Unlike so many Civilization-sortas, Banished lacks tech trees. In the beginning of every playthrough, Banished will drip a handful of families, a construct or two and a token amount of goods into your hand. Survive against the approaching winter, the outbreaks of dysentery, the fires and the inexorable, lethal march of age. The core premise is a familiar anthem: survive.

Depending on your starting choices, temperament and aptitude for such games, Banished will either be a relaxing diversion or a reason to get quite, quite cross with your villagers' inability to stop dying. Banished is blunt and understated, eschewing frills in favor of resource friendliness. It's an open-ended survival simulation jammed into a city builder, a lone developer's fevered vision of a medieval micro-management utopia and a game so steeped in that 'one more turn' taste it took me six hours to yank myself free. In spite of Lestellow's infestation of pedophiles, I like Banished a whole lot. This is what I get for letting foreigners into my town. If her husband dies in the quarry, I am so going to dance a jig on his grave. According to the little window detailing the wooden shack's particulars, she just gave birth under my vigil. The girl, who is freckled and dressed in rumpled overalls and pigtails in my mind's eye, was apparently pregnant. Hope, and the promise of a future in Banished's bleak, hungry world. Sandwiched between a geriatric couple and a spinster who has remained obstinately single since she moved into the house, they should have represented hope to me. This mismatched pair was the latest 'family unit' to sprout in my town of Lestellow. But that doesn't change the fact that there's something deeply, fundamentally wrong about a 12-year old girl shacking up with a 29-year old man - even if he's a bearded beefcake of a stonecutter. I know medieval tweens were keener on marriage than some 30-year olds are today. 'I guess that explains why they were Banished in the first place.' Someone quips over Twitter. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team. This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247.

Banished the game current version