I have been following this game for a while and downloaded the demo a couple of years ago but felt a bit overwhelmed when I tried it so didn't end up purchasing it. I've always loved Total War and have been playing since the original Rome back in 2004 but haven't been interested in any of their recent titles, played hours upon hours of Dwarf Fortress but I always found building and manipulating structures and water to be a bit of a headache. It was always a struggle for me to build a fort that I felt truly satisfied with the layout with. Rimworld has never appealed to me unfortunately for some reason I guess I'm just not a fan of the vibe of the game. Also a massive fan of Paradox titles with hundreds of hours accumulated in Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV, Hearts of Iron IV and Victoria II. This is just to give you an idea of what types of games I enjoy. I value depth and strategic gameplay. To me, everything else is secondary. One thing I can’t stand is shallow games; games which are as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle. Well Recently I've been desperate for a new strategy/base building/colony game and thought that I'd give Songs of Syx another go as I saw it had been updated recently with a fresh UI.
I watched a random tutorial video on YouTube about how to get things going and after playing the tutorial I got stuck in. I find I learn best by just fumbling around and failing until I get the hang of things. So, the first thing I noticed about playing Songs of Syx for the first time properly recently was that the game in my opinion, looks absolutely gorgeous. Maybe I'm easily impressed, but it seems obvious to me that Jake has put incredible care and attention in making the game look as good as possible although it's essentially 2D. The maps look amazing, the trees and flora rustling in the wind, the soft warm lighting emanating from my small village, the animations of the plebeians going about tilling fields, baking, crafting etc make everything feel so alive. The torch applied to your mouse at night and how it interacts with the environment and adds a sense of depth is a beautiful touch, the effects of the seasons and weather, with the bright greens of spring and the snow fall in winter. It's just lovely to look at to be honest, real care has gone into it. I haven't even mentioned the world map with the borders of vast empires and mountain ranges adding an amazing sense of scale and awe to the world.
I found the building UI mechanics were quite easy to get the hang of. Paint a rectangle, add furnishings for the building and room you've laid out, click an entrance for a door and maybe remove a section from the middle of the room for structural support and you're done. It's quite simple and the variety of options you can use to construct your rooms like the brush or fill tool are very easy to use and it's quite fun to construct elaborate buildings. Also, it's very useful that almost everything you hover over in the UI has some sort of tool tip associated with it so you can figure out what various numbers mean like 'work value' on farms for example. If I was to make one criticism of the UI is that I found a hard time trying to find the help section with the in-game encyclopaedia. I also wish that that the encyclopaedia was a bit more fleshed out and had more in-depth explanations of various systems with screenshots in the game providing some visual context. Overall, I didn't have great difficulty understanding the basics of the UI. One suggestion I would offer is that sometimes I would receive a trade offer from a neighbouring faction in which they gave me a certain resources like fabric or paper and I wouldn't assign a crate to it from my storage and then would completely forget that I had it since it will read 0 if you haven't allocated a crate. So maybe a notification indicating to the player that they have resources that are not allocated to storage. Note this may already be in the game or there might be a way of handling this, but I haven’t found it yet.
I think the resource variety is well designed. There are many resources, of course, but it's not like there are a million different types of mushrooms or meat or wood etc like there is in Dwarf Fortress which is good because it means I'm not obsessing over the minutia of what every particular thing is being produced from. It's straightforward, Grain + Wood = Bread, it's the perfect level of depth for me. Fruit is fruit. I'm very happy with this level of abstraction, I'm not bothered with every variety of apple, pear, watermelon, tomato, potato, lettuce, cabbage, species of wood, or ore etc being represented. Again, it's straightforward and you get to focus on playing the game.
My first challenge was obviously trying to get a stable food supply working so that I could generate sustainable levels of growth. I found the drama created by this to be exciting, eagerly awaiting the grain harvest to come in so I can prepare enough bread for the winter. Foraging for fruit and mushrooms to setup more farms and a greater variety of produce to appease my human population. Hunting for some early meat to prevent a catastrophe. Managing my stocks of grain so I can reinvest the surplus harvest and build more farms to produce more bread to attract more immigrants and so on. The tension of a dwindling food stock throughout winter. That looming threat of starvation... it's so engaging and so fun! I am now sitting on a population of just over 100 people, just praying I don't get raided any time soon, but I haven't experienced this mechanic yet so I’m not sure what to expect. My plebs are happy and loyal as I have been providing them with various amenities. I wanted to construct a truly grand public lavatory, and it was my first stone construction with the rest of my village being wooden. Expensive yes but I'm happy with the investment and hope the promise of such grand place to ‘discharge’ will continue to attract future immigrants to my humble village.
The game is so incredibly satisfying. It pays to be patient and I have been in no rush whatsoever to make sure food supply is sustainable before feeling comfortable welcoming new plebs. I think food really is power in this game. Right now, I'm thinking of the future. The Gods have blessed us with a naturally occurring gem deposit to the northeast and I hope eventually to exploit its riches to export the finest cut gems and jewellery to my trade partners for maximum profit. My scientists are hard at work researching innovative agricultural technologies which I'm prioritising first to maximise food security for my people. The tech system in this game is great. I like the idea of having to maintain knowledge through dedicated scholars, it's a unique and interesting way of depicting research in a game.
This post is getting quite long but I just wanted to share my initial thoughts. Overall, this game is like crack for me and it’s entering through a central line into my left subclavian vein straight into my bloodstream. I haven’t even touched on the beautiful soundtrack… Yesterday I played for about 11 hours. I could probably be a bit further along through the game at this point but, honestly, I just like taking my time. Occasionally I will go onto x25 or x250 speed but for the most part I'm on the >> option I can't remember how fast that is. It's the perfect depth for me. I haven't even reached combat or military or high-level administration mechanics but I'm already so captivated. For this all to be accomplished by a single developer is truly mind blowing, and the game isn't even done yet! In my humble opinion, this game is a true masterpiece.