Rediscover what was lost and nurture your reborn civilisation in Before We Leave, a city building game set in a cozy corner of the universe. Grow, gather and manage resources to help your settlements thrive, and share goods between the hexagonal lands and planets around you. Relax and expand the fabric of your growing societies and create a solar system of happy planets at your own pace. Not everything will go your way, though - use your wits and research solutions to overcome the challenges that your ancestors once faced...

Centuries after a global catastrophe, mankind finally emerges from bunkers in order to take back the earth

Before We Leave is a city building game set centuries after a mysterious event forced mankind to retreat to underground bunkers to preserve their futures. Now, the first of their ancestors (known as peeps) to venture out onto the planet's surface are tasked with taking back the planet's surface.

You start on one island, on one planet. As you learn how to build huts and other buildings you slowly grow your numbers and learn how to build ships so that you can look for other islands on your planet. All the while you must grow your knowledge base (via research at your library), mine for resources to build structures, farm the land to feed your population and, like a plague, spread over your planet before looking to space to ensure your kind survive.

This is a fun and engaging game that will steal many hours, days, weeks, months of your life. The learning curve is steep, but the very lengthy tutorial (which really doesn't feel like a tutorial at all) helps you to get the basics down. In fact the tutorial can be kept on for the entire run of the game (so that you know what your ongoing quests are. With so much to learn I was impressed at how easy it was to retain the information and quickly work out the next step.

Mine for resources to build structures, farm the land to feed your population and, like a plague, spread over your planet

As you progress through the game, it opens up little surprises to keep you on your toes. Events occur that will set you and your peeps heading on a totally different path to the one you envisioned. Balancing your peeps needs and knowing when the time is right to expand your populace to another area is not an easy task to master. Likewise, as you build roads for moving infrastructure around, you have to be mindful that buildings will need to be placed at various points if you plan to bring more peeps into the environment or you want to store surplus stock in warehouses.

It's a fun, addictive a cute game. Another aspect worth mentioning is how impressive the soundtrack is. This is certainly one game that city building fans will fall in love with.

8

Nick Smithson