Frequent readers of my Fresh Look column know I am a huge fan of the city builder Manor Lords. I have reviewed many of these titles and felt that Manor Lords and Timberborn were the best of the bunch. Those games balanced challenging building tasks with intelligent AI and task management. Well, a new competitor has entered that arena in the form of Farthest Frontier, which is now available on the Steam platform. Among other things, it provides a unique take on the challenges of surviving in a hostile frontier.
Farthest Frontier tells the story of a group escaping corruption, persecution, and starvation, which is kind of typical for games of this genre. It was giving off a lot of Banished vibes at the onset. You start out with ten people and no shelter, which is not a good spot to be in when you are surrounded by an unknown and unfamiliar environment.
My first playthrough was plagued by errors of assumption that I learned while playing titles like Manor Lords. Mainly, I assumed that my people would automatically harvest all the lumber and stone nearby so that we could start building things like homes for everyone. However, I found out that I had to constantly select the areas that I wanted them to target, or they just stood there drooling around the fire.
I constantly went back and forth on whether this was a good thing or a bad one in terms of this review. But I guess it comes down to how much control you want to have over a world that you are building up from scratch. This also affects the difficulty level of the simulation somewhat because the AI is not going to take any initiative without you. In any case, you really need to micromanage things in your Farthest Frontier society, which might make the experience more or less enjoyable depending on your preferences and playstyle.
My first playthrough also cascaded into a short and bitter end when I tried to get a fishing hut built so that we could get some food on the table (after I got around to building places to eat). But when I sent a worker out to start putting the hut together, they wandered a few pixels too far away from our camp and got shot by bandits. While he was lying there in need of medical attention, another villager walked over presumably to try and finish the hut and not out of any concern for his fellow colonist. It didn’t really matter because that villager too was shot and killed.
This sad process happened over and over again until I had almost no villagers left. And that was all because I was not paying attention to a small detail in my land.
The construction of a new fishing hut led to a death spiral the likes of which would have made Dwarf Fortress proud. That is not to say that Farthest Frontier is as hard to play as Dwarf Fortress, but the difficulty curve is certainly in line with something like Frostpunk. It’s a lot more challenging by design than most city builders. If you ever got bored with a builder because everything worked perfectly, Farthest Frontier will almost certainly provide a greater challenge.
Even with the high difficulty, the gameplay is fun. Players looking for something a bit more challenging than a typical builder that mostly just requires a high investment in time and where mistakes can often be rectified, should check Farthest Frontier out. That said, I would like to see the gameplay take a couple of notes from Manor Lords in terms of autonomy by letting the citizens learn to take some actions on their own and maybe not walk into areas where lots of other townspeople have been killed. That might avoid some unnecessary death spirals that are just a little bit unfair.
There are also a few interface challenges. The menus that you use to order every single action in Farthest Frontier are not very easy to navigate. I found myself struggling to quickly find the building I was looking for when the clock was ticking. In a title with razor thin margins and citizens who only take actions when specifically commanded, the time I wasted rooting through menus increased the chances of running into negative outcomes. This is almost more of a simulation than a game. Everything is very intricate and detailed, which makes for a steep learning curve which the menus do little to soften.
For an example of the complexity, just look at the farming aspects of Farthest Frontier. There are twelve different types of crops that you can plant, and all of them are unique in terms of how they grow, what type of soil they like, and how well they tolerate heat, cold weather, and different kinds of disease. You will have to do more than just planting them and hope for the best. Expect to weed your fields, remove rocks, and rotate your crops to keep the soil fertile. Fail at any of that and people might start to starve, setting up yet another way you can death spiral your town.
Now, despite the difficulties and my struggles when learning how to play, my overall experience with Farthest Frontier was pretty good and even fun. Having a really good looking, highly detailed, and challenging city builder is a really great concept, especially for players who have mastered a lot of the easier titles out there in the world. It just needs a bit more polishing and a few accessibility improvements for it to reach that pinnacle of top-tier city builders.
Overall, Farthest Frontier is a really rewarding city builder that is challenging but fun, with great music and sound design to back up the gameplay. The developers, Crate Entertainment, are working really hard to keep things updated as well as adding new features. In time, that could mean that Farthest Frontier will grow into an even better, more accessible title. But even now, it’s more than worth playing. If you like city builders and are looking for a new challenge, Farthest Frontier is ready to provide it.