A certain controversial billionaire would have us believe that mankind’s salvation lies within the stars. The developers of this slow-life settlement builder clearly feel differently, believing that the solution lies within mountains once deemed inhospitable. Through a combination of nutrient rich soil, fresh streams, and precious mineral reserves, everything is at hand for a modest lifestyle. Sure, you may have to contend with the occasional avalanche but look on the bright side – steep mountain paths render the need for expensive gym memberships obsolete.
Laysara: Summit Kingdom sets out to provide a vastly different experience to most city builders, centred on themes of naturalism and spiritualism. We aren’t managing bustling cities here with crime, pollution, and unstable employment rates, but small settlements for humble folk keen to live off the land. This means villages with populations barely breaking a few hundred, chained across numerous rugged mountain faces, and managing a small treasury to purchase farms, factories, and accommodation. If the balance dips into the negative for too long, your current mission is deemed a failure. Fortunately, it’s possible to pause the action and manage debts before they spiral, even if this does mean destroying buildings to recoup half their cost.
The campaign is spread across fifteen missions on a handful of mountains, ending with a trek to a celestial peak – a mere glimmer in the distance when starting out. The first two missions form the tutorial, with the first teaching the basics and the second going more in-depth. As everything is explained step-by-step with objectives to meet, you’re looking at around two hours to become adept. Before the third mission commences the chance is given to alter the difficulty going forward, including a custom setting with toggable options. A free building mode and a dozen or so challenge-based scenarios also feature, giving a pool of modes to dip in and out of.
While citizens are (mostly) quietly content, they do rather enjoy having a variety of foodstuffs. Residential properties – categorised into three distinct classes, including monk dormitories – must be placed close to a food market, before establishing a transport network to bring a variety of delicacies including cheese, honey, and eggs. Establishing routes is one of the bigger features, tying into the rugged terrane, limited building space, and the need to create bridges and lifts to link communities together. If a mill, or similar, is too far away from the food market you’ll need to establish courier posts, and the further they are away, the larger the workforce.
You’d think that certain crops would only grow in certain areas, just like in the Tropico series, but that isn’t the case – you can plant fields of barley just about anywhere, and place yak farms right into the middle of a settlement. Fishing shacks do, of course, require streams – so a few limitations are present. More advanced building unlock via research, requiring a monastery and an academy. The more citizens living in vicinity to the academy, the higher the obtainable research level. Not having a complete catalogue of buildings available from the start benefits the campaign a great deal, with some not unlocking until putting in dozens of hours.
Diversifying Layasara further are the unique needs required to upgrade accommodation in return for more cash. Playing into the game’s spiritual theme, citizens demand enlightenment and prosperity. Enlightenment isn’t tricky to grasp, initially requiring shrines to be placed liberally, and later money-making donation stands. Prosperity is broader, including not just fountains and floral displays, but also things such as a supply of utensils forged from nearby copper mines. This makes for a very different experience to something like Cities: Skylines, especially when there are avalanches and storms to take into account.
Avalanches will coat buildings in snow, rendering them inoperable until Mr. Plow comes along. That name again, it’s Mr Plow. No – seriously, this is the moniker used. Environmental effects such as snow and rain visually pleasing. Together with detailed terrane and buildings with numerous small touches, this helps Laysara feel polished.
The controls in this new console release (Laysara has been in PC early access for two years) are mostly intuitive, based around radial menus controlled by rotating the analogue stick, along with a ticker full of stats (population, treasury, etc) that can be cycled through with the trigger buttons. A quick menu allows for buildings to be moved freely – a godsend if a village suddenly needs a full layout change, which is a possibility given the need to keep certain structures close.
Establishing routes isn’t too complex, but occasionally (at least in the Xbox Series version) the cursor doesn’t appear, requiring the menu to be reopened a few times. Another peculiarity is that buildings cannot be rotated. I’m guessing there is a reason for this, perhaps from a design or technical standpoint, but it makes for villages that can appear messy with horizontal buildings placed on vertical paths, and visa versa. The camera can be unwieldy at times, snapping onto mountain faces with a fixed centre point, but is manageable.
Laysara: Summit Kingdom puts a unique spin on the settlement building formula, being slower paced and more methodical, while turning its attention to micromanaging trade routes rather than matters such as crime and unemployment. It’s a real slow burner (achievement/trophy hunters need not apply) but by tearing up the rulebook set by Sim City all those years ago, it presents a new and fresh experience to become engrossed in. Some of its ideas could be better explained – early on, even the means of making money is a mystery – but it isn’t too complex overall, and I wasn’t left thinking this should have remained on PC. There are steep hills to overcome here, sure, but there are plenty of picturesque views to take in along the way.
Quite OK Games’ Laysara: Summit Kingdom is out now PS5, PS4, Xbox Series, Xbox One, Switch and PC.