Upcoming city builder from Gone Home, Baldur’s Gate 3 devs flips the genre on its head

polygon.com:

Steam is flooded with city builders right now (I’m playing Fabledom, for instance), and most of them are relatively similar. Which is why, for me, the excitement of starting a new city builder comes in the form of new art styles, interesting combat mechanics, and compelling stories. But former Klei Entertainment developer Nel Anderson’s new company, Sonderlust Studios, is bringing novelty to the genre with its first game, Generation Exile, announced with a trailer on Sunday.

Generation Exile is a pretty city builder like any other, but this one has a distinctly anti-colonialist, environmentally sound aspect: Rather than bore into your new land for resources, ultimately destroying what it once was, Exile challenges players to use only the resources they had with them when they left their old world in the last-ever generation ship. That includes water, food, and even air. Gameplay will also include turn-based combat as well as the typical tasks of creating abodes and amenities, amassing resources, and keeping your residents content.

Over email, Anderson, who works as Sonderlust’s creative director, aptly explained to Polygon what the game’s trying to do: Lots of city builders, he explained, are “fundamentally extractive and reward — if not demand — growing infinitely.” That means in order to continue in the game, you have to continuously bore into the earth, cut down trees, mine caves, etc. Generation Exile, on the other hand, pushes players to work in tandem with the new environment.

“Rather than simply ‘number get bigger’ we wanted to make the problem-solving space more about seeking balance,” Anderson said. “Rather than pulling more raw materials out of the ground for refinement, progress might instead look like developing a series of anaerobic lagoons that transform the biological waste (that must be stored and managed regardless) into nutrients for growing food or source crops for bioplastics.”

Time will move ultra-fast to account for several generations of your