I've had a bit of a history with Foundation. I originally played a really early version of it some time ago and thoroughly enjoyed my time with it back then, although there were certainly limitations to what the game offered at the time. Coming back to it now, it's wonderful to see just how far it has come. This feels like a much more polished, complete and confident version of the game I already enjoyed. The first challenge is perhaps one of the most important: where on earth do I build my village? You're given a good-sized map to work with and plenty of freedom to customise things before you've even properly begun. I can spend far too long looking around for that perfect starting location, because this isn't a game where I simply want to plonk buildings down wherever they'll fit. I want my village to feel like somewhere I'd actually want to live. Once you've finally stopped procrastinating and chosen your little corner of the world, Foundation settles into a wonderfully satisfying rhythm. You'll build homes for your villagers, establish farms and food production, manage forests and other resources, develop trade routes and gradually advance your settlement. Eventually you're working towards more advanced industries, including mining and iron working, while constantly making sure your growing population has everything it needs. There's plenty going on beneath the surface. You still need to think about money. Your villagers need feeding. Resources need managing and your economy needs to function. Make enough bad decisions and things aren't simply going to magically work themselves out. But what I particularly love about Foundation is that it rarely feels like it's rushing me. There are plenty of city builders where I feel as though I'm constantly fighting the game. Something is collapsing, somebody is starving, another resource has suddenly disappeared and apparently half the population has decided they're unhappy because I forgot to construct the medieval equivalent of a coffee shop. Foundation gives me room to breathe. I can spend time looking at my village, deciding where I'd like the next group of houses to develop or thinking about how I want an area to look rather than constantly worrying that civilisation is going to collapse because I haven't optimised every square inch of land. And that freedom is incredibly important to me. I'm perfectly capable of spending twenty minutes designing something that could probably have been placed in thirty seconds simply because I like it better over there. Efficiency is important, of course, but sometimes I want my little medieval settlement to look nice as well! Trade adds another enjoyable layer. Establishing relationships with other settlements gives you opportunities to buy and sell resources, helping you balance your own economy and giving all that production a greater purpose. As your village develops, there's a lovely feeling of moving from a handful of people trying to establish themselves into a settlement with increasingly complex industries and needs. The progression works particularly well because it feels natural. You're not simply unlocking things because an arbitrary experience bar has filled. As your settlement grows, so do your ambitions. Farming leads into larger production chains, resource management becomes more involved, technology advances and eventually you're looking at mines, iron production and considerably more sophisticated infrastructure than the little village you started with. Yet despite all of that complexity, Foundation remains remarkably relaxing. That's probably the biggest compliment I can give it. I love building games, but I don't necessarily want every one of them to become a battle for survival or an exercise in perfect optimisation. Foundation gives me enough management to keep my brain occupied while still allowing me to sit back, enjoy the scenery and watch my villagers go about their lives. There's also something particularly refreshing about the absence of an overriding need to conquer everybody around you. This isn't a game where my peaceful little farming community inevitably has to transform into an enormous military machine because Dave from the neighbouring kingdom has decided he wants my turnips. I can simply thrive. Build something. Improve it. Make the villagers happy. Trade with my neighbours. Develop new industries. Then suddenly look at the clock and realise several hours have disappeared. That's Foundation. Having returned to the game after my earlier experience, I'm genuinely impressed by how polished it now feels. The core idea that originally attracted me is still very much there, but everything feels considerably more developed around it. Is Foundation completely stress-free? Of course not. It's still a management game. You can run short of food, make poor financial decisions or discover that your carefully constructed plans aren't working quite as brilliantly as you imagined. But that's part of the fun. The important difference for me is that Foundation gives me enough breathing room between those moments to actually enjoy the village I've created. If you're someone who wants an aggressive medieval strategy game centred around armies, conquest and painting the entire map your colour, this probably isn't what you're looking for. But if, like me, you enjoy watching a settlement gradually grow from almost nothing, managing its economy, developing industries, trading with neighbouring settlements and occasionally ignoring optimal efficiency because you think the houses would look prettier beside those trees... Foundation is an absolutely wonderful place to lose yourself for a few hours. 💜 Tom Recommends. I loved Foundation before, but I'm thoroughly enjoying rediscovering it, and I can already tell I'm going to lose an entirely unreasonable number of hours building my latest little medieval home. 🏡🌳