Farthest Frontier is the tried-and-true of an unexpected quality city builder.

The strong ignore people’s difficulties. Famines, looters, bandits, drought: nothing touches them. Regardless of everything, they want their share, the biggest of course. Indeed, they demand it, often making life impossible for those who cannot survive while working. For this reason, some decide to take a few things and leave, seeking unexplored areas where they can start from scratch to improve their living conditions. This is the starting point of the new game. Chest FunIt’s having great success on Steam, where it’s in early access.

we therefore Tried the Farthest Boundarythis title is to discover a city builder with unexpected qualities.

a harsh winter

A harsher winter than usual. Crops are partially destroyed and there is less food than usual in the countryside. Fortunately, we’ve put aside enough material to get through the sinister season without thinking big, but we’re going to have to deal with some really pressing issues in the spring. The first would be to try to figure out if it is. producing it will last the next year, the second is to prevent wild animals from eating all the seeds and crops caused by starvation.

There build Fertilizer should help, make fields more fertile, and make our countrymen’s excrement more useful, but we’ll also need a fence to prevent unwanted infestations. Only wood is scarce, production is slow, and there are many buildings to build, including additional residences. The relative prosperity of our new community has actually attracted some immigrants as well: there is plenty of work but beds are running out. Considering births, there will soon be a small housing emergency.

luckily productive activities it starts up and runs smoothly. Clay quarries are working at full capacity, so are the sand quarries. Citizens have warm clothing and basic services such as schools and cemeteries. Hunters have plenty of game, and gathering wild resources such as blackberries and vegetables is also very productive. The wells are able to supply water to the whole country, and despite the difficulties, the happiness is really high. In short, optimism is in the air and prospects for the future look bright.

this external threats they don’t scare us too much, and we’ve already determined what our first walls will be to protect ourselves from aggression. What used to be a small community is getting bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger. Soon, thanks to the barracks, we’ll have an army too, in the hope that the looters will leave us alone in the meantime. Everything is going well, at least so far. How long it will take?

many ideas

Initially we thought Farthest Frontier was the usual city ​​builder. We also had some biases as it was developed by Crate Entertainment, the same studio as Grim Dawn. It’s not that we don’t like Grim Dawn, it’s actually just an action RPG, a whole different genre. We had to change our minds pretty quickly though, because they apparently managed to do better than many veterans, probably because they got stuck in certain styles. Have some mechanical having experienced them, one wonders why they are not implemented at all or simply not so well implemented. For example, the problem of food spoilage, the challenge associated with the preservation of food products, which, as in other topics, makes it impossible to store unlimited quantities, at least until wheat production becomes widespread. It’s a simple detail, but it allowed the addition of a number of additional mechanics, largely linked to technological advancement, that made the experience (and meat) fresh, despite offering the genre’s normal gameplay loops.

So here it becomes very useful to build cellars for smoking meat and fish to make them more durable, as well as for storing certain goods, which are much more efficient than normal warehouses. Of course, this isn’t the first time we’re building roads and dwellings, we’re building defensive walls or designing fields to exploit the most fertile soils, but we’ve never been more worried. true composition of the world, have the necessary resources that can be changed. As we played, we learned that soil with the right amount of sand and clay and less rock can yield much more with certain crops. These are elements that show how the developers have done some in-depth research on the genre but tried to suggest something different rather than just copying it.

The relatively less successful part, though relative to us, battle systemThis is more of an ominous event than a configured system. Of course, the game’s focus isn’t on combat, but it is hoped that some real improvements will be added over time to add variety to this element as well.

technical issues

despite being in early access, Farthest Frontier turned out to be cleaner and more robust than some games released in the last version. During the hours we devoted to this, we did not encounter any bugs and did not experience sudden crashes, so much so that at one point we forgot that we were dealing with a game that was still in development. We assure you this doesn’t happen too often, as most of the time this title release mode is best used to launch demos when there aren’t large and largely missing prototypes. Also, there are many customization options already implemented that allow you to adjust the difficulty in every aspect. Want to sweat every log, have endless problems with looters and fill the public graveyard in a few years? You can do this. Do you like the idea of ​​a more casual game that doesn’t keep you facing challenges all the time? There are options for that too.

even talk about graphic Farthest Frontier looks successful (by genre): the inhabitants are defined and well animated, the buildings are well modeled, and they all have little animations that make the villages and towns lively and pulsating. Even the natural elements are perfect and show great dynamism, including in real time behaving as possible herds, trees supporting the landscape, moving ponds, changes in weather conditions and seasons. How nice is it to see the snow starting to fall and gradually filling the entire landscape, and as a result the citizens are wearing heavier clothing? In short, it is definitely early to make a definitive judgment, but it is undeniable that we liked what we saw very much. Also, even after developing a medium-sized city, we did not experience any problems in terms of performance, which is an indication that the optimization is already at a high level.