It was not resource optimization to ensure technological advancement that pulled me into this game, it was the beavers themselves. In the game if you don’t make the technological advancements rapidly, you might find yourself in the position which your food production is ultimately tied to the scarce fertile areas you have, and in that position, mass beaver deaths by starvation is almost inevitable. While it was wrong for the world, it might be true for Timberborn. It would be an understatement to note Malthus was wrong and had questionable ethics, the main thing he failed to consider was how technology would effect food production.
Malthusian principle is named after Thomas Malthus, an 18th century British economist, and denotes while the population growth is exponential, food production is tied to the available field, therefore its growth is linear, and once the population exceeds the available food the starving population would die and find its equilibrium. As said, this is almost a landmark in city builder genre and in this game it presented itself through Malthusian economic principles. The beavers themselves felt like not present in the game, only their statistics. You constantly had to keep an eye on your population and your resources, when the next drought might come. Once I started playing the game, I quickly realized the main attention in the system was building a city centered on survival. It is understandable given the scale of the games, but for Timberborn specifically, this turned into a problem for me. People are only people to the extent of their statistics, the living individual is not present, instead most games in this genre simplify them to census data. Most city-builders rely on abstraction of the individuals that live inside their cities. Once I started playing, I realized the game had a different approach. I really liked the premise of the game, to build a haven for beavers, possibly even making mega cities, but the shining spot from the beginning from me was the beavers themselves. Through a progression chain in the game you can use logs, combined with electricity to make planks, gears, paper and even explosives. The other kind of resource is logs, mainly used for making new constructions. The main objective of the game is to build a city with your beavers while also enduring drought seasons, making sure you have the right infrastructure to accumulate enough resources, which are mainly, food and water. It’s a city-builder game that is centered around beavers. While checking some of the games on sales a couple weeks ago I came across a game called Timberborn.
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