Timberborn Review

Timberrrr! Timberborn, a city-building game where humans are no more and beavers are now the dominant species, entices the player as they work to develop a thriving colony. The game is based on resource management – how well you gather and spend resources determines if your city will continue to grow or head toward its demise. While resources are abundant usually at the beginning of the game, which allows initial growth, the collection of resources becomes more challenging – requiring the player to build buildings such as a farm to grow and collect food, a forester to grow trees and bushes, etc. Overcoming a supply shortage of the resource in need is a euphoric moment for the player and can leave the player feeling relief as it may mean that the player can now survive the next draught or expand further.

Water, an essential resource due to the semi-frequent draughts, is what I have found to have the most significant impact on the game. You need water to grow crops and to drink – if your beavers cannot get food or drink after some time, they will begin dying and dwindling in numbers. If your colony population drops to zero – game over. No longer a society of beavers willing to drink straight from the river or lake on your map, these beavers now require the water to be pumped and filtered for use. Storage of water in tanks allows drinking water to be had during the draughts, and then use of that water in irrigation towers keeps your crops alive. Damming water up (they are beavers, after all) can allow you to retain water longer nearby your base to pump up or to keep your soil moist and crops alive. The physics of water within the game is well thought out as you can cause water to speed up and turn waterwheels for power or flood certain land to make irrigation easier – you can have a lot of fun as a player manipulating the water.

While still an unfinished game, as they have only released an early access edition on steam, the game shows real potential for expansion as it currently sits with only two factions, each having unique buildings and rules for growing and thriving as a colony. The second faction, unlocked by playing the first faction and earning enough well-being points (scores of how well your beaver colony is thriving based on different categories), is much more challenging for players who have gotten used to specific actions. By providing additional factions and rules, the game has some serious potential to entertain the player for many hours as they learn and create new strategies based on the differences of their chosen faction.

Not only does the game have ways to expand, but the creators also have the opportunity to take some feedback from the current players and incorporate it into the finished project. For one thing, a “game-over” type of screen would be excellent at the beginning as the player does not know after spending a great time building a city if additional beavers will spawn after unsuccessfully surviving a draught (the answer is no). Further, if you cut down all the trees initially and haven’t unlocked the forester, you cannot continue growing as you cannot build stairs to access new forests, cannot build the forester without wood planks, and cannot get wood planks without the lumber mill. As a new player and not knowing this, you will inevitably spend wood on other items, such as housing, without first ensuring a steady supply, and thus another game-over scenario exists. By fixing this via allowing respawn of trees when none are left or by changing the build requirements for stairs, you might prevent this scenario from occurring and not forcing players to learn the hard way.

Timberborn is an incredibly addicting and fun game as you experience new challenges, causing high and low emotions. Making it by the skin of your teeth through a draught to suddenly have an abundance of resources for the next (likely due to a population reduction, sadly) makes the game very entertaining as you craft the beaver’s city. Hey! If you do end up having to start over, remember this – sometimes starting over and planning out your base with more direction can make the game even more fun as you take advantage of the ability to build upwards on top of other buildings or, by knowing how future buildings work, you can take advantage of positioning to push your city into higher and higher well-being levels.

Let us know in the comments below what you think of Timberborn! Did I convince you to go and hang out with the beavers? Or do you think I’m crazy and this game is horrible?