Survival citybuilder Patron is nearing its two year anniversary, and to celebrate its developers have released an update which adds a new creative game mode. Instead of struggling to quell social tensions and navigate disasters, creative mode unlocks everything, gives you infinite resources, and lets you adopt “the role of ultimate medieval urbanist.”
“Creative mode is a special game mode that opens everything to players. Entire research tree is available from the start, all resources are infinite, citizens will always spawn in sufficient numbers, access to all buildings is open and so on… You get the picture,” explains the announcement.
The previously default mode is now called “sandbox”, and it’s also the beneficiary of v1.610.0’s other changes. There’s now an “automatic jobs board”, for example, which reduces micromanagement by automatically staffing jobs in your town with available citizens. There are also a bunch of graphical optimisations designed to improve performance, and some localisation fixes.
Patron’s most obvious genremate is survival townbuilder Banished, but Patron is set apart by the social simulation of your city. Every citizen is a member of a social group, and each social group will react differently to your decisions, depending on their views on “religion, immigration, loyalty, poverty… Whatever you choose to do can lead to unforeseen consequences years later.” In other words, you might fail because everyone is mad at you, rather than because it got cold and your crops died.
I love survival citybuilders, but I don’t always have the time required to get into them. I also love easy citybuilders that let me turn on cheats and just construct something pretty, so a creative update for Patron makes it more tempting. It’s also currently got a 70% discount on Steam. Hmm.
