Genre of the Month (FEB 2024 TR) - Simply Simulated

[Ziggy]

Together Retro - February 2024 - Simply Simulated



Ahh, who doesn't like to watch the grass grow? There are many things that could be considered a simulation game, but I wanted to focus on what most people think of when they hear "sim game." The building/managerial type and the life sim type. Wikipedia suggests that sports are a type of simulation game, but sports will have their own dedicated month. And also vehicular simulation games, but that would better fit as a sub genre of the month dedicated to racing games. There are other types of sim games, like flight simulators, that may fit more neatly into this month. So feel free to talk about other types of sim games outside of the building and life type ones.

When making the game Raid on Bungeling Bay, Will Wright realized that he was having more fun with the map creation feature than the main game. This led him to create SimCity. At first, a number of companies declined to publish the game. At the time, this genre was unheard of. Publishers believed it would be hard to market a game that could not be beaten or has no end. Finally, Maxis published the game and history was made.



The popularity of SimCity led to many things. There were a slew of "Sim" games from Maxis, too many to really list. SimEarth, SimAnt, SimLife, SimFarm, and so on. But other companies started to make sim games, such as Theme Hospital and Theme Park and then later Rollercoaster Tycoon. There are many sim type games that focus on something more unique, but I think the city builder is still king of the sim type games. Not only did SimCity see several sequels, but there has been many other games to focus on city building and resource managing such as the Anno series.





Will Wright also created The Sims, which is a sort of life and/or social simulation game. As the story goes, Will Wright thought up the idea for The Sims when he lost him home in a flood. There's also games like Animal Crossing, which is another ultra popular series.



To be honest, I haven't played many simulation games. I prefer to find one that I like and sink many hours into it. So I'd be happy to hear about what sim games you all enjoy! I will speak about some of my favorites later.

[Ack]

Is that a screenshot of Banished you shared there? Excellent game, that one. I can enjoy a relatively relaxing city builder from time to time.

Also, it's a weird one because it's first person, and you play as a peasant building his own town, but Medieval Dynasty is a sort of simulation I enjoy. You do have quests to perform and skills to build up, but you also slowly build a town, recruit villagers to come and work in the town, maintain the economy, and eventually run an entire village and have a child. Upon adulthood, the player character retires, and the son takes over as the head of the town, hence building the dynasty. I really enjoyed it, and with multiplayer having recently been added, I'd love to go build and manage a town with some friends.

[Ziggy]

Is that a screenshot of Banished you shared there? Excellent game, that one. I can enjoy a relatively relaxing city builder from time to time.

YES !

I absolutely love Banished, and I'm so glad that someone recognized the screenshot! For years I have thought about posting a thread for Banished. But this forum never seemed to have many city builder fans, so I also thought such a thread would get crickets (like my SimCity 4 thread).

I have over 61 hours clocked for Banish on GoG, but that was only since I started using GoG Galaxy. I have unknown hours playing that game before then. It's definitely one of those games for me that I feel like a few minutes past but it's really been another hour. Then "just one more thing" leads to another hour, and another hour.

Banished strikes the perfect balance of complexity for me. There's not so much to the game that it's overwhelming, or you forget how to do certain things after taking breaks. But it's also not shallow enough that you get bored of it. And also, this game has a really good mod community that have expanded the game quite a bit.

Another cool thing about it is that one dude made the entire game.

[Raging Justice]

Wikipedia classifies this as a sim game and I quite like it, though I wish there was a way it could get ported to the Switch as it would be a perfect fit for it. I miss the days when Rare was a Nintendo company



Viva Pinata is fun and relaxing and anyone who is a real life animal lover will be addicted to this game. The graphics, while obviously kid friendly, were pretty damn amazing at the time.

[o.pwuaioc]

Is that a screenshot of Banished you shared there? Excellent game, that one. I can enjoy a relatively relaxing city builder from time to time.

YES !

I absolutely love Banished, and I'm so glad that someone recognized the screenshot! For years I have thought about posting a thread for Banished. But this forum never seemed to have many city builder fans, so I also thought such a thread would get crickets (like my SimCity 4 thread).

I have over 61 hours clocked for Banish on GoG, but that was only since I started using GoG Galaxy. I have unknown hours playing that game before then. It's definitely one of those games for me that I feel like a few minutes past but it's really been another hour. Then "just one more thing" leads to another hour, and another hour.

Banished strikes the perfect balance of complexity for me. There's not so much to the game that it's overwhelming, or you forget how to do certain things after taking breaks. But it's also not shallow enough that you get bored of it. And also, this game has a really good mod community that have expanded the game quite a bit.

Another cool thing about it is that one dude made the entire game.

You can count me as a city-builder fan, but I never got into Sim City. Lately, though, I've been all in on Cities Skylines. My laptop won't be able to handle Cities Skylines 2, so I've been digging through the DLC. I think with the add-ons, it manages to scratch all the city-builder itches I have, and I think I'm actually going to take an urban planning class or two to take that to the next level.

Re: your final paragraph of the op, I don't think you need to play *many* of these types of games. They're more rewarding when you select a few and continually return to it. In that respect, they're similar to a lot of strategy games. You only get better with each playthrough, and the best allow for infinite paths forward.

[Ziggy]

You can count me as a city-builder fan, but I never got into Sim City. Lately, though, I've been all in on Cities Skylines. My laptop won't be able to handle Cities Skylines 2, so I've been digging through the DLC. I think with the add-ons, it manages to scratch all the city-builder itches I have, and I think I'm actually going to take an urban planning class or two to take that to the next level.

I fucking love Cities: Skylines! Like Banished, I had long thought about creating a thread on RB for it but I thought it would be super unpopular here.

When EA put out SimCity (5) I was excited but it had so many negative reviews. I'm not one to write off a game due to bad reviews, but there were so many things about it that made it clear that it was a real stinker. So even though I was a long time SimCity fan and played every main entry, I skipped that one. That made Cities: Skylines all the more appealing, because it was the SimCity 5 that we never got. I put in many hours to Skylines. It's the only game in Steam that I broke 100 hours in.

The mod community for Skylines is unreal! There's so many great additions. I ended up adding so many mods that it now takes several minutes to load the game, which is kind of annoying. I played the vanilla game for a while. But really, after using some of the mods you cannot go back. Specifically things like the road tools and stuff like that. But I also really enjoy getting custom buildings, especially real world retail places. That makes it one more step into immersion for me.

I was really stoked for Skylines 2 to come out. As new as my desktop was, I actually had to upgrade a few things. I don't do much modern gaming on the PC. This would be the first new PC game (meaning the game was released less than a year ago) that I bought in many years. Most PC games I buy or play are at least a few years old at the newest. I purchased a few PC parts, but have not installed all of them yet. I'm waiting until then before I purchase the game.

Re: your final paragraph of the op, I don't think you need to play *many* of these types of games. They're more rewarding when you select a few and continually return to it. In that respect, they're similar to a lot of strategy games. You only get better with each playthrough, and the best allow for infinite paths forward.

I think you're right. With the newer games, I think there's a time investment to learn the UI and ins and outs of the management system before you can really start enjoying the game. That's one reason why I'd rather go back to one that I know versus trying a new game.

But I would still like to learn of new games. I love Cities: Skylines and Banished... So what other city builders would I enjoy?

One thing that I found really enjoyable about Banished is how relaxing it is. Maybe it's mostly the music, but the rain and snow I find to be really calming.

I had purchased Frostpunk, and I think I even have it installed, but I have yet to play it. It's billed as a city building survival game.

[o.pwuaioc]

The mod community for Skylines is unreal! There's so many great additions. I ended up adding so many mods that it now takes several minutes to load the game, which is kind of annoying. I played the vanilla game for a while. But really, after using some of the mods you cannot go back. Specifically things like the road tools and stuff like that. But I also really enjoy getting custom buildings, especially real world retail places. That makes it one more step into immersion for me.

I have no idea where to start with mods yet, considering there are tons of DLC still left to explore. I'm also worried that I might bog it down with too many QOL improvements that will make vanilla unappealing again. That happened to me with both Skyrim and Civ 4, 5, & 6. But the people who make the mods don't always update their stuff, leading to incompatibilities when dumb devs introduce another hundred bugs in their updates. Given how garbage CS's launcher is now (seriously, fuck off anyone who suggests adding ads to launchers, you shit-eating parasite), I'm not keen to test out any mods without copious approval from current users.

A thread for mods would be great, but I think you're right that here isn't the place for it. I tried checking out the Discord for the game, but I really hate how childified it felt.

[Ziggy]

I think I wasn't awake yet when I posted. I read "DLC" and thought "mod" for some reason. Yes, the DLC is awesome for Skylines! I have most if not all of the major ones, plus some of the minor ones. To be honest, I can't remember what is in all of them and I don't remember what the vanilla game is like without any DLC. But I do remembering thinking that Industries is the most bang for your buck as far as added gameplay goes. It's like a game within the game.

The mods though, yeah, there's some that I think can be considered mandatory. And there's a mod menu in the game, where you can turn them all on and off individually. There's lots of YouTube videos that go over the "essential" mods and how to use them, that's how I learned about most of them. As for not messing up your game, if you go to the Steam Workshop for the game, I like to sort by most popular of all time and pick from there. The ones that have many, MANY users are usually the safe ones. I like to also NOT update on day 1. That way if any updates (the game or the mods) breaks something, it can be fixed long before I bother with the update.

[o.pwuaioc]

I think I wasn't awake yet when I posted. I read "DLC" and thought "mod" for some reason. Yes, the DLC is awesome for Skylines! I have most if not all of the major ones, plus some of the minor ones. To be honest, I can't remember what is in all of them and I don't remember what the vanilla game is like without any DLC. But I do remembering thinking that Industries is the most bang for your buck as far as added gameplay goes. It's like a game within the game.

The mods though, yeah, there's some that I think can be considered mandatory. And there's a mod menu in the game, where you can turn them all on and off individually. There's lots of YouTube videos that go over the "essential" mods and how to use them, that's how I learned about most of them. As for not messing up your game, if you go to the Steam Workshop for the game, I like to sort by most popular of all time and pick from there. The ones that have many, MANY users are usually the safe ones. I like to also NOT update on day 1. That way if any updates (the game or the mods) breaks something, it can be fixed long before I bother with the update.

I think I'll continue exploring the game a bit before moving into mods. I just got the Campus expansion, and haven't even begun that. I'm in the middle of making Manhattan, so space is limited.

What DLC I currently have for it are:

After Dark
Mass Transit
Natural Disasters (not installed yet)
Plazas & Promenades
Snowfall
Campus
Green Cities

I do think Industries is what I'll get next.

My dream would be a game like Cities Skylines but collaborative in nature. You get a bunch of friends together who are in charge of different aspects of the city. You have one person who is in charge of mass transit, another in charge of electricity and plumbing, another who keeps track of environmental issues, etc.

If any developer could make *that*, I'm all in!

[Ziggy]

As much as I love Skylines, and I'll still probably play it again one day, but I put in over 100 hours so I don't really feel bad about moving on to Skylines 2. I'd preferable like to start playing Skylines 2 before many DLC and mods come out, that way I can learn as I go. Compared to Skylines 1, I really can't even remember what's been included in each DLC (in addition to the main attraction, I mean) nor can I really remember all of the mods I had installed.

You know what's nuts? I put in over 100 hours in Skylines, but I really only have like 3 or 4 cities.