I’m used to giant armies invading my territory in strategy games. The frantic stockpiling of resources and the production of military units is always a thrill. I almost always lose due to my lack of strategic awareness, but I used to think I was pretty good at the resource-management end of it all. Turns out, I am not. And I know that now thanks to Outlanders.
Outlanders strips out the war from the strategy experience. The game, at first, appeared an idyllic strategy game. A miniature valley of plenty for me to build my village in. But I soon found myself watching my hardworking villagers starve to death in the middle of the night, thanks to my inability to manage my resources.
I felt nothing but guilt.
Outlanders is all about resource-management. If you don’t like that aspect of strategy games, Outlanders isn’t for you.
Players are given a few goals and a time period to complete those goals in for each level. Each mission begins with a few villagers that players must task to gathering resources. During the game’s day and night cycles, villagers will wake up, do their jobs, eat dinner and then go home to sleep. They will do their tasks diligently until the resource they’re tasked with gathering or producing runs out…or until they starve to death.
Outlanders doesn’t give players enough villagers to make the process easy. I always found myself with just enough workers to get the job done. Having an abundance of any one resource was a red flag that I wasn’t allocating my workers in an efficient way. Having too much wood, for example, may mean that I am cutting through the forest too quickly. Without a forest, the mushrooms will be unable to flourish and my villagers will lose out on an easy-to-gather, edible resource.
I found myself stressed while I played Outlanders. Until I was able to understand the flow of gathering and processing resources, I was often blindsided by a factor I hadn’t planned for. I knew that having locations to stockpile resources was necessary, but it wasn’t until my third or fourth attempt at a certain level when I realize that the location of the stockpile was incredibly important to the overall flow of the resource production chain.
As an Apple Arcade game, Outlanders was played during the times of day when I wanted to relax. I typically play on my iPhone shortly before going to bed, or randomly during the day when I have a moment or two of downtime. But, because Outlanders demands the player’s attention, it’s hard to just casually play the game during brief downtime. Then, due to how stressful the game can become, it’s not ideal to play when trying to unwind.
Outlanders is good at what it does, but I couldn’t justify playing it for more than a few levels. At night, while I was supposed to be relaxing, I ended up having to turn to other games after playing Outlanders, just to unwind from the stressful experience.
If you appreciate resource management games, and are comfortable playing games that demand focus on your iPhone or iPad, you’ll likely enjoy Outlanders. The game worked great on my iPhone, so I imagine the experience will be even easier to manage on one of the iPad’s bigger screens. However, if you’re like me and not that great at strategy games, Outlanders may do very little other than nudge up your stress level.
Outlanders was reviewed using an Apple Arcade account maintained by Epic Brew.
