Timberborn has reached its milestone update 5 and is better than ever thanks to a ton of new updates brought to the game. The fun thing about Timberborn is that it was solid as update 1, but each update has only expanded what the kingdom of beavers can do. If you’ve not really got into Timberborn yet and have a city building scratch, now is the best time ever to get started; the game is more than complete enough now for an overwhelming great time.

Let’s skip over the core game, which is building a city and all of that let’s just put that as “really good.” Let’s just focus on what update 5 brings to the table:

Badwater (Not the City…)

Fans of major city builders like City Skylines are well accustomed to sewage and trying to keep cities pristine. What if the sewage mechanic actually mattered and played deeply into the core game loop? That’s essentially what Badwater accomplishes. “Hooman” waste is reaching the beaver’s land and you’ll need to handle it, otherwise it does what any ecological disaster can do: destroys the land.

The ways to deal with Badwater are numerous and a slew of new water physic-based tools are added to help divert the nasty waste to where you want it, which is where you can form Extract to be used to produce fully adult beavers.

It’s so cool to see the waste mechanic actually playing with the water physics. Playing it, it’s actually REALLY good to have thought around sewage. I can honestly say this is the first time I haven’t tried to take sewage in a city builder and exploit it directly off the map.

Faction Specific Additions

To really game up replay value and add the ability to choose what path you take your city, the factions system continues to receive deep updates. All of the contamination items come for either faction and lots of new faction specific attractions are added. It helps really define an Iron Teeth vs. Foxtail city.

Terraforming

Using Badwater, the beavers can now terraform the land with dynamite. This moves terraforming out from the bot flow and into the beaver flow. It’s useful considering the new need to move Badwater around.

Other Updates

I can’t do justice the number of updates, but I can call out the exciting ones!

• Irrigation System Fixes: It’s no longer as janky and has been polished, removing the Irrigation Tower and letting all the new water movement features do their thing.
• Flipping: You can now switch entrances to buildings around!
• QoL Updates: As mentioned, tons of updates like season banners and map previews on save help make the game more polished.
• Map Editor: You can change the direction of the terrain brush with dedicated buttons now.

If you haven’t played Timberborn and love city building, this is an absolute must have. This update brings a lot of polish to an already overwhelmingly polished EA game.