This thread seems to have been hijacked, and is no longer about Banished specifically but bloated development teams and indie games.
This I really feel the need to comment on. The UI is one of the best things about Banished. It is CLEAN, efficient and well organized. The trouble with many AAA games (I play a lot of them, I think I own over 130 on steam alone) is that when they have a team of 15 guys responsible for the UI alone, they feel they need to do something, so they add all these animations, and transition effects etc. Yes, some of them are nice eye candy but a lot of them end up just being unnecessarily confusing. Many AAA games have pretty UI’s that do very little. I cant count the games I’ve played where I’m always left feeling, why does this game not have the ability to watch X, or open a Y type window. Well to be honest pretty much every game I play I always think of something I would really like to have that the game doesn’t (Banished Included).
Banished’s UI is very well done. It’s simplicity in visual design aids in it’s efficiency. It takes very little time to learn, and allows you to focus on the game, not trying to figure out how to use the UI. AAA games could learn from Banished.