We've talked about Shining Rock's hardcore medieval city builder before, and yes, the game's still around! In fact, in a recent interview, the creator yet again confirmed that Banished would definitely be out before the end of the year.
Talking to PC Gamer, Luke Hodorowicz, the sole developer working on Banished, also discussed the importance of player choice. "I didn’t want to build a game with build trees," he said, explaining that he doesn't like it when games arbitrarily restrict his options when it comes to building new structures. "It's really free-form, (...) I want it to be sandbox, and people can do what they want."
But choices aren't limited to just deciding what to build for your colony of refugees. Hodorowicz described a situation where a large amount of a town's people died in a mining accident:
All of a sudden your workforce is down by 30 people and you have to shuffle people around. You no longer produce anything from the mine, so you have to balance what people are doing and figure out how to get your town to survive after this terrible event has happened, whether it’s a fire or tornado or just random deaths.
You can read the interview in its entirety here. And, to learn more, head over to the game's website, where you can find the official description, screenshots, and videos—including the latest gameplay footage, which we've embedded above.
Banished interview: player choice in an indie city builder [PC Gamer]
Interview and new video [Official Website]