. It's not a bad game, but I just can't recommend it in its current form, due to how severe the flaws are and how noticeable they are to someone who played enough other sandboxes and sims. Let's start with the good stuff: * voxel-y small-scale city sim with no hard time or resource limit - never enough of those :) * good 3D graphics, cute and thematic (although a little bland overall, all browns and pale greens - one might argue it builds the theme here :) * fun worldbuilding (beavers taking over the world after humans, excuse me, HOOMANS got extinct after destroying the ecosystem), * developers are definitely smart and they were able to come up with lots of fun mechanics and intriguing solutions to problems, they have a page with most requested features and many of them got into the game, and are fixing bugs constantly, * core game flow is innovative, yet familiar (similar to Settlers), * you can place many objects to customize your settlement, * the two available races are HUGELY different, both in terms of play style and building selection, * has many maps available out-of-the-box, and even more custom ones, * has a multitude of mods available. One might think, "a perfect game!" So did I, for the first couple of dozens of hours and for a couple of first maps I completed. Then you realize some problematic things: * only two races, drastically limiting replayability (there are mods for more races :), * lacks many basic buildings or blocks that are existing everywhere and that were requested years ago by many players (some of them even on the Most Wanted Update dev list), like ladders, lifts, 45 deg slopes, pipes etc. (some of the lacking buildings are added from time to time, like waterproof stuff that was just added in 1.1 experimental, and of course THERE ARE MODS FOR ALL THAT :) * only two "disaster seasons" (drought and badtide), which are hugely imbalanced - basically, badtide has all the problems of drought (no usable water) but also poisons your water supply and kills crops - meaning _if you can survive long badtide, drought is irrelevant, and even often useful for engineering reasons_. People requested flooding, rain etc., it could have plagues or earthquakes or space debris falling... you name it. * no real recurring problems or obstacles other than the seasons above - if the map has bombs, once they explode that's it, you have a static environment again. Nothing changes, nothing is randomized, the only bonus for "winning" a map (wonder) is flexible start... meaning you can make the map _easier_ once you already _completely beaten it_ :D * UI ranges from "usable, but rough" to "almost unusable", depending on how advanced you are in the game; not everything has a keybinding, most icons are just light brown outlines on dark brown background (barely legible), and you'll spend many hours hunting for some buildings placed in some strange and not-really-fitting tab until you memorize everything, and then realize it could've used color coding or more menu levels or just a configurable hotbar etc. (there are probably mods for it :) * robots/automatons are too weak compared to max happiness beavers and available only when you don't need them anymore, making them fluff, not core mechanic, * almost all maps are same-ish (notable exception is Oasis, which I really like due to its quirks, and Plains, which certainly are great for your first playthrough), and there is basically only a single way of getting to the finish line, * core development pace is glacial. You get new feature, you get new bugs, you get fixes, you get tiny mostly irrelevant rebalancing... meanwhile, the core game is exactly where it was, boring and predictable at this point. * very few ways to improve logistics (basically only zipline is an easy and fast improvement; tubeway, while great, requires a lot of engineering resources and time to function properly), and districts being really tedious to set up, * it's easier to wait for the resources to be produced small scale in small colony than to expand and do it quickly. There are very few ways to improve/upgrade existing flows, so you can only reduplicate the industry... but that increases the risk of catastrophic failure of your settlement if any variable in the holy beaver equation goes wrong, * you can have beavers starving to death on a literal field of food, just because your production priority assignment got skewed etc. * NO BLUEPRINTS IN A SANDBOX IN 2026. You'll be clicking like madman to set up yet-another similar settlement. * NO HIGH-POWER EXPLOSIVES (3x depth TNT is max), meaning YOU'LL BE CLICKING LIKE MADMAN TO TERRAFORM. Still not bad, right? Even with those problems, it could've been a great game, right? ... Well, it is, kinda. Until you "crack the code". When you realize how easy the game is even on Hard or Hard++ (i.e. settings you customize to be strictly harder than hard), when you realize how repetitive the runs are, how irrelevant most unlocks, techs and automations are... Then you'll be as bored as me. Basically, there's a SPOILER TAG HERE - DON'T READ IT IF YOU WANT TO PLAY THE GAME AND ENJOY IT. Iron Teeth. You start hating it, then you realize they are broken in every way possible, due to their unique breeding mechanism... and tubeway on top of it. Breeding pods need upkeep... for the first 80%. Then, they don't. And they can be paused. And you can have advanced breeding pods that produce adults instantly. As a result, almost every map can be won like this: * levee, get your hands on it ASAP and wall off water flows, then floodgates as on/off switches for the flows, * forester, plant tons of berries and oak, * 10 or so breeding pods, pause most of them on 95+%, leave just 4-5 running initially, then add more as you expand, * lots of low-priority inventors so that you never have idle beavers, instead you have tons of research, * rush metal, numbercrunchers, explosives and extract; get some automated power if possible (geothermal or pressurizer + water wheel) * now tons of advanced breeding pods, leave 10-20 paused on 95+% * no way to lose. Even if everyone dies, you just unpause the pods, * bonus points: use tubeway for total verticality. Once you get good at it, you can have 1000 days of drought, 1000 days of badtide, it doesn't matter. Even with no-one alive (or dead, you don't need automatons) the crunchers produce research, and you can just unpause your colony after you got enough research for what you want. There is no literal challenge. >inb4 just play with FT then no. It just makes the game more tedious, because you need to idle for longer, and because verticality is the winning strategy for for FT and IT. Try playing Diorama, you'll get my point :D >inb4 just don't pause your pods then yeah, I can also play blindfolded, or with my tongue. Any other bright ideas? :D --- tl;dr great game, gets boring once you "crack" it, then it's no longer great, requires serious rebalancing and many additions, I don't recommend it but feel free to try it out yourself.

非常不错的游戏，每个角色就像自己的孩子一样可爱，但是死太快了/(ㄒoㄒ)/~~。 然后就是自然灾害/季节，这一块要素太少了，另外娱乐设施没怎么实装，导致娱乐与正向收益不存在正比关系。

♥♥♥♥♥ bober ⠀⠀⢠⣿⣿⣶⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣶⣿⣿⡄⠀⠀ ⠀⢠⣾⣿⣿⡿⠉⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠉⢿⣿⣿⣷⡄⠀ ⠀⠘⢿⣿⣿⣇⣠⣿⡿⠛⠉⠉⠛⢿⣿⣄⣸⣿⣿⡿⠃⠀ ⠀⠀⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⡋⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢙⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀ ⠀⣸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣾⣇⣀⣀⣸⣷⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣇⠀ ⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣆ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠟⠛⠉⢸⡇⠉⠛⠻⠿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⢸⡇⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟ ⠀⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡀⠀⠀⢸⡇⠀⠀⢀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⠀ ⠀⠀⠈⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠟⠁⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠙⠻⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠟⠋⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀