Foundation has been in early access for 3 years and finally hit it’s 1.0 release.
Foundation provides the ultra niche experience of dark ages ant colony where the roads build themselves. The big selling point for Foundation is that the game does not take place on a grid. Instead you can rotate and place your buildings wherever you want and your villagers just figure out the best way to get there.

The experience is far more chill than something like Bellwright, or its distant grandparent Banished.
I played the demo for the game which overwhelmed me with it’s chillness. I bounced off the demo immediately and decided it wasn’t for me. The game however, had sown its seeds. The next day… I wanted to play more.
The gridless building system is not the only thing that makes Foundation unique.

Foundation’s Building System

Foundation employs a building system similar to…
Ok this is a throwback, but the first thing it reminded me of is the building system in Spore. I suppose it’s closest relative nowadays is Tiny Glade. Tiny Glade is utterly beautiful, and is a game about building castles. However, Tiny Glade is an art game, and has no strategy or simulation in it. Foundation takes that system and asks. What if we added economy, villager happiness (like that in Anno), and some light combat. This system also ties into the upgrades which require you to meet certain requirements in either Trade, Military, or Religion. I think this system from a design standpoint is smart. It ties many of the systems together.

My personal standpoint is mixed. I don’t always want to sit down and design a new building. I wish there were presets I could choose from if I’m feeling too lazy to build my own.

Economic Simulation

One of the aspects of the game I really enjoy is the games economic simulation and zoning. City building games, by their nature, have a very clear and visual representation of the flow of resources through your system. You put down the woodcutter, you hired the workers. I’ve always liked this kind of simulation.

My issue with this game’s system is that balancing production lines is very difficult. It’s standard in city building games with production lines to have some way to track what each building is producing and how much it uses. Unfortunately there’s no way to track these metrics (as far as I know). You just have to, like, vibe it out man.

There is, however, another economic system that makes me want to pull my hair out from time to time. The town trading system. Trading can be used as an additional revenue source, but early game it acts as a life vest for high tier resources. You have no way of crafting them, and you will run out. The issue with this system is that traders come by infrequently. Even on the fastest speed it feels like they come around every 10 or 15 minutes. If I’m short on tools my whole town grinds to a halt until they show up.

God Game Influences

Started by the game Populous released in 1989 by Bullfrog Productions. This genre is largely about influencing your civilization through acts of god. The people will do what they want. You are simply their deity, granting their wishes and smiting your enemies.

This genre was shelved years ago. Though small attempts to revive it have shown up here or there. Most notably the Xbox Live Arcade Game From Dust which I adored. From Dust had similar vibes, but it was more of a puzzle game than strategy. I compare to this genre because, although you place some buildings. You don’t place all of them. The zoning feature, which is reminiscent of the zoning system in games like SimCity or Cities Skylines, satisfies this god game callback.

On the landscape you paint a residential zone with a brush and they decide when and where to build them in this zone. Since the AI is in charge of it’s own pathing, roads naturally appear on the routes villages take the most.

I think this system is so cool.

Conclusion?

I really like Foundation for it’s interesting mash up of genres. It’s very chill. While I think the chill vibes won’t suit all types of city building players, if you are someone who likes games with AI simulations, or god games, this game is a good time.

Check out my full review here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/nickpasta/p/foundation-medieval-city-builder-review?r=1gvhqz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

In Timberborn you play as a colony of beavers attempting to survive in a landscape affected by the coming and going of a river. As you plan your colony you have to take into account how many citizens you can support during your next drought, and how to make things just a little bit better. Overall this game is a fantastic city builder that focuses on the challenges of the city itself over combat.

See full review here:
https://bitsnpixels.org/p/best-city-building-games-2025

Most strategy, city builder, and 4x games tend to get better as time goes on. The studio has time to add more features and dlc that makes the game better in almost every way. If you’re looking for a game where you manage the economic zoning, road building, and growing of a modern city this is the game for you.

The elephant in the room is Cities Skylines 2 which released to a lukewarm reception. As I said it takes time for games in these genres to improve, but the benefit of the next game coming out is you can grab Cities Skylines with all its DLC on sale for a great price!

See Full Article Here:
https://bitsnpixels.org/p/best-city-building-games-2025

Introduction
My girlfriend and I have a problem. We both burn through co-op games like wildfire. We also are both interested in very different genre of game. She loves collectathon games, and sandbox survival. I, on the other hand really like management and strategy games. So my question is this: How do we find a game that bridges that gap and manages to hold both of our interests?
Allow me to explain the problem in a little bit more detail then I’ll get to Bellwright I promise.
I am an optimization machine. I love automation games like Shapez 2, Factorio, and Satisfactory.

The feeling of laying down the groundwork for something; be it, conveyor belts, robots, or citizens, satisfies something deep in my soul. Haha I guess trains do too. If anyone has an inkling about what condition this might be tied to, the trains probably give it away.
Perhaps its the same reason I want to start an ant colony, or really like making terrariums. I’m willing to tolerate the spreadsheets and planning in order to see the systems I’ve designed work for themselves.
My girlfriend is on the opposite end of the spectrum. She’s a loot goblin and refuses to skip any part of the experience no matter how minor. If there’s an option to do it all herself she’s going to take it.
These diametrically opposed viewpoints cause tension when we attempt to play games together.
When we play her games I lack the mental stimulation to keep up with the grind. My solution is to divert my attention to finding exploits, glitches, and sometimes cheats. If the game won’t let me skip the boring stuff I’ll find my own way.

This frustrates my girlfriend to no end because she gets the strong feeling that I’m not really helping out (which is definitely the case). Plus lets be honest nobody likes playing games with someone who’s bored.
Similarly. When we play my games my girlfriend lacks the stimulation from feeling like she’s actually doing something. She’s blinded by a game who’s UI is the bastard child of Excel dressed up to look like a videogame.
It’s not that she can’t figure out these systems. She is very smart.
She just isn’t stimulated by games who’s primary objective is for the player to retire their sword for the exciting adventure that is logistics and personnel management.
Plus as I’ve said. It’s no fun to play with someone who’s bored.
Therefore it’s exciting for me to say that Bellwright fantastically provides an experience that we both enjoy.
Survival Elements
Lets start with the stuff that my girlfriend likes since that follows the natural progression of the game.
The game starts the same way all survival crafting games start. We are Deus Ex Machina’d into existence with nothing but some undies and the will to succeed. The game’s tutorial leads us quite nicely through the motions. Pick up sticks, rocks, and make an axe. Build a campfire, build a home, build some chests.
What sets this game apart are the townships across the map. The towns have a problem. The entire region has been taken over by a bandit hoard. If we help the towns rebuild and rebel we gain their trust giving us a special currency called renown.
80% of my girlfriends time is trekking back and forth between towns supplying them with whatever it is that they need. She finds filling out these checklists rewarding and fun.
The other 20% of her time is a balance between crafting what she needs, and fighting. What’s unique about Bellwright is that players can use (nearly) all buildings the same way villagers do.
My girlfriend can go about her business without engaging with villagers at all
Not only is this engaging to her, but it also allows her to approach villager management at her own pace.
City Building
Now lets talk about what I like.
The freedom to run around, collect resources, farm, and craft everything myself is there. I simply don’t want to. My goal is to automate.
Luckily, Bellwright is “heavily inspired by”
genre titans Rimworld, and Dwarf Fortress. Get villagers, assign them jobs based on their skills, and set work orders. Research new buildings, armor, and technology to get better items and higher tier resources. Rinse repeat.
While my girlfriend is running around, I get to sit at home, stare at the resources page, and debug our system till we are self sustaining. That makes up about 80% of my time. The other 20% of my time is ordering and equipping troops to fight bandit hoards. I also enjoy getting some blood on my own sword.
How these systems force us to rely on each other.
How They Work Together
The First Pillar
There are three main pillars that tie the questing and town management together.
Lets start by talking about renown, the currency I skipped earlier. Whenever my girlfriend fulfills a need for a town we get Renown (word up).
Our relationship with the town improves.
Critically, new villagers cost renown and can only be recruited (poached) from towns. To get better villagers we must reach relationship milestones.
In order to get what I want, I have to rely on my girlfriend questing.
Therefore the first pillar is Renown.
The Second Pillar
The second pillar is research.
As our towns reach higher relationship levels, they require higher quality equipment which needs to be researched.
Uniquely, research is the only job that cannot be done by a player. Therefore we must have at least some citizens. Additionally higher level research and buildings require progressively high quantities and qualities of resources that would take a solo player hours to collect and build. This forces my girlfriend to rely on me to produce a steady stream of resources that she can use to fill out quests.
The Third Pillar
The third and final pillar is combat.
As the game progresses the hoards of enemies we fight not only get larger, but they also become better equipped.
Combat in Bellwright is slow and clunky. Not in a bad way. I find the combat very fun actually. The clunkiness only serves to give numbers and equipment a large advantage in combat.
I need to rely on my girlfriend for collecting renown for more and better villagers. She needs to rely on me for keeping them fed and well-equipped.
This is why this game is perfect for the both of us.
Bugs and Cons
Before we finish lets talk about ways the game let us down, and ways it impressed us both.
Bugs. Throughout our experience we’ve encountered many bugs including: ai pathfinding bugs, quest markers in the wrong place, and UI errors.
Crashes. My game as the host has been totally stable. The same cannot be said for my girlfriend who has had issues with crashing, getting stuck in things, and desynced construction.
AI Placeholders. Bellwright has a decent amount of AI placeholder art which is sad to see, but gets the job done.
I think the largest offender is the AI voice acting they use for the NPC’s. Their steam page claims this is temporary while the game is in early access.
The writing in the game is not very good and has a lot of English translation issues. This is especially relevant with regard to the AI bark lines.
I can only hear an AI repeat
“There’s nothing like a good days of work.”
And,
“Why does it feel like the birds are plotting something?”
as I pass by my villagers.
Thankfully the voices can be turned off..
Conclusion
At the time of writing we have 35 hours in Bellwright and are nearly done with the tech tree. The game is still early access, so sadly we will reach an abrupt end quite soon. That fact has not stopped us from having a great time.

I highly recommend you give Bellwright a shot if you’re looking for a co-op survival city builder.
Support my substack here: https://bitsnpixels.org/p/bellwright-co-op-survival-city-builder-review

A fantastic free teaser to what I can only assume will be a fun game.

My official review of this game is:
Its great! You should play it! My girlfriend and I had a fantastic time, and I'm sure new content will be added in the future.

The rest of this review is going to be more like a list of playtest notes for the dev. Read it for your entertainment, but not for a review.

Upon loading into the game with my girlfriend we both had a fantastic time. The shop being the cash register and not the merchant man standing there was a little confusing, but nothing we couldn't handle. We started cooking right away. The process of running the store is fun and exciting. The progress gating behind your Tavern Level is fantastic at acclimating you to the game, and is very RPG-like.

When we unlocked the quest board we frantically set out to deliver the food only to get killed by a camp of theives or zombies along the way. It felt like a great way to earn money because the slow drip feed of money from actually running the Tavern was small in comparison. The frustating part was losing plates and cups afterwards. So we set out and got killed by some camps, then finally completed our order. The issue only presented itself later on when running the tavern not only earned us just as much money as doing a delivery, but also provided more intrensic motivation. Doing the deliveries was not satisfying enough, and so we stopped doing them altogether.

We were extemely excited to unlock farming and animal tendering as well. We jumped on those quests as soon as we could. I tended to the livestock and my girlfriend managed the farming. Great fun! I had some issues with the fact that the chickens lay way too many eggs. Our chest slowly filled with eggs until they had their own dedicated chest. I have a different issue with the pigs which I'll talk about when i get to the recipes.

I cant speak much about farming because my girlfriend did most of it, but she did ask for an owl for farming which I felt like would have been a huge help. I felt like the plot stayed too small for the operation we expanded into.

I think my largest complaint with this games as it is right now are the recipes. Many times they seem to be arbitrarily more difficult than they should be to make. I like that some of the recipes require you to actually step outside the tavern, but the truth is the best part of the game is inside the tavern. So there were regularly tons of recipes, usually grilled recipes, we couldn't make because of the mushroom requirements.

Without a doubt the strongest most negative reaction I had to this game was after unlocking the eggs and bacon. For our play through the combat, fishing, and foraging ingredients had just been off the menu. I was kicking out royalty faster than drunks. So when we unlocked the eggs and bacon I was happy because it seemed like the perfect combination of eggs and pork. I wish you could have heard my scream in frustration at finding out that the bacon is made from wild boar meat and not from the pigs we had in the back.

This is the internet so I want to let you know. I'm not mad or anything, again I'm just trying to relay the playthrough as best I can so you can improve the game.

I really had hoped that the pigs would act as an at-home version of the boars to emphasize our progression through the game. It came at the perfect time since the pork steaks previously had to be hunted for. I was a little disappointed finding out that the pigs gave different meat. I think what made me so frustrated is the fact that bacon is made from pig in real life, and also I was really hoping for more recipes we could make at home.

Finally the questing which you can probably guess is something that we avoided unless it felt like it might give us something. I like the idea of the questing and venturing out for ingredients then selling them, but from my experience playing the game many of the quests don't have sizeable enough rewards to really justify doing them. We stopped doing quests because it was hard to know which quests would give good rewards and which wouldn't.

At this point we maxed out our tavern level, and we've done all the quests we felt like doing. The only item we haven't unlocked is the alchemical flask thing.

There's a lot to love here. Especially the mechanics you have built in the tavern feel fast and frantic. The owls are a lot of fun to get. Things seem priced really well, at least until endgame when we have unlimited money.

The final thing I have to say is the menu management is fun, but a little tough at times. Many of the items on the menu at the endgame are extremely resource limited. It would be great to have a (specials) table or something where we can offer limited quantities while we have them so we don't forget to take them off the menu.

Thank you so much for reading. I hope this helps you out in the development of your game. Keep me up to date with how things are going and we'll come back at the next content update!

The art in Chants of Sennaar is amazing, hands down. The game is so artistically unique. The strong yellows and reds help the game stand out, but depending on the area the game is not afraid to stray away from its yellow color palette for cooler blues and whites. No issues there.

Obviously a game like this is going to struggle in the story department, and I have to agree that the story is not exactly ground breaking. Smart people made a tower, others came to the tower, height-based hierarchies formed, racism ensued. No one before you has had the ability to translate between the languages, or if they did it was forgotten a long time ago.

Chants of Sennaar relies heavily on the language mechanics and exploration. The issue I have is that the exploration feels far too similar to a traditional point and click adventure. I had hoped that the game would lean heavier on having to use the languages I’ve learned to gain access to new locations. The game shines brightest in its language learning theme, but it relies too heavily on key-door style mechanics to reward the player for learning the intricacies of the varied languages the game has on offer.

Some counterexamples are the higher level translation puzzles that is revealed to the player early on, but are only solvable later in the playthrough. These puzzles are stimulating and engaging. They make me wish the languages were more homogenized throughout the world in order to allow for basic translation to act as a progression mechanic on a smaller scale.

Even worse are the games stealth sections. Mandatory stealth sections are a horse that was beaten to death years ago. The game has mandatory stealth sections, and their inclusion feels silly and awkward.

Is Chants of Sennar good? Yes absolutely. The game clocks in at about 13 hours for me, and it has an absurdly high finish rate of about 55.5% according to steam achievements. Considering most games have a completion rate of about 13% or lower I’d say this game is very worth your time!

If you do play Chants of Sennar, you should turn off achievement notifications because there is an early game spoiler that gets revealed from them *wipes tears from face*.

What's not to love about 20 unique puzzles. Each interesting in their own way.
Except sliding puzzles. ♥♥♥♥ sliding puzzles.

Interesting mix of a tarkov style looter, with co-op horror. Very fun with friends, and has great sound design.
Can't wait to see this game grow and get more content!

Just when I thought spreadsheets were getting old