Game: Patron
Genre: City Building, Indie, Survival, Simulation
System: Steam (also available on GOG)
Developers | Publishers: Overseer Games
Controller Support: No, Mouse & Keyboard
Price: US $19.99 | UK £15.49| EU € 19,99
Release Date: August 10th, 2021
Review code used, with many thanks to Terminals IO
Overseer Games is a new team from Croatia, established in late 2018. Patron is the first independent title created by the studio.
Survival City Building
Patron is a survival city-building game set in medieval times, with a unique social system. It is the mix of strategy and city-building mechanics that make Patron a good choice for players who like to think about their strategic moves.
You must keep an eye on resources, making sure you have enough food and firewood. Keep your population happy by supplying the correct goods, if you don’t, they up sticks and leave your city, or worse, they die. And believe me, I had it happen!
Starting out
When the game starts you can pick your settlement’s name, there is a choice of 14 maps with different terrain to choose from too. You can tweak the map how you like it, changing things like soil fertility, because more fertile soil can mean better food production. Each map offers a different weather environment covering Tropical, Temperate, Dry and Cold and of course, that will affect your weather conditions.
Find Resources
Like most strategy city building games, using the few supplies you have, you start by building shelters for your citizens, a Forester’s Hut to supply wood and fulfill the requirements for food. You also need firewood to keep your citizens warm.
Each building and shelter has a set radius, meaning a citizen will only travel so far a distance to work and it’s the same for moving resources. For example, if a forester’s hut is built around water and stone but doesn’t have trees in the vicinity then it will produce nothing. Likewise, if workers collect all of the available resources in an area, then that means you will need to wait months or years for those to regrow naturally. This makes it very important to position buildings in the right place to have 100% or even higher efficiency. When winter rolls around, resources are harder to find so it is vital to establish a good food production and firewood to see out the winter.
Research Tech, Pass Laws
Picking the right moments to progress the large research tree that Patron has is an important decision. To research most things it usually takes a sum of your gold coins which are obtained from income and taxes on houses. Some will also require resources depending on what it is you are researching.
As you progress in the game you also have to make decisions on what laws you should pass. This is where Patron’s social dynamics system comes into play, as your citizens will react to the decisions you make and the laws you pass. You have to take their opinions into account and reactions to what you do. Every Peasant, Laborer, Merchant and Gentry have their own individual needs, opinions and reactions to all aspects of gameplay, from class strife to immigration, religion, health, safety, and loyalty.
The King and Weather Hazards
Political decisions also extend to making decisions in other ways. At times the king asks to send a boat of convicts to live with you and other times it can be pirates who want to buy your goods. It’s a combination of good and bad and you will have to choose that which you believe is the best for your growing settlement. Choosing the right option for your settlement, your people will respect you and remain happy. Choose poorly and they will revolt, they will refuse to work and will even leave your town.
Depending on the map you have picked you will also have to put up with weathers disasters. The tropical maps can be warm and dry with fires breaking out in your settlement and on the cooler maps you have to contend with a cooler climate such as snow and blizzards.
Don’t Kill all your Citizens
There is a good steady challenge in Patron. With having to deal with slow population growth versus the lure of building up too fast and growing your settlement quickly. My first winter in Patron ended in despair for my citizens. I’d gone too fast down the building route and along the research tree. This resulted in my citizens freezing and starving to death. I didn’t have adequate food to eat nor firewood to keep the poor souls warm during the snowy winter.
There is a pop-up tutorial system in Parton and it does a decent job at informing you about the game, the rest you pick up as you go along. Since my disastrous first run in the game, I’ve improved I think! I have learnt the ins and outs of running a successful settlement that is on its way to growing into a prosperous city that is still going years later. Patron is a game where you take your time as building too fast will have dire consequences for your citizens and eventually for your game. As you can see, it will end with this screen.
Visuals and Sound
Patron looks well on my laptop, with warm rich colours during the summer months. The change in the seasons is represented well, with rich orange tree leafs during autumn and thick snow on the ground during winter. The animations are fine though the animations of the citizens look a little basic when zoomed in. However, most of the gameplay takes place zoomed out, looking at the open map, where the animation looks so much smoother.
The audio is enjoyable. Relaxing music plays in the background while you get some audio cues to inform you of any events taking place. From alarm bells ringing loudly when a fire breaks out, to the striking of hammers on metal as you build and upgrade your settlement.
Conclusion
Patron is an engrossing and very enjoyable survival city builder. Once you can pass the first four to six years or so in the game it seems to get easier to manage everything the game throws at you. With fourteen maps to play through with different rule sets, there is plenty of long-term gameplay on offer.
The progress in Patron can be slow, even with a fast forward button, but for those that like to ponder their next move on pause, Patron is perfect for a strategic play-through. Just be careful as there is so much to do and one wrong decision can send you crashing back to the start with an unhappy ending for your citizens. I love it!
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up 
You must log in to post a comment.