Banished similar games & best alternatives

Banished

PC (Microsoft Windows) • 2014

Should you play it?

In this city-building strategy game, you control a group of exiled travelers who decide to restart their lives in a new land. They have only the clothes on their backs and a cart filled with supplies from their homeland. The townspeople of Banished are your primary resource.

What works

  • Challenging and deep resource management
  • Immersive and relaxing atmosphere
  • Random map generation
  • Active modding community
  • Long play sessions and replayability

Things to keep in mind

  • Limited building variety
  • No multiplayer or social features
  • Lack of narrative or campaign
  • Performance issues at large population
  • Some repetitiveness after extended play

What to play next

Top picks

Games that feels the closest overall

  • Settlement Survival

  • Oxygen

  • Farthest Frontier

  • Endzone - A World Apart

  • New Cycle

  • Oxygen: First Breath

More violent

Games that feels like Banished but with more combat and destruction

  • Blitzkrieg Anthology

  • Hegemony III: Clash of the Ancients

  • Becastled

  • Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

  • Stronghold: Definitive Edition

  • Land of the Vikings

More story-driven

Games that feels like Banished but with deeper narrative immersion

  • Pompeii: The Legacy

  • Pax Augusta

  • Whiskerwood

  • Outlanders

  • Thriving City: Song

  • Pharaoh™: A New Era

Choose your own criteria ->

Similarity map

How to use the graph

Similarity map

Each dot is a game placed from its motivation profile relative to this page’s game. Direction shows which motivation differs most; distance along that axis shows how large the gap is.

  • Purple star: this page’s game at the centre — everything is relative to it.
  • Direction: each axis is a main motivational difference vs this game (e.g. more / less competitive).
  • Distance on an axis: how large that difference is (ring scales show +/− points).
  • Coloured chips: click to highlight games that mainly differ on that motivation; click again to reset.
  • Dotted line: link between this page’s game and the one selected for comparison.
  • Hover a dot to preview that game in the panel on the right; click to keep that comparison.
  • Scroll or double-click the chart to zoom.

How to read the map This is a polar difference map: direction = which motivation differs, and distance = how much (same units as the sidebar deltas).

Banished: Broadly representative of its motivational profile, with a few distinct shifts. Motivations that often define this kind of title include Violence, Fantasy, Story, Thrill. Here, the score leans higher than usual among comparable games on Survival, Leadership, Thrill.

Last update: 03/08/2026