I've played enough city builders over the years to know that I tend to enjoy them right up until the point where I feel like I'm spending more time babysitting everything than actually building anything. I like having a plate full of things to manage, of course, because that's a huge part of the reason I play these games in the first place, but there is definitely a line where all of that management can start to feel like work. Maybe some consider that the point of city builders—and I do, at times—but sometimes, I wouldn't mind something a little slower. Well, after spending some time with Wild West Pioneers ahead of its Early Access launch, I never really felt like it crossed the line between work and fun. There is actually quite a bit going on here once everything starts opening up, but the pace of it all is surprisingly laid back, and I found myself settling into its rhythm much faster than I expected.
The basic idea is pretty straightforward, as Wild West Pioneers puts you in charge of a group of settlers trying to establish themselves on the American frontier, with that small beginning gradually turning into something much bigger as you unlock more of what the game has to offer. Of course, that means gathering resources and building the structures your people need, but the further I got into it, the more I started paying attention to how I was actually using the settlers themselves. That ended up becoming one of my favorite parts of the whole gameplay loop, mostly because Wild West Pioneers doesn't treat workers like something you assign once and then completely forget about.
What I probably enjoyed most during my time with Wild West Pioneers was how involved I could be in managing my settlement without feeling like I needed to hover over every little thing it was doing. EmpireCraft Studios has actually talked about wanting the game's economy to be "relaxed, but with decisions in it that actually count," and after playing it myself, I can definitely see what the developer means. I was always doing something, even if that just meant watching production for a little while to figure out where I could make a change, but I never felt like the game was constantly trying to punish me for not being two steps ahead of it.
A big part of that comes down to how settlers are assigned to jobs, which ended up becoming this little puzzle I was solving throughout most of my playtime. Just because I had someone working somewhere didn't mean I needed to leave them there indefinitely, so I got into the habit of regularly moving settlers around whenever one part of my production needed more attention. If I had more workers assigned to one job than I really needed at the time, I could pull somebody away from it and put them somewhere else until things caught up. Once they did, I might send that same settler right back where they came from or move them onto something entirely different.
I really liked approaching production that way because there were plenty of times when my first instinct was to think I needed another structure, only to realize the one I already had was perfectly capable of keeping up if I gave it another worker for a while. In the same way, I didn't need every workplace operating at full capacity all the time, especially if I already had more than enough of whatever it was producing. Once I started looking at my settlers as people I could move around depending on what I needed rather than permanent employees of whatever building I first assigned them to, managing the settlement became a lot more interesting.
What I probably enjoyed most during my time with Wild West Pioneers was how involved I could be in managing my settlement without feeling like I needed to hover over every little thing it was doing.
However, Wild West Pioneers also makes sure those settlers aren't only there to keep production moving, which is where the Whims system comes into play. As the settlement grows, residents start asking for things that have more to do with actually enjoying where they live than simply surviving there. Some might want certain amenities around town, while others might have more personal wishes involving things like pets or instruments. Fulfilling those Whims helps keep settlers happy, and I like how naturally that fits into everything else, because it gives me another reason to think about the town as an actual place people live rather than one giant production machine.
There is something satisfying about spending so much time worrying about who should be chopping wood or working somewhere else and then having those same people turn around and basically remind me that they would also like their town to be a nice place to live. It gives all of the building a little more purpose, especially once decorations and other additions start being about the people living there instead of simply making everything look better from above. Wild West Pioneers still has all the resource management I expect from a city builder, but I appreciated having reasons to occasionally think about something other than efficiency.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://gamerant.com/wild-west-pioneers-city-builder-cozy-game-relaxing-gameplay/
