I hesitantly give the Settlers Pioniers of Pagonia a positive review. The game is very much a work in progress and it shows.

1. The graphics are pleasant, rather cartoonish, but fit the game nicely. Buildings are consistent in style. Nature looks gorgeous yet remains disctintive. You can easily tell what ground type you are building on, which trees are softwood and which are hardwood, where the hunting animals and foragable plants are present, and so on. Only mineral deposits are sometimes hard to distinguish - an overlay to quckly find them would be nice.

2. Music is relaxing and not too repetitive. Ambient sounds of your pioniers doing their jobs work wonders. Although I still cannot find the chicken that I hear clucking from time to time. Combat also sounds decently. The jingle played when you destroy a hostile camp is an instant dopamine hit. Overall the audio is really great.

3. Core gameplay of building your town and exploring the island is well thought out and fun. Very reminescent of the first Settlers games from 1990's. Somewhat more complex, but not too much. You get a few new resources like limestone, copper, silver and nickel. You can choose if your tools should be made from copper or iron, copper may also be used for making coins while iron can make better weapons, a really strategic decision. Lumber is split into softwood for construction, hardwood for tools and weapons, and firewood for cooking. Food variety is is fine, not overwhelming, although there should be some replacement possible for berries as dessert in the meals.

4. Combat is diversified. Game includes guards, soldiers and three kinds of adventurers on your side. The enemies include thieves, spectres, werewolves and more, with various abilities that your adventurers may counter. It requires some micromanagement and can get tedious at times. Still, an improvement overall.


1. Forced diversity - call me what you want but I would prefer to have my people look at least vaguely similar. Instead I get all melanin levels from northern Scandinavia to equatoral Africa. No society looks like that, not for long anyway. It completely kills any immersion of a medieval-ish fantasy theme.

2. Balance - right now the early game can be very challenging but once you establish your economy it is just boring. Explore-kill enemies-take territory-repeat. Other pagonians are an odd bunch. Their villages stand in your way on one hand, but are the only source of gems for upgraded adventurers on the other. Sometimes they will give you valuable stuff for free, sometimes they offer completely pointless trades like Steel for Leather. They do not interact with enemies in any way at the moment. They do not expand their village nor can you fight them. I believe there is room for improvement.

3. Little replay value - once you finish a map there is no reason to come back to it. You can try for a better time if you are that kind of a player, but it hardly presents any challenge once you know what is where.

4. Minor annoyances - road building is a chore. You are constantly short on space early in the game so you will probably want to favor grid layout, which in turn results in slower flow later. Buildings and roads on uneven terrain look bad. Some animations are absurd - sawmil for example has a huge vertical bandsaw, onto which the worker throws whole logs. Carrier with a tool or metal bar carries it in outstreched hands, looking odd.

Overall a strong 7/10 game with potential for improvement.

Man will es lieben. Es sieht wunderschön aus. Das Gewusel macht Spaß zu zusehen. Jedoch ist der Coop bei dem man zusammen eine Nation steuert absolut überflüssig. Da dann lieber Anno 1800 spielen wo es durch die Komplexität der DLCs und die Größe des Spiels absolut sinnvoll ist.
Zudem ist das Kampfsystem absolut sinnlos und hat durch das System eher mit einem Glücksspiel zu tun.

Dadurch ist leider einfach sehr schnell die Luft raus. Vorhandene Mechanics sind in Foundation zu finden, welche teilweise besser umgesetzt und dynamischer sind.

Mal sehen was sich noch tut

font i hard to see. i enjoy the tchnicality.