Age of Empires and the Settles defined my youth, next to games like Age of Wonders and the likes. I spent hours and hours in RTS and settlement games, which developed in games like Anno and even CIV over the years. I could never grasp my head around Europa Universalis and the likes since they were too complicated when I had to invest in them. Could the Colonist be my lucky Switch-break?
The Colonists
According to the developers, The Colonists is a relaxing settlement building game inspired by classic titles like The Settlers and the Anno series. Take on a series of individual campaign missions, play randomly generated maps, compete on player-designed creations or build your colony unfettered by any constraints in the sandbox mode. Explore, research, manage, tweak and refine to your heart’s content. And it’s a pretty good summary, but it lacks.. depth? Or guidance? Just like the actual game – yeh, trying to build a bridge here.
Trial & Error
When I booted up the tutorial for The Colonist, it felt rich and diverse. So many options, all under the click of a shoulder button. Luckily the game guided me through the basics of robot civilization, so I was ready to take over the world with my mini bots. Or so I thought. I worked my way through the second mission and failed hard. I must have missed something during the tutorial, which was my initial thought. So I went back to the tutorial, read, and played through it again – but I did not miss anything. What I missed was a prompt about how you can pick up certain pointers on what to do – even though it’s mostly ‘main-line-stuff,’ they offer like ‘upgrade facet x, build y.
Once I figured this out, I started building my robot colony and finished the second mission after some trial and error. The problem lies in the whole trial and error part. The COlonist present themself as a relaxing builder but lacks guidance. It offers so much backstory, options, micromanagement, etc., that it can be a bit overwhelming on the handheld of a Switch or, even worse, on a Switch Lite. It wouldn’t have hurt to offer the player a system where they pick the option for either guided instructions (at least for the first few levels) or hardcore mode with no help.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a deep grinding colony builder with a relaxing and cute look, the Colonist is probably the game for you. Since I look for more guided RTS games, I did not click with The Colonists with added depth when I’m ready for the deep dive (like Anno). I loved the art style, the music, the environment, and options that reflect real-life options, but it wasn’t the right way to present it, not on the Switch. When hooked on a big screen, or an external monitor of a kind, this would become much more pleasant to play. But most players with those options probably opt for Steam anyway.
