By Chris Picone, 27 October, 2025

Farthest Frontier's been kicking around in Early Access for a long time now, and it's already acclaimed - but as of a few days ago, the 1.0 full release is finally upon us!  As you can imagine after ~3 years in EA, the game's in pretty damn good shape.  If you've already played it, the update introduces a re-worked tech tree, more buildings and decorations, bridges (!), civil management policies, and all the usual visual upgrades - improved animations, that sort of thing. If you haven't played, read on!

Aesthetics

Farthest Frontier's a bloody gorgeous game.  The scenery's absolutely gorgeous.  Of course you can zoom right out to view your sprawling city and surrounding landscape, and zoom right in close enough to watch your peasants in action.  And there's tons of detail too - aside from the usual chopping at trees and pushing wheelbarrows around you can even watch them washing and hanging out laundry when they're idling in their houses. And of course the game's full of ambient sounds to bring it all to life. 

Gameplay

In many ways, Farthest Frontier is similar to any other modern city builder, and it does everything expected well, but there are a few gameplay elements it leans heavily into and does better than many of its competitors.  Like any other game in the genre, there's a simultaneous timekeeping system that sees both your villagers play out each day individually while also fast-forwarding through months and years. This is important because Farthest Frontier places a much heavier emphasis on the seasons than most similar games, to the point where you need to consider things like collecting firewood to survive hard winters and crop rotation through the year.  Sustainability also plays a bigger part than usual for the genre.  Some of the best ways to solve your food problems in the early game are fishing and hunting but if you rely on these methods too heavily as your population grows, you'll soon find that you're depleting those resources faster than they can replenish, and that's bad news. Likewise, you will need a huge amount of timber for both building and firewood but as you cut down trees you will need to travel further and further to find more. This can introduce you to new problems as you may bump into raiders or enemy armies if you stray too far from home. 

Verdict

I think most city builder fans will enjoy Farthest Frontier.  It has a lot to offer both in terms of just being a well constructed game but also in terms of some of the unusual challenges it throws at you.  My one word of warning is that you really need to settle in for the long haul.  It can be a slow, grindy experience, even in 3x speed, although things do start to snowball as you progress. 

Links: 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1044720/Farthest_Frontier/