Timberborn Preview

Humanity is gone. Civilisation has crumbled. Water is scarce. In the dry wasteland of the near future, there is nothing but BEAVERS. Timberborn is the city-builder colony sim debut from developer Mechanistry, focusing on the lives of beavers and their surprisingly well-developed society.

Timberborn starts with the ever-familiar city-building steps. You begin with your central District Center and a small band of beavers at your disposal. From here, you’ll need to accrue the essential resources needed to expand and further populate your small beaver colony. The usual suspects of resource acquisition fill the lineup here: water, wood, and food. Erecting a Lumber Flag and marking the trees in its immediate vicinity will have one of your beavers hustling to acquire wood, with each further separate Lumber Flag allowing another beaver to work towards getting that wood.

Who knew beavers were this good at erecting wood?

Along with wood, having plentiful water and food is crucial to the continued existence of your colony. The best way to guarantee that your supplies are consistent is to ensure all of your beavers are assigned to a station and working on a task. Some you might assign a Gatherer Flag to go around and collect berries as a preliminary food source, whilst other beavers could focus on the construction of water pumps and tanks to store water. Having a healthy supply of food and filled water towers is imperative to survive the never-ending supply of droughts that roll through the environment.

Droughts in Timberborn are as dangerous as you’d expect them to be, especially for a water-dwelling mammal like a beaver. Marking the end of each seasonic cycle, droughts start off relatively short and infrequent, providing beginner players enough time to comfortably adapt to their looming threat before they reach a point where only the most tried, tested, and well-prepared of Timberborn players will stand a chance against them. The need for an abundant stockpile of supplies isn’t just for mere advancement here as it is in many other similar titles but crucial for the ongoing perseverance of your buck-toothed rodents. Lacking sufficient preparedness for a drought isn’t a guaranteed game over, however, as you might scrape by with just a severely hindered colony.

Luckily, it’s not just water pumps and towers at your disposal to help prepare for droughts. It wouldn’t be a beaver game without the ability to manipulate the flow of water and construct dams. Although the map only has fertile land around the main sources of water, some handy landscaping and adjustments to water levels will allow the water to expand to further areas around you, granting decent and prosperous grounds for expansion. Whilst you start with rather rudimentary tools and options for water manipulation, you will gain research points and work through the technology tree during your playthrough, unlocking new options that provide more flexibility to your strategy, as well as to your creative flexings.

Ensure your beavers have a nice moist area to lay their seeds in

Timberborn might not be as immediately visually striking as other city-builders, such as the Anno series or Tropico 6, but its presentation does well to build a calm, yet immersive atmosphere during the main seasonal part of the game, before dropping you into the midst of desolation when the drought comes along. Backed with a folksy and orchestral-inspired soundtrack to accompany the distant sounds of your beavers maintaining their little society, Timberborn does a great job of delivering a lot from a relatively minimal palette. Another positive about this approach is that it increases the game’s accessibility, from those who have beastly gaming behemoth rigs, to those who just like a little bit of a game from time to time on their laptop.

Despite only being on its fourth major update, Timberborn’s Early Access release provides a substantial amount of game, with its unique take on both city-building and colony management providing a satisfying experience for those new to the genre, as well as those already familiar with it. Mechanistry’s promising approach to the further development of the title means that Timberborn can only grow and improve from this already fantastic foundation.