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My most nostalgic game is a colony sim from two decades ago—how does it hold up today?
Nostalgia can take many forms for different people. For you, it may look like your first experience in an arcade, picking up a copy of The Legend of Zelda for the NES in the 80s, or trying out Diablo 1 in the late 90s. For me, it's playing colony sims and cooking games from the early 2000s. While my first-ever video game was Heroes of Might and Magic 3, the most nostalgic is a colony sim that, although simple by today's standards, was surprisingly difficult for its time. At least for a young child, that is. Let me tell you all about Virtual Villagers, a game series I grew up with in my formative years and only just recently learned is still ongoing. Image via Last Day of Work For those uninitiated, Virtual Villagers is a casual colony simulation game series where you, an almighty deity-like being, watch over and care for a group of villagers. Your villagers start by training their basic survival skills, from foraging berries to building huts and researching new technologies, all while discovering secrets within the village itself. These secrets come in the form of puzzles, and it's up to you to solve them based on clues around the map. Most of the titles in this series follow the same format, but the one that holds the most nostalgic value for me is the series' first entry, Virtual Villagers: A New Home. Its concept sounds simple, right? Well, kind of. For today's standards, this is a very simple concept that we've seen time and time again, carefully crafted over decades of innovation within the gaming industry. Even for 2006, this wasn't the most challenging game out there, but it was enough to stump the likes of my child self, who needed several playthroughs to figure out that you could pause the game. Screenshot by Destructoid That's right—Virtual Villagers runs in real time. You could have your villagers set up for success, with a few buildings, one researching, and one or two foraging, only to come back a few days later and see everyone gone because they ran out of food when the berry bush ran out of fruit to harvest. There's a balance between actively playing and discovering secrets on the map and leaving before returning a few hours late to see how things are going. Let's just say I struggled to find this balance until I got a little older and learned some strategies. Until then, I had to restart several times because I overpopulated my village and ran out of food. Overall, though, it follows a simple format you can apply to most playthroughs. You focus on food and research first before building up your village and increasing your population, so you can have more people working at once. You also need to look out for diseases, so having a local healer to help create medicine will prevent any unfortunate, unexpected mishaps from occurring. I only realized all this as I got older: my younger self mainly focused on breeding as many villagers as possible so I'd have more workers to take care of the village. This strategy was far from perfect, but it occasionally worked when I got a lucky run. Screenshot by Destructoid With all that said, how does Virtual Villagers hold up in the modern day? I can't speak for newer entries like Origins 2 or Divine Destiny, as my last Virtual Villagers game was The Tree of Life. For the four earliest titles I have played, though, it depends on a recent discovery I made: mobile versions. After feeling nostalgic and diving back into Virtual Villagers, I learned that there are mobile versions of each game, including older and newer entries in the series alongside spinoffs like Virtual Families. While I don't think nostalgia carries the series enough to justify picking them up at their regular PC price, especially compared to high-quality indie games within the genre with similar (or even lower) price tags, I can't quite say the same for their much cheaper mobile counterparts. At least for me, I've accepted that Virtual Villagers is a core memory in my mind that tugs at my heartstrings when I think about my childhood. I may return one day to experience a blast from the past on a different platform. For now, I'm content with trying new games and broadening my horizons while acknowledging the overall positive impact this series has on my gaming history. How often do you reminisce about games from your childhood? Let us know in the comments below! The post My most nostalgic game is a colony sim from two decades ago—how does it hold up today? appeared first on Destructoid.
Nostalgia can take many forms for different people. For you, it may look like your first experience in an arcade, picking up a copy of The Legend of Zelda for the NES in the 80s, or trying out Diablo 1 in the late 90s. For me, it's playing colony sims and cooking games from the early 2000s.
While my first-ever video game was Heroes of Might and Magic 3, the most nostalgic is a colony sim that, although simple by today's standards, was surprisingly difficult for its time. At least for a young child, that is. Let me tell you all about Virtual Villagers, a game series I grew up with in my formative years and only just recently learned is still ongoing.
For those uninitiated, Virtual Villagers is a casual colony simulation game series where you, an almighty deity-like being, watch over and care for a group of villagers. Your villagers start by training their basic survival skills, from foraging berries to building huts and researching new technologies, all while discovering secrets within the village itself. These secrets come in the form of puzzles, and it's up to you to solve them based on clues around the map. Most of the titles in this series follow the same format, but the one that holds the most nostalgic value for me is the series' first entry, Virtual Villagers: A New Home.
Its concept sounds simple, right? Well, kind of. For today's standards, this is a very simple concept that we've seen time and time again, carefully crafted over decades of innovation within the gaming industry. Even for 2006, this wasn't the most challenging game out there, but it was enough to stump the likes of my child self, who needed several playthroughs to figure out that you could pause the game.
That's right—Virtual Villagers runs in real time. You could have your villagers set up for success, with a few buildings, one researching, and one or two foraging, only to come back a few days later and see everyone gone because they ran out of food when the berry bush ran out of fruit to harvest. There's a balance between actively playing and discovering secrets on the map and leaving before returning a few hours late to see how things are going. Let's just say I struggled to find this balance until I got a little older and learned some strategies. Until then, I had to restart several times because I overpopulated my village and ran out of food.
Overall, though, it follows a simple format you can apply to most playthroughs. You focus on food and research first before building up your village and increasing your population, so you can have more people working at once. You also need to look out for diseases, so having a local healer to help create medicine will prevent any unfortunate, unexpected mishaps from occurring. I only realized all this as I got older: my younger self mainly focused on breeding as many villagers as possible so I'd have more workers to take care of the village. This strategy was far from perfect, but it occasionally worked when I got a lucky run.
With all that said, how does Virtual Villagers hold up in the modern day? I can't speak for newer entries like Origins 2 or Divine Destiny, as my last Virtual Villagers game was The Tree of Life. For the four earliest titles I have played, though, it depends on a recent discovery I made: mobile versions.
After feeling nostalgic and diving back into Virtual Villagers, I learned that there are mobile versions of each game, including older and newer entries in the series alongside spinoffs like Virtual Families. While I don't think nostalgia carries the series enough to justify picking them up at their regular PC price, especially compared to high-quality indie games within the genre with similar (or even lower) price tags, I can't quite say the same for their much cheaper mobile counterparts.
At least for me, I've accepted that Virtual Villagers is a core memory in my mind that tugs at my heartstrings when I think about my childhood. I may return one day to experience a blast from the past on a different platform. For now, I'm content with trying new games and broadening my horizons while acknowledging the overall positive impact this series has on my gaming history.
How often do you reminisce about games from your childhood? Let us know in the comments below!
The post My most nostalgic game is a colony sim from two decades ago—how does it hold up today? appeared first on Destructoid.
