Timberborn

概要

In the crowded landscape of post-apocalyptic city builders, where grimdark survival and human misery are typically the core focus, Timberborn emerges as a breathtakingly original breath of fresh air. Mankind has perished, turning the Earth into a desolate, dry wasteland choked by toxic waste. But life, as they say, finds a way. In this ingenious 'lumberpunk' simulation developed by Mechanistry, humanity's hubris has paved the way for a highly evolved, surprisingly industrious society of sentient beavers. Your first impression of Timberborn is likely to be sheer delight at its undeniable charm; watching adorable, blocky beavers scurry about carrying massive logs is inherently joyful. However, that cozy facade expertly masks a deeply complex, relentlessly challenging survival and management simulation that will test your strategic foresight to its absolute limits. This is not just a game about building a cute animal town; it is a masterclass in resource management, fluid dynamics, and environmental engineering where the stakes are life, death, and the complete dehydration of your thriving colony. The core gameplay loop of Timberborn revolves around a terrifyingly beautiful cycle of life-giving wet seasons and devastating, protracted droughts. When the rivers flow, your colony thrives. Your water wheels spin, your farms burst with diverse crops like kohlrabis, canolas, and cassavas, and your beavers work tirelessly to stockpile resources. But the wet season is fleeting, and the true test of your leadership comes when the water dries up. When the drought hits, the lush green riversides turn into brown, cracked wastelands. Your crops begin to wither, your power grids stall, and the desperate race to survive on your stockpiles begins. This loop forces players to think multiple steps ahead, constructing elaborate dams, reservoirs, and floodgates to trap water before it escapes the map. The tension of watching your reservoir slowly deplete as the days of drought tick by is palpable. Furthermore, the introduction of 'badtides'—horrific events where rivers run thick with toxic 'badwater'—adds a layer of thrilling peril, forcing you to rapidly reroute polluted streams to save your beavers from contamination. From a visual and audio design perspective, Timberborn is a triumph of the 'lumberpunk' aesthetic. Because metal is a rare commodity scavenged only from the decaying ruins of human civilization, almost everything your beavers build is constructed from wood. The visual philosophy is a gorgeous blend of naturalism and mechanical ingenuity. Massive wooden water wheels churn in the rivers, intricate systems of cogs and gears transfer power across vast distances, and enormous aqueducts cast shadows over bustling settlements. The sound design perfectly complements this visual identity. The gentle, ambient rush of water is the heartbeat of your city, accompanied by the satisfying rhythmic clanking of mechanized pumps, the thud of lumber mills, and the cheerful squeaks of your industrious citizens. The visual identity is further enhanced by the game's extraordinary vertical architecture system. Because arable land is precious, you must build upwards, stacking lodges on top of workshops, connecting them with soaring bridges, scaffolding, and intricate transportation networks like ziplines and tubeways. When compared to its contemporaries like Banished, Frostpunk, or Cities: Skylines, Timberborn distinguishes itself entirely through its revolutionary 3D water physics and terraforming mechanics. While other city builders treat the map as a static canvas upon which you place buildings, Timberborn treats the environment as a dynamic, malleable opponent. You are not just building on the map; you are fundamentally altering it. Using carefully placed explosives, you can carve massive canals through mountains, blow up natural barriers to reroute entire river systems, and construct soaring artificial reservoirs. The introduction of full 3D water simulation means that fluid behavior is incredibly realistic—water flows, pools, and cascades according to genuine physical laws. If you build a dam too low, the water will spill over and flood your city. If you blast a tunnel, you can create underground aquifers. This profound level of environmental manipulation gives players an unprecedented degree of creative freedom and strategic depth that leaves traditional grid-based builders in the dust. Timberborn is a game meticulously crafted for fans of deep strategy, colony simulation, and automation, yet it remains incredibly accessible to newcomers drawn in by its charming premise. It is for the player who loves the satisfaction of optimizing a production chain, the engineer who wants to design intricate self-controlling floodgate systems using sensors and relays, and the creative spirit who wants to sculpt beautiful, towering wooden metropolises. With over seven major updates adding features like farming expansions, mechanized beaver bots, toxic badwater, and comprehensive official mod support, Mechanistry has delivered an astonishing value proposition. Whether you are seeking a peaceful, creative sandbox experience on adjustable difficulties or a grueling survival challenge against an unforgiving Earth, Timberborn proves that the end of the world is just the beginning of something wonderful. It is an absolute must-play title that effortlessly secures its place among the elite titans of the city-building genre.

ストーリー

The history of the world in Timberborn is intrinsically tied to the failures of humanity. Though humans are never seen in the game—having gone entirely extinct long before the events of your playthrough—their presence is felt everywhere. Mankind, through reckless industrialization, unchecked pollution, and environmental neglect, turned the vibrant Earth into a dry, toxic wasteland. As the rivers dried up and the climate collapsed, the human race perished, leaving behind only rusted metal skeletons of skyscrapers and decaying infrastructure. But nature is resilient. In the wake of this self-inflicted apocalypse, a new species evolved to claim dominance over the ruined planet: the beaver. Forced to adapt to the harsh cycles of extreme droughts and toxic runoff, these highly intelligent, sentient rodents developed sophisticated 'timber-tech' and formed complex societies, determined not to repeat the fatal mistakes of the species that came before them. Without a traditional narrative campaign featuring distinct individual characters, the 'characters' of Timberborn are the factions themselves, each representing a fundamentally different philosophical approach to survival. The Folktails are the nature-friendly traditionalists. They believe in living in harmony with the environment, relying on sustainable agriculture, wind power, and cozy, sprawling settlements. They move swiftly across their territories using intricate networks of ziplines and prioritize the comfort and well-being of their citizens. In stark contrast are the Iron Teeth, a faction born from a philosophy of relentless industry and absolute control. The Iron Teeth do not fear the harsh world; they seek to conquer it. They utilize deep-water pumps, massive industrial engines powered by burning wood, high-speed tubeways for transportation, and even artificial breeding pods to rapidly expand their workforce. Choosing between the Folktails and the Iron Teeth isn't just a cosmetic decision; it represents a profound shift in technological progression and societal motivation. The central conflict of Timberborn is an eternal, grueling struggle against nature itself. Your enemy is not an invading army or a rival faction, but the devastating environmental cycles of the post-apocalyptic Earth. The recurring droughts are a relentless antagonist, threatening to turn your lush, green oasis back into the dusty wasteland the humans left behind. More terrifying still is the 'Badwater'—toxic, polluted sludge that periodically erupts from water sources during horrific 'badtides.' This toxic waste corrupts the land, kills crops, and sickens your beavers, requiring desperate countermeasures, medical antidotes, and complex rerouting of rivers to survive. The premise constantly asks the player: Can you master the environment, or will you succumb to the same apocalyptic forces that destroyed humanity? Beneath the charming veneer of lumberpunk beavers lies a poignant exploration of profound environmental themes. Timberborn is a narrative about resilience, conservation, and the dire consequences of taking natural resources for granted. It highlights the delicate balance between industrial expansion and ecological preservation. As you guide your colony from a desperate band of survivors to a thriving, advanced metropolis, you eventually unlock 'Wonders'—massive, resource-intensive end-game monuments dedicated to restoring the Earth. These monuments serve as a powerful thematic conclusion to the game: a declaration that while the world was broken by mankind, it can be healed by those who respect the power of the river and the life it brings.

Gameplay

The moment-to-moment gameplay of Timberborn is a delicate, deeply engaging balancing act of resource management, population assignment, and infrastructure development. You begin with a small central district and a handful of eager beavers. Your immediate task is to secure the absolute basics: assigning workers to cut down trees, gathering wild berries, and setting up rudimentary water pumps to quench your colony's thirst. As your population grows, you must lay down road networks and establish expansive farms, choosing from a variety of crops like Kohlrabis, Eggplants, and Coffee Bushes, each with unique growth times and nutritional benefits. However, you are always racing against the clock. The UI constantly warns you of an impending drought. You must rapidly construct rudimentary dams using logs to trap a small reservoir of water. When the drought arrives, the riverbed turns to dust, the water wheels stop turning, and you watch anxiously as your beavers survive solely on the food and water you managed to hoard during the wet season. Where Timberborn truly transcends its genre is in its core mechanics of water physics, terraforming, and vertical architecture. Powered by a highly sophisticated 3D water simulation engine, water in Timberborn flows with realistic pressure and volume. You are tasked with mastering this physics engine by building complex systems of levees, dams, and adjustable floodgates. By raising and lowering floodgates, you can control the precise depth of a river, creating massive artificial lakes or diverting water into irrigation canals to keep your distant forests alive. Later in the game, you unlock explosives, allowing you to literally reshape the 3D map by blasting craters and carving new riverbeds. Because fertile land near water is incredibly scarce, you cannot simply build outward; you must build upward. The game's vertical architecture system is remarkably robust, allowing you to stack warehouses on top of lodges, and cap them with power-generating windmills, all interconnected by towering wooden scaffolding and suspension bridges. Progression in Timberborn is driven by a satisfying technology tree fueled by 'Science' points, generated by inventor beavers working at their desks. As you accumulate Science, you unlock increasingly sophisticated lumberpunk machinery. You transition from simple water wheels to massive mechanized pumps, gravity batteries, and wood-burning engines. You also unlock the ability to send scavengers to the decaying ruins of human civilization to mine scrap metal, a crucial resource required for the most advanced buildings. The ultimate leap in progression is the advent of Automation. You can construct 'Bots'—mechanized beaver golems that require power and maintenance but can work 24 hours a day without sleep or food. These bots can be sent into the most hazardous, badwater-flooded areas, supercharging your colony's efficiency and allowing your biological beavers to focus on leisure. This ties directly into the complex 'Well-being' system, where you must satisfy your evolved rodents with varied diets, entertainment venues, and elaborate decorations to boost their working speed and life expectancy. As your city expands across the massive maps, you must utilize the District system to manage your sprawling empire. A single district can only reach so far, forcing you to establish new settlements via District Crossings and migrate populations and resources between them. The game boasts phenomenal replayability thanks to its highly customizable difficulty settings, an intuitive built-in map editor, and robust official Steam Workshop mod support. Players can share their custom terraformed maps or download massive community overhauls. Whether you are optimizing a localized water wheel grid, laying down a massive network of Folktail ziplines or Iron Teeth tubeways to maximize transport efficiency, or fighting back a horrific toxic badtide with automated sensor-driven floodgates, the mechanical depth of Timberborn ensures that there is always a new engineering puzzle waiting to be solved.

Key Features

• 13D Water Physics Engine: Experience a revolutionary, fully simulated 3D water system where rivers flow, pool, and cascade based on genuine fluid dynamics. This requires players to carefully manage water pressure, build precise dams, and manipulate floodgates to survive.
• 2Lumberpunk Vertical Architecture: Space is a premium resource, forcing players to build towering, multi-tiered cities by stacking lodges, workshops, and power grids on top of one another. This verticality is enhanced by complex pathways, suspension bridges, and soaring scaffolding.
• 3Dynamic Seasons & Deadly Badwater: Your strategic planning is constantly tested by alternating cycles of life-giving wet seasons, devastating droughts, and terrifying 'badtides' that flood the map with toxic waste, requiring constant adaptation and robust stockpile management.
• 4Advanced Terraforming: Don't just adapt to the environment; reshape it completely. Utilize powerful explosives to blast away mountains, carve deep irrigation canals, and create massive artificial reservoirs to control the flow of life-saving water.
• 5Two Distinct Sentient Factions: Choose between the nature-loving Folktails and the hyper-industrial Iron Teeth. Each faction offers completely unique buildings, technologies, transportation methods (ziplines vs. tubeways), and fundamentally different playstyles.
• 6Intricate Automation & Bots: Transition from manual labor to a fully automated utopia by constructing networks of sensors, relays, and self-operating floodgates. You can even build a specialized workforce of mechanized Beaver Bots that operate 24/7 in hazardous conditions.
• 7Complex Agriculture & Well-Being: Manage a diverse agricultural ecosystem featuring crops like kohlrabis, canolas, and cassavas to maintain complex production chains. A robust well-being system demands you provide varied diets, entertainment, and monuments to keep your beavers happy.
• 8Endless Replayability & Mod Support: Enjoy a massive sandbox experience with an intuitive built-in map editor, adjustable difficulty settings, and official Steam Workshop support featuring a thriving community of custom maps, mods, and quality-of-life additions.

Highlights

Pros & Cons

Latest Updates & Events

Scores

“Humans have long gone extinct, will your civilization do any better?”— Game Tagline

“Undeniable charm and a remarkably pleasant time.”— PC Gamer

“Focuses on more than simply surviving resource shortages, allowing players to learn and exploit different features to make successful cities.”— Rock Paper Shotgun

Latest Updates & Events