Reviews from

in the past


It's funny how making all your citizens cute little beavers makes you more motivated to build a cozy, stable life for them.

Altogether very fun, but, as of me writing this, it's unfortunately possible to fall into the rut of having unlocked everything interesting and upgraded all your resource-gathering as much as you feel you need to. In other words, you can reach the point where you little motivation to keep playing beyond slightly improving your city. I've run into this when it comes to the few other resource-management/city sims I've played before, so I don't know if this is just what is considered the "end-game" of this type of game or there's an issue with the way I play.

In any case, it's kept my attention for 60 hours and counting, so that's gotta count for something. Slightly steep learning curve, but addicting as hell. I very much look forward to what this game will become with more updates.

A very strong city builder with a unique theme. Creating Dams and directing the flow of water is very fun and there is a lot of flavor between the two playable factions. Building vertical structures was also a genius idea as it makes district layouts feel like it's own puzzle.

There are two main things that hold this back however. It's UI is very messy and can make understanding how certain systems work feel like trial/error. Also there is a severe lack of dynamic events. At the time of writing the game has 2, Badwater Tides and Droughts. Both are great challenges but I think the game needs more to keep long playthroughs interesting.

Thankfully the game is in Early Access, has a strong community behind it and Devs who are open to feedback. Timberborn is a great game now and I see a bright future where it will be truly excellent. I really do look forward to checking in on this game as it updates.

A by-the-book resource management city builder with a dam twist! Doesn't push anything forward here gameplay wise except the admittedly endearing beaver skin pulled over everything. Genuinely an ugly looking game though, with a truly horrendous UI!

Truly fucking delightful city builder I've been dipping in and out of for the last year or so. Strikes a really good balance where it has enough mechanical complexity to be interesting, but is forgiving enough to be a chill no-stress good-vibes game.

For anyone finding the game difficult, I have one tip: the tutorial is decent but conspicuously never mentions dams. You're beavers. Consider... dams.

The drought will surely devastate our harvest.


Cute beaver city builder! Definitely enjoyed it for a few days, but lacks an end goal. I wish maps were randomly generated instead of being set. Limits replayablity.

its like factorio
but your beavers are fucking dying

suffering primarily from a lack of content and the fact that sometimes you just get owned by drought and there's nothing you can do, but the vertical building is really fun and this is just a very solid city builder that kept me playing (and i'll probably keep playing)

I ran out of things to do cause early access but it's fun

The beavers walk about having a great time and then die because I'm bad at strategy games

I tried this out much earlier in its development, saw potential, but wanted to come back to it. I have now come back to it and I had a lot of fun. The limitations the game puts on city building is interesting, with the need to trap water to make it through droughts of ever increasing length. Expanding becomes an interest fight to move beavers to a new district (something that I hope they can streamline a little better as the game progresses) to dam up water before the next drought comes. The research progression is a little wonky. I think the game would benefit greatly from a research tree that visually organizes its building dependencies. I will pick the game up again later after it receives some more updates. I haven't checked out the more mechanically oriented beavers yet, but that will be for my next pass with the game.

Cool mechanics but odd execution.

Still in development and I think recently they completely rebuilt the industrial beaver race so they play differently. It's a cute game and idea but right now the balance feels a little unstable. I played a handful of times trying to keeping the beavers alive long term but without the tutorial I ended up over extending myself every time or just died out during the first summer.

The building is the best part, I love the way the city layers on itself and you create these wonderfully intricate and interwoven little societies - but there's a big focus on resource management more than anything else so you're exclusively cutting wood, collecting water, and farming crops. There's no end goal just yet and it's easy to unlock and exhaust all the available structures and tech within a few hours.

Seems like it might be alright if/when it gets finished. A lot of cute and fun ideas being played with.

Timberborn is a very good and cute city builder. If you enjoy these kind of games there's no doubt that you will like this spin on the genre. I'm not personally the biggest fan of this genre but they always draw me in to playing them at least once. In Timberborn's case I may play it a few more times.

Cute beaver city builder. It's early access but still has enough content for the time being. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do next.

Awesome starting point for this game, but a long ways to go before it feels like a complete experience. There's an enormous amount of jank that limits how fun it is to play for an extended amount of time.

I'm super excited to revisit this in a couple years, but for the time being I don't think it's more than a novelty.

Timberborn is a really fun game that suffers from a "district" concept that limits your build capability and separates resources into distinct pools that the beavers will not share.

An "outpost" that extends your supply chain(s) and build area would be vastly better. The districts concept really sucks the fun out of the society management sim and turns it into non-stop micromanagement. You will spend all your time past the first hour or two fiddling with your districts and trying to shuttle resources back and forth. It's very painful.

Sadly, I think districts are core to this game, but I hope the developers add some ability to toggle a setting where instead of new districts, you can simply extend the build area of your existing settlement.

This game is fun, and I recommend it, but I do so with a ton of hesitancy ONLY because of the districts mechanic. The game is quite good otherwise, probably ⭐⭐⭐⭐⚫ without districts (which you can mod out)!