Timberborn is a survival city-building game developed by Mechanistry for PC. It entered early access in 2021. Set After the End, humanity is long gone, leaving the Earth to be inherited by sapient beavers. Droughts are common, so stockpiling resources is essential.
The player is given the option of controlling one of two factions: the traditionalist, agrarian Folktails, whose unique buildings boost the growth of crops, and the progressive, industrialist Iron Teeth, who instead focus on industrial buildings and metal processing.
The game provides examples of:
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: In their artwork, the Folktails wear hats, the Iron Teeth wear sandals, and both wear belts. This doesn't translate to their in-game models, however.
- After the End: The game is set after humanity's extinction, with the beavers now gaining sapience and forming societies and civilizations. The flavour text for the irrigation tower says that water only covers one-third of the Earth's surface now.
- Animal Is the New Man: Humanity is long dead by now and has been replaced by beavers as the new dominant species.
- April Fools' Day: On the 1st of April 2023, Mechanistry posted
a preview of update 4... which consisted of a beaver very slowly walking down a path. - Bamboo Technology: Beaver technology is mostly based on wood as the starting material, even load-bearing machine parts like gears. The flavor text indicates that metallurgy was simply not a thing until the beavers figured out how to use the scrap metal they scavenged from human ruins.
- Busy Beaver: THE GAME. You guide a growing civilization of very industrious semiaquatic rodents.
- Civilized Animal: The beavers have invented agriculture and industry, but they still live near rivers and build everything out of wood.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The Folktails' fur and buildings are light tan, while the Iron Teeth are slate-colored.
- Divergent Character Evolution: The main focus of update 4 was making the Iron Teeth more distinct from the Folktails, so it introduced a slew of exclusive buildings and crops for each faction.
- Endless Game: Your only objective is to make sure your beaver civilisation doesn't die.
- Foil: The two playable factions are the Folktails and Iron Teeth. The Folktails are described as farmers who live in harmony with nature, and the flavour text for their unique buildings references old sayings and songs. The Iron Teeth have a more industrial and military feel to them; their babies are grown in vats, and their default houses are called barracks.
- Furry Reminder: A number of amenity buildings are themed around the various needs that a sapient beaver might experience, such as tooth grindstones. Beavers also enjoy keeping their fur damp, requiring you to either send them to do tasks in the water or install public showers. Also, the most basic form of power supply is a giant hamster wheel.
- Hamster-Wheel Power: One option for supplying power for buildings is a power wheel that a beaver walks on. It's not powerful, but it is constant for as long as your beavers are working, making it Boring, but Practical. In particular, it provides just enough power to keep a lumber mill or other basic powered building humming along when a drought freezes your water wheels.
- Modular Difficulty: In addition to the default easy, normal, and hard difficulties, there's also a custom setting that allows you to adjust the length of droughts, how much resources beavers will consume, and more.
- Punny Name: "Folktails" is a pun on "folk tales".
- Rock of Limitless Water: Every map has "water sources", rocks that constantly spawn water during the temperate season.
- Shout-Out:
- The flavour text for the medical bed begins with "'Tis but a scratch!", a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
- The description for the Gear Workshop contains the phrase "Wooden gear's solid!", a play on Metal Gear Solid.
- Sufficiently Advanced Bamboo Technology: They are capable of building robots. Some of these robots are mostly covered in wood, while the others are entirely metallic.
- Uterine Replicator: The Iron Teeth reproduce using breeding pods, cylindrical vats filled with purple liquid and, when active, a developing beaver, which are kept fueled with water and blueberries. As long as materials are provided, a pod will pop out an infant kit every five days.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: There are a lot of kinds of resources in this game. Logs are the basic resource of the game, and can be refined into planks, gears or paper, which in turn can be refined into other materials. Every building requires one or more log-based material. Additionally, Beavers also need food and water, and there are a lot of crops they can grow; some can be eaten directly, while others need to be prepared first. Each faction has a different way to reproduce; the Folktails have a chance to give birth at night if you have at least two beavers and at least one empty bed, while the Iron Teeth grow babies in vats using a small amount of basic resources. Finally, far away from the starting point on every map, your beavers can scavenge scrap metal from human ruins.
