CAPITAL

FARTHEST FRONTIER is a survival city builder packed with intricately engaging systems

- Christopher Livingston

Priorities. That’s what managing a medieval city is all about. Farms are important for long-term survival, but fishing and gathering makes more sense if people need food quickly. Chopping logs into planks means construction on new buildings can commence, but if people are freezing in their homes, that timber should be turned into firewood instead.

And assigning labourers to salvage nearby ruins for resources should be put on hold if – and here’s just one quick example – a giant angry bear is rampaging through the town brutally mauling everybody to death. Yeah, a murder-bear can shuffle a city’s priorities real fast. Forget fishing and firewood: every single citizen’s job right now is to find something sharp and become an expert bear-stabber.

Ravenous wildlife is just one of the many, many dangers you face in survival city builder Farthest Frontier, where famines, heatwaves, diseases, fires, bandit attacks and even bee stings can send your settlers to their early graves. (Important new priority: build a graveyard.)

But Crate Entertainment’s city builder isn’t all catastrophes and crises, it’s also a deep and intricate management sim about ushering your settlers from the early days of poverty and dirt roads into economic stability and (bear-free) cobblestone streets.

TOWN HALLS

The first year of