It’s a banner day in Banished, I have chickens!

I’ve had some minor setbacks in Banished, such as a couple of fires, but that’s all behind me and I bask in the glory of my chicken purchases. Yes indeed, I was able to amass enough stone and iron to buy 3, count em 3, chickens. The long disused pasture will now be home to my flock of birds. This is a red letter day as I will now have eggs and chicken meat. I have come to see that stone is the major trading commodity in this game. Far more so than ale or coats. I have both of those in my market but none of the vendors seem to want them. If my calculations are correct, the chickens should multiply over time and once I go over a certain level they will be used as food. This is my first attempt at herding so let’s see how it goes. Next up will be the purchase of some sheep […]

Banished – It takes a village

I started my village over to try and recover from all the mistakes I made the first time around. Such is the way with these sorts of games. I have no doubt this started village will end in tears as well. But, I made what I thought was decent progress. I managed to build a house for each citizen to shelter them from the elements and stockpiled fish, stone, iron, logs and firewood. I only have a few villagers to choose from so allocated jobs is a little tricky. I did manage to get a tailor set up, but I think I made a mistake by setting up a pasture when I have no livestock. Ooops. I’m clearcutting the hell out of the forest and I’m not sure 1 person allocated for forestry is going to undo the damage I’m causing. It is neat that trees will regrow and baby animals will appear. I think my biggest accomplishment was placing […]

Banished – Starting life over in a strange new land

In all the Steam offerings I picked up a new game called Banished and it has me quite intrigued. The concept is simple, you control a group of villagers who are starting life over in a new land. Why they’ve been banished from their homes remains a mystery, but they’ve left with nothing more than a few articles of clothes and whatever else fit in their cart. To that end they have to build houses, find food, gather wood, build tools, farm and hopefully build a trade center so they can trade with other villages. It may sound simple and perhaps not even that complicated or engaging, but I jumped into this game with both feet, dropped into the tutorial and found there is a lot of depth here. You need to get houses built as quickly as possible so your villagers can stay warm. You need to get your farms up and running before people starve. You need to […]