The Early Access Report - City20
Early Access is often a troubling proposition. Is the game ready for the public or are the public just glorified beta testers? That’s where we come in. Welcome to the Early Access Report, where Player 2’s writers tackle an early access title to determine if it is worth your time now, or is something you should keep an eye on in the future.
Key Information
The Game: City 20
The Pitch:
The Game Version This Report is Based On: 0.1.0
The Developer: Untold Games
Simulation, and I mean true simulation in games can be a tough nut to crack. I remember a story from Richard Garriott about how he had simulated a virtual ecology in Ultima Online, only for players to destroy it so wantonly that it had to be removed from the game. I think that, from an outsider’s perspective, there must be a certain level of illusion where the game auto-corrects to ensure the simulation, or concept of simulation remains.
It’s clear when loading up City 20 where the inspirations are. Despite never reaching large renown, Kenshi is a game near and dear to me. You’re placed in a world, with the starting vocation of your choosing, and set free. There’s no objective, the world is vast, and the simulation is quite good. Mod support drastically helped this, of course, but those that have played Kenshi understand it stands out in its own way. Rimworld too. Games that are brutal simulations of a savaged land. Project Zomboid too has a simulated world where you’re struggling to survive and carve out your own narrative. These are big shoes to fill.
City 20 drops you right in the thick of it. With just a little backstory that you made it through the marshes and were found on the outskirts of the city and brought in to nurse you back to health. After a brief tutorial and a couple of potential options for quests, you’re left alone. First thing I did was spend time working out how to complete my quest, which was a lot more difficult than I expected. The first hurdle was making a tool to fix the door. This took a bit to work out, as the UI isn’t entirely friendly. I finally found the option to hand craft the tool in my menus and did so. Then I needed to make the wood. That wasn’t too bad, once I worked out how to actually craft an axe for logs to refine them.
I don’t mind the crafting system; some of it has to be done on specialised tables, but this was where the cracks started to form for me. You require blueprints to make items, and the game only saved when you sleep in a bed. Gogo, the gent who saved me in the wilderness lets you stay there for 3 days then kicks you out with a blueprint for a makeshift bed. This bed requires a lot of ingredients (all foraged), but gets destroyed after you use it once. After around ten or fifteen days in game, I never found a blueprint for a bed or bedroll. This made things quite challenging, so I end up having to sneak into unoccupied houses I didn’t own and sleep the night. Blueprints are rewarded from people who have a good relationship with you, but it seems that the only way to raise your relationship with people is to do quests for them, which is another random chance. Not my favourite thing, but there’s not too many recipes in game so maybe it’s a lot better long term.
The next place that cracks started to show was in the simulation itself. As I walked around, talked to people, traded with them and got to know them a bit two things became evident; a lot of dialogue is repeated, and people don’t care if they’re carrying rotten food. It is Early Access, so this is quite early on in the cycle, but these two issues took me out of things quite a bit. The next part that surprised me is that things don’t seem to replenish themselves. I got asked to buy vodka for someone; pretty innocuous request, so I nipped over to the bar. Oh, after the first few days it seems like the bar only sells a few foodstuffs and all empty bottles now. Pretty sure that’s a bad business model, but it left me completely out of options (that I found, admittedly) to buy the vodka. This just meant I failed the quest and the person got shitty with me.
A few times too, people got mad at me for no reason. Guards were happy chatting to me, only to start beating the living shit out of me a few moments later, even though I had committed no crime I was aware of. Trespassing and other crimes exist, but I didn’t do any of those. There was also at least a few times where it corrupted my save files and I could no longer load them or when things just fell apart in a way that forced me to reload, like getting stuck in a conversation loop with no out.
I showed some screenshots to a friend of mine, and he said it looks like a mobile game. I completely disagree; sure the bowed legs look weird, but I still think this game is dripping with atmosphere. The lighting looks nice, all the environments are absolutely fine. Regardless of this, gameplay trumps all. Games like Dwarf Fortress and Kenshi are among my favourites, and they both look quite old. How a game runs and feels is by far the most important thing.
One last point, before I offer my recommendations. I never worked out any way to actually fully interact with the environment. Kenshi works because the world is so vast that you can eke out a living doing any number of things while still getting challenging by forces in the world. Here, I couldn’t work out what the factions might have wanted from me, so my days were distilled down to growing crops, wandering around town and hoping for quests, praying for blueprints, and actually surviving; you know, making sure I was fed and watered. I can’t really make a life from trading, or selling prisoners, or any other number of options because resources are limited and it doesn’t feel like people replace other people when something happens to them, so jobs just fall by the wayside a bit.
As I said, this is Early Access. It’s just launched. So far though, I am digging the vibe. I believe that City20 is pure potential. Once the bugs are sorted out and more things get added I think this will really hit a good niche that’s not often filled and I am very excited for that. The developer says the roadmap is coming a few days after launch, so here’s to hoping. They do seem like they’re very passionate about it; I can feel that instantly. Right now though, I think I’ll let it simmer a bit longer before I jump in again.
City 20 was played on PC. Thanks to the publishers for supplying code for coverage.
