Timberborn Review (kenmercadante)
I've played 124 hours on 5 separate maps, playing both types of beavers. I've encountered zero bugs. The interface is clean and well-designed; it will always tell you what you need to construct, and then operate, a building. It doesn't hide anything from you, which is great. The beavers are fun to watch (they sound a bit like Minions when you click on them), and reasonably efficient in their activities (although some appear to spend time moving things between warehouses, or moving water between containers, which seems pointless). I don't normally like the blocky terrain design, but it works well here. I'm not a fan of having your map float in the middle of a void--it would be nice if there was some hint of land beyond it.
The early game is well-done. It's a challenge to keep your beavers alive during first few droughts. You have to carefully balance resources (water and food) with your population to make sure you have enough to last the dry times, while still advancing your science points to unlock new technologies. Over-populating early will kill your colony quick.
The middle-game is more open-ended. Once you've developed some landscaping technologies and figured out how to manage your water supplies for drinking water and irrigation, you can start exploring improving the beavers' well-being, and that can keep you occupied for a while.
What I've found lacking (at least so far--this is an "Early Access" game after all), is the end-game. Comparing Timberborn to my favorite City-Building game of all time, Pharaoh, two things appear to be lacking: a map-level objective, and a story to tie the various maps together. Pharaoh had both, and it kept driving the player to progress within each individual map, as well as jump into the next map with anticipation, because even though you were doing many of the same activities in each map, the resources available to you varied, the level of well-being you needed to achieve and maintain varied (Pharaoh also had foreign trade and the occasional invasion to worry about, which Timberborn does not--and I'm not advocating adding conflict to the game, but a more diverse resource/trade mechanic might be helpful). But beyond the basic premise of "mankind screwed everything up and died off, leaving the beavers to pick up the pieces," there's nothing beyond that to connect your maps or activities, so right now the game feels a little hollow once your beavers are fat and happy.
Is it worth the purchase in its current state? Absolutely. I've definitely gotten my money's worth out of it even unfinished. But if the developers can work out the end-game challenge and figure out how to tie the maps together, they will have a superb City-Builder on their hands.