Common'hood

I must admit that when I heard about Common'hood, I thought that this was a game I had seen a million times before. Well, while a community building style of game is nothing new, nor is base building, economy management, and so on. This game manages to do it in a way that really grabs you and makes you want to keep on playing to try and make sure that your community is not just scraping by and surviving, but is thriving and loving life. There is a free demo that you can check out for this and I highly recommend that you do.

Being A Savoir!

That was supposed to be a Walking Dead reference, but I must admit, it is pretty weak! Anyway, Common'hood is a fascinating game and one where the story of what happened here, unfolds as you look around items and see why things are so rundown. I love the way that things unfold in the game and the way you can talk to your people will make you care about them and want to see them thrive in this new community you are trying to build.

The Building Blocks For Success

If you have played any other community building style of game before you are going to feel right at home with what Common'hood is offering. You will start out small with a few places for people to sleep, the basics for growing your own food, and so on. However, you will eventually be able to build your community up as you scavenge and find new and useful items. Items that can eventually be used to build machines that will automate a great deal of the labor that needs to happen. It is like a constant work in progress and that is something I think is really going to drive people to keep on playing to see what they can build for their community next. There is also a social aspect where you can share stuff that you have built with other players online and I am very interested to see how this turns out once the game is fully released.

Simple, Smooth, And Effective

I really wanted to talk a bit about the presentation of Common'hood. It is kind of hard to describe actually as at first glance it has a rather minimalistic style to it. However, things are detailed enough and you do get the impression that something bad had to have happened for things to end up this way. Even without lots of fine details, it is still very easy to become attached to the people in your settlement.

If you like base and community building style games, Common'hood is a game for you. I swear, ever since my dad bought me Sim City on a whim for the Super Nintendo, I have loved games like this! What is pretty interesting about this game is that I could not point my finger at any one reason as to why it is so appealing to me and why I feel it is going to be very addictive.

Pros:

• I really want to find out more about the world this game is set in
• The building tools are fantastic and very easy to get to grips with
• You always feel like your community is progressing
• Fans of city builders are going to love what this has to offer

Cons:

• I hope that the final game gives more information about what happened here
• While I love what I have seen, I cannot really see anything massively original in the gameplay