It’s a sure-fire way to look really, really old, but we’re going to say it anyway: they really don’t make them like them. The settlers more. Whenever a new city builder or resource management sim comes out, it seems to outperform the last in terms of microscopy of details, zooming out of range, and the amount of DLC that can be pumped out. Often times we just want to strip everything to its basics and start a copy of the original Settlers or ANNO. If you’re of a similar mindset, well, The Colonists is dipping your cookie.

Like Settlers, The Colonists is essentially a construction and road simulation: you place a handful of buildings on a map, and then seek to connect them in the most efficient way possible. You don’t control any maneuvering characters or armies – it happens automatically. It’s all about fine-tuning the transportation networks so that your adorable robots can move around and operate the city. As your city grows, this job becomes more difficult, as bottlenecks appear and various manufacturing nodes, like lumber yards and factories, come to a halt.

The settlers initially seem like it could be cute and simple. The characters are all discarded prototypes of WALL-E, and the world appears to be made of Lego. We love the way the robots are all 3D printed on the main shuttle, emerging in a form suited to their task. There are only 14 campaign levels to play, and you’d be forgiven for feeling like this is an extremely simple, Kingdom of Keflings-style disposable management simulation. Well, we can tell you that is not 100% the case.

If you leave it, the settlers will harvest your free time and take it away to turn it into energy cubes. Although it has 14 campaign levels, they are extremely long and completing them all will take you tens of hours. Each has several goals, and you will be a long way from achieving them; At the start of a level, you will need to build residential areas, which fuel your resources and crafting stations, which then unlock towers to spread the fog of war and find more resources. But your city will keep you on a leash, and if you cut the costs of collecting resources or building shoddy infrastructure, you’ll fail and have to overhaul everything. So it’s a slow progression, as you’re creating an efficient complex that can support a much larger city in the long run.

The Colonists are happy to keep you patient. Things are built or crafted in real time and while you can speed things up, you will often be hit with a blockage in your roads, or a lack of logs, rocks, ores and more, so you will come back to life. normal. speed frequently. Do it wrong, and it’s often best to start over from the beginning, as you can go into a catastrophic spiral, with everything in a traffic jam and no robot capable of unblocking it.

As a result, The Colonists is not for everyone. It takes a tremendous amount of patience and persistence, and we found ourselves oscillating between love and hate for that. More often than not, we were in the area, starting the pace of construction and expansion, and our settlers’ itching was starting to scratch. For a game that thrives on PC, it feels intuitive on console, with clear radial menus and well-organized tab structures. Everything can be fine-tuned to a satisfactory degree, from the type of tree you want to grow, to the placement of checkpoints on the roads. There’s a lot to tweak in terms of options, and The Colonists do a great job of bringing them to you.

But, very occasionally in the Countryside, we hit a boredom ceiling. The levels can last too long, but must be completed if we are to progress (the levels are linear on two tracks: one resource-based and the other combat-oriented). As it is especially necessary to start from zero at each level, we were frustrated to go through the same movements and to make the same choices. We were eager to stick with one city, rather than Etch-a-Sketch and remake the same image over and over again. The campaign can seem a bit stop-start this way and creates moments when you stop and wonder if it’s worth it.

In anticipation of this, The Colonists comes with a Sandbox mode. That’s great, frankly, and there’s an argument for ditching the campaign and devoting yourself to it (if the campaign hasn’t taught you some vital skills and tactics). There are an incredible number of options before you even start, as you can play around with the procedural seeds to generate the island you want. Sandbox mode doesn’t end once you’ve completed all of the goals either – you can just keep growing and perfecting your city. For many, it’s the spirit of a Settlers, Sim City, or ANNO, and it’s appreciated that it’s here at launch (on PC, the feature arrived much later in its life).

The Colonists is complete enough that it also gives you scenario-type challenges, which require you to complete tasks that you might not have otherwise disturbed, such as unlocking all of the tech in your workshop. Borders are similar to challenges, but open to the whole community; there is a global leaderboard that tracks everyone’s progress as everyone strives to achieve the goal as efficiently as possible. These boundaries highlight a lack of multiplayer, which is somewhat missed. While combat is automated in the campaign, which might not immediately lend itself to multiplayer, it’s not hard to imagine a take on land version of the game. Checking out the forums for The Colonists, there are plans to introduce it later, but it’s a shame that – for now – your skills are only recognized on the high score boards.

This is a testament to the thoroughness of The Colonist’s design and the many ways you can optimize your city, that we would like to play The Colonists in multiplayer. Slowness aside, this is a game that we can see ourselves coming back to in abundance in the future, thinking about a new layout or efficiency. In Sandbox in particular, there is every chance of losing ten hours, and few games make us dream about them like Colonists does.

If you value your free time or have a backlog of games to sort out, then be warned: the settlers can put you under the same magical spell as the original settlers and ANNO. While her slowness can be annoying at times, especially in the countryside, she has a habit of pulling you back. Book a week off, find a log cabin with wi-fi and no trespassing, and watch the hour go by.

You can buy The Colonists at Xbox Store for Xbox One and Xbox Series X | S