Timberborn

Beaver sandbox city builder about building up a settlement and surviving a harsh environment.

Humans suck, not all of us, I’m sure we have little pockets of safety and community to keep us sane, but it’s hard not to feel like as a broad whole, humans suck, and well, the beavers think so too. Who’s there to stop them, humans went extinct after all, leaving the world barely holding on, barren and polluted and destroyed. It’s not all doom and gloom though, a river here, an oasis or aquafer there, just enough to get some greenary going, grow trees, build a lodge, grow your population. It’s a rough start, but you can rebuild.

This is a sandbox city builder. At the beginning, you have a small population, a couple resources to get started, and some berries nearby. First priority, survive: Build a lumberjack flag, get wood. Build a gatherer flag, get food. Build a water pump, get water. That’ll get you by to begin. Then from there, time to start replanting some of the trees to have a source of wood, and then start preparing for what might happen if the water stops flowing.

Water is your lifeblood. Without it, your plants will wither and die, and your beavers will dehydrate. But well, you’re a colony of beavers. Directing water is kinda your entire thing. Build levees to block the water flow and dams to hold back a reserve of water. When the dry season comes calling, new water stops flowing, so you’re going to have to maintain the little water stockpiles that you have to keep the grass green.

Expansion is the name of the game though. Build more housing and birth more beavers. Sure it means that you will have to have more food and water to keep them healthy, but it also means you have more paws to build and work. Harness the power of wind and water to generate power for your sawmills to cut logs into planks, and use those to build more sophisticated infrastructure. Start gathering metal scrap and processing it into blocks for more building options, and spread out across the land to farm more crops, grow more trees, and direct the water wherever you need to send it to greenify the soil under foot, or into large resevoirs to sustain the colony through hardship. You do need to start seriously considering the droughts and badtides. Early on they aren’t that bad. A day without water here or there, but they do become significantly worse as time goes on. 15 days without water, 20 days of all your water sources producing sewage. You really have to prepare and pay attention for when badtides happen, and ensure the contaminated and dangerous badwater is directed away from your main watercourses, otherwise it will contaminate your irrigation water and very quickly kill your crops and infect any beavers that swim through it.

Ultimately your goal isn’t domination, or money, or any of those other stupid human things that got the world like this in the first place; it’s wellbeing. Every new type of food, every new source of entertainment or wonder. It all goes towards making your beavers happy. Happy beavers are healthier; move faster, work harder, live longer. The more beavers at high wellbeing, the better the whole colony is doing. The ultimate goal is only to raise your wellbeing as high as possible. Work towards all the wonders, make sure your home is well decorated. Produce all the different varieties of food, and keep your colony safe from droughts and badtides.

The game releases out of early access in just under 3 weeks. I know I’ll be sinking more time into it, especially since there is already a diverse modding ecosystem to explore too.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062090 £29.50
Humble: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/timberborn £29.50