Leave it to the Beavers--Timberborn

I recently spent a bit of time trying to master my city building skills.  Now, I'm absolutely not an expert in city building, but I can usually do decently.  The city builder in question doesn't involve your typical human cities, instead, it's based on a civilization of advanced beavers.

What is it?

A city-builder with a few unique twists that include the aforementioned society of beavers.

How much playtime can I expect?

Honestly...potentially infinite.  Your city can exist as long as you can keep it functioning and survive gradually lengthening periods of crisis (I will explain soon).

Pros:

+ Mostly helpful tutorial that allows you to get a grasp on the basics.  More advanced features do require some searching.

The industrial area of my town.

+ Beavers!  Humans are boring...but beavers are cute, great engineers, and love to socialize.  Beavers have the same basic survival needs as humans--they need food and water--but keeping them truly happy requires making sure that they have a variety of their favorite foods to choose from (there are multiple buildings where you can prepare a wide ranging menu) and plenty of options for ways that they can spend their free time.  Since beavers are very social creatures they like to have cozy places to gather with others--this includes a nice campfire, a rooftop terrace, or a grand amphitheater where they can discuss their favorite task--logging.  They also like to cut loose and have a good time, so building a carousel and a dance hall is a must.  A unique need for the beavers--wet fur.  Building special showers or a lido deck allows your beaver pals to take a quick dip.  They also love an aesthetically pleasant area with plenty of decorations.  Keeping your community of beavers happy will boost their efficiency.

+ Controls are easy to use and understand.  You can easily rotate buildings and place them where you want.

+ Two different factions of beavers with specific perks.  You start off as the Folktails, a faction that specializes in farming and can build beehives that help crops to grow more quickly.  Once you've played the Folktails faction to a certain level you unlock the Iron Teeth.  The Iron Teeth are more focused on technological skills.  Each faction has its own unique buildings, so it's fun to experiment with their strengths and weaknesses.

The beaver fun zone--a carousel and dance hall.

+ Elements of survival.  The game functions on a calendar made up of cycles.  Each cycle is made up of a certain number of days where everything works as normal and then a period of drought or badtide.  During a drought all water on the map stops flowing.  This means that unless you create a reservoir to store water your crops will all dry up and you'll be totally reliant on your stored water supply.  Drought is the lesser of the two evils though, badtide is more challenging to deal with.  A badtide is an event where all the water on the map is replaced by water that is polluted with high levels of radiation.  It cannot be used for farming and will cause corruption to spread to any areas that are close to water.  Corruption will cause any living things it touches to die (this includes trees, crops, and berry bushes).  Learning how to deal with these disasters is a must as your civilization can only last as long as your supplies do.

These periods of disaster throw some additional challenge into the traditional city-builder genre.  They also lengthen/happen more frequently the longer you play.  I managed to get my civilization to cycle 50 but had one very close brush with disaster when I got hit by back-to-back badtides (the type of disaster you experience is random) and didn't have enough time to store up enough water.  Luckily my few surviving beavers managed to chug along and bounce back.

(*I'm also fairly certain that you can turn off disasters if you're looking for a totally chill experience)

+ Advanced features for the leet.  You can unlock a wide variety of switches that allow you to automate exactly how/when certain parts of your city function.  These switches include logic switches (something that exceeds my abilities) but also a number of other types that trigger based off of things like weather or time of day.  I lack the skills to get into this, but if you're the type of person who likes to tinker with all the fancy stuff...it's there for you.

+ A nice soundtrack.  It's mostly piano-based music but it changes based on the weather.  It's slightly more ominous during droughts and badtides.

+ Monuments to build.  Like many other city-builders the ultimate achievement is gathering a massive amount of materials and building an awe inspiring monument in your civilization.  There are several to choose from and also faction specific monuments.  Most of them are beaver themed, which is definitely fun.

+ Speed controls to play at the pace you want.  

+ Many starting maps to choose from with their own unique challenges.

+ Mod support.

Cons:

- More advanced gameplay mechanics do require some research.  That's not terribly abnormal, but I found the tutorial to be unhelpful beyond the basics.  Just expect that there will likely be aspects of gameplay that you'll need to look up.

Recommendation:

If you're looking for a city-build that mostly fits into the shape of the genre, Timberborn will be right up your alley.  The additional survival challenge (and the ability to toggle it on or off) makes the game more fun.  The infinite playability plus features for all skill levels of gamers means that it's great for basically everyone.