Where most traditional city management sims task you with keeping empires healthy, Banished takes a much more ... micro approach.

The game is less about building the biggest, most successful city you can build, and more about making sure everyone isn't always starving to death. There's an interesting approach to the idea of "human resources," here — each citizen in your town is a tool for expansion, for cultivation and survival. Each citizen is also a mouth to feed, and I'll be damned if the person that mouth is attached to doesn't die if you only feed it walnuts for its entire, miserable life.

In today's Overview, Polygon's Charlie Hall and I explore the ins and outs of survival in Banished, dooming one batch of settlers in just under a calendar year in the process. If you're new to the game, we don't recommend following our inscrutable city-planning priorities, which involve bringing religion and pumpkins to the masses in equal, overwhelming measure.