New Cycle Review

Saving your very own civilization by building various kinds of structures and homes, and providing them with resources can be sometimes a challenging task in a city-building game, especially if the world is apocalyptic. Well, this is a case with a new city-building game named New Cycle developed by Core Engage and published by Daedalic Entertainment. Unlike pleasant city-building experiences where the resources are easy to get, New Cycle will require players to both find ways to get resources and food as well as build all necessities for the civilization to survive.

Story

The story of New Cycle takes place in a Dieselpunk-esque post-apocalyptic in the year 2073, after a series of solar flares deprived the world of all its technological advancements in the year 2034. Bring the communities together by establishing a city in the selected map type to unlock new technologies for the betterment of the civilization.

Gameplay

New Cycle offers 3 different game modes including Sandbox, Campaign, and Sanity. Players can choose either the Sandbox or Campaign at the beginning as the Sanity game mode unlocks after completing the Campaign mode. The Sandbox mode is the most pleasant experience as almost all of the resources are easy to get and there aren’t many natural disasters to worry about nor the morale of the population.

However, the original New Cycle experience begins in the Campaign mode which will allow you to choose a map out of three different maps. Every map has its advantages as well as disadvantages. Start with gathering the usual resources like wood, stones, and fiber to build the houses for the people and then you will be able to provide clothes to the people and hire them to gather refined resources.

Alongside gathering the resources, make sure to assign the workers to get food as well. One of the starting food items that you can easily get is Mushroom and then start exploring the areas in the surrounding to find more food items. As you build more homes and structures in the city, more technologies will unlock that you will be able to use and build various kinds of production facilities.

Having a successful production network in the city will keep your civilization’s morale up but in this apocalyptic world, health is more important. It is crucial to build as many health facilities in the city as possible as your civilization will have a demand for medicines often. If you fail to provide medicines to the people, they will simply die off which is a bit downgrade.

One of the biggest aspects of the game is Natural Disasters that you cannot prevent in any way. There are numerous disasters that you will get to witness and possibly lose a bunch of people in the city. It can be a lightning strike, a solar flare, or a wave of an unknown disease.

Despite losing the people another factor that I can’t comprehend is the wastage of various resources. There will be several occasions throughout the gameplay that you will encounter in which you have to give up various resources for nothing in return. It can be frustrating at the start when you do have not many resources stored but eventually, you will get over it as you make further progress.

Sound and Visuals

The sound design of the game and the music is decent but I like the representation of everything happening in the city with an overview. You can see clearly which resources are gathered where and what production facility is having problems. Additionally, the working animations of your workers are decent.

Verdict – Score 7/10

New Cycle is a decent city-building game with multiple game modes and map types with a post-apocalyptic world for players to experience. There might not be a ton load of content for players to consume but it is still in an early access stage and by overviewing the roadmap of the production of the game, there are certainly more content and features coming to the game in the near future.

If you are someone who loves the city-building genre games then spending time in the New Cycle and establishing a community with a productive city will might bring you some joy.

New Cycle is now available on Steam (PC).

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