It can be so nice to sit back, watch your city build itself while you just produce some jobs; buy some land. Well that is possible with Foundation. Foundation is a city building sim, with no grids. You can rotate, place job building wherever you wish. mark where homes can exist, where replanting is possible as well as taking down trees. Don’t forget to designate where food is allowed to be extracted from.
Another part of the game that I want to mention is the music. It has a beautiful soundtrack designed for a medieval settlement building game. It is calm, relaxing and lovely to just sit and listen to while waiting to accumulate money in game.
New Tutorial
Foundation is about to update very soon, and in this update they have added a very nice, in depth Tutorial that is disguise by citizens of your town offering advice. The advice works almost like quests, gives you something to complete, while also learning the game. Failure to complete an advice can cause some struggle in game. As advice is given you can stop them at any point and just play the game as is.
Building
Now the building aspect, starts with gathering resources like wood and stone. You need plenty of space to store the materials because later projects will require lots of it. For the smaller projects throughout, building creates jobs. Having jobs means less homeless people in your town. The more unemployed, the less likely your village will grow.
Your kingdom grows by means of immigration. No Immigration means less work getting done, less money and also less resources. There is no “family” in the game, but you do have houses that hold up to six people at a time.
Status
As you gather immigrants, create more money, you will eventually acquire better products to create and sell. With these products comes another means of evolving your kingdom: raising the status of your people. As they arrive, they start as a newcomer. When you accept them into your realm, they become a Serf. Serf’s live simple lives just needing food, faith, a home, and a job. They can be upgraded to Commoner.
Commoner’s require more goods to be happy. Next level would be Citizen whom require even more. Be careful when you reach this point. You have to be able to keep your people happy or they will not produce or work as they have been.
Your soldiers also have their own status, starting with Novice, and once through the levels of novice they can reach Militiaman. I was unable to progress enough to pay close attention to the Soldier’s status levels.
Unlocks and Progression
Some buildings are locked behind progression, some are locked behind other means. Under the Progression Tab, you can purchase decorations, purchase other sets of buildings, or taxes/edicts. There are also three factions that also have buildings and taxes/edicts locked behind their progression.
Regarding the Factions, you have to do jobs for them and support them within your kingdom enough to gain a reputation with them enough to buy through their progression. Unfortunately you can only support one faction at any given time. The other factors will stop support if you partner with the last. If you support the Clergy, the Kingdom, and Laborers will stop visiting. If you support Laborers, the Kingdom and Clergy will cease their visits.
Zoning
With a grid-less city building sim, this game also has zones, which plays a major part in the game. The Zones are Reforestation, Extracting, Housing, No Man land and hunting. There is also Farming, but that is specific to the building, Farmhouse. These Zones determine how the city expands.
Reforestation creates more wood to grow for an untouchable forest or as a means to keep wood to be produced. Extracting is not only a means to tell the Woodcutters to chop down the trees in the area, it is also needed to tell the berry pickers that the berries are okay to pick.
No man land is a means of saying no one is allowed to step foot in this area. It is a good way of keeping people from walking in a specific area or controlling where some paths can go. Housing is needed so that the people can know exactly where they are allowed to build their homes. This can keep work areas separate from homes and not have it mixed, if you want to do so. You can mix work and homes together if you would rather see it blend together.
Farming just tells the Farmhouse workers where they can plant the wheat. Be careful, as there is a max distance that the Farmhands can plant. Best to build one farm at a time, over extend at first, and then adjust accordingly.
Large Builds
There is very few large builds in game, but the few there is are customizable in so many ways. You have the Lord Manor where you run everything pertaining to the town. Then there’s the Garrison where your army resides(or just trains at). There’s also various churches that you can build from the rustic church to a monastery.
The Lord Manor has various types of building pieces that can be unlocked and used to enlarge the Manor for various roles: one is the Treasury and another is the town Bailiff. With the Tax office you can charge a tax against your people and various areas to obtain more gold.
The Garrison has functions like a Barracks, beds to heal your soldiers, and a place to train. The pieces for some of these are also behind progression, just like the Lord Manor.
Finally is the various churches; the most basic, Rustic Church, primarily focuses on how many people can attend its service. The Monastery, which you can build later, has parts to house nuns/monks, a place of study, and also a means to feed themselves, in addition to the people that attend it’s service as well.
Author’s Thoughts
Foundation is a lovely, beautiful game with a simple gameplay. I can relax and play while also working towards personal goals or just towards one of the twenty-one achievements. The music is worth listening to for hours while playing. Check out Foundation on Steam and for $29.99, you could own this Early Access game.
The Developers are also planning to add Biomes to the maps, new map Generation, and plan to make modding possible. Working on a deeper estate system, new buildings, and production chains. Currently the game has 5 diverse maps and around 60% of the planned content.
I can’t wait to see how the final product comes to life. Polymorph Games has done a fantastic job with Foundation and I can’t wait to see what else they plan to do after completion of Foundation.
Mom of three, enjoy videogames, board games and phone games. I typically am playing Simulation games or FPS games.
