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Choose Farthest Frontier if you want hands-on crop planning, a broad building progression and documented options to disable some survival threats. Choose Banished if you want a focused village-survival game where villagers’ lives, work and needs are at the center. Both involve producing food, managing a settlement and preparing for danger; the difference is which management loop you want to spend more time with.
How the two games approach settlement survival
Both games ask you to turn a vulnerable settlement into a place that can sustain itself. Farthest Frontier describes a loop of gathering, hunting, fishing, farming, making goods and trading while coping with the environment and outside threats. Banished centers on building, assigning labor, managing inventory, crafting and trading, while feeding the town through hunting, gathering and farming and preparing for winter and disasters. (Farthest Frontier on Steam; Banished official game page)
That makes this less a choice between a farming game and a non-farming game than a choice between two emphases: Farthest Frontier spells out more crop and production planning, while Banished puts the life cycle and survival of its townspeople prominently in the foreground.
Where Farthest Frontier stands out
Crop rotation is an explicit management system
Crate Entertainment’s feature guide lists 12 crops and configurable crop rotations. The point is not simply to plant food: players are expected to manage soil fertility and account for heat, frost and crop disease. If planning fields and adjusting what grows over time sounds appealing, this is the clearer fit. These are developer-listed features, not an independent measure of how challenging or enjoyable the farming is. (Farthest Frontier: Major Features)
#1 Best Overall
- CLASSIC TILE PLACEMENT: Draw and place landscape tiles to build cities, roads, fields, and monasteries, then deploy meeples as knights, farmers, and monks to claim features and score points.
- STRATEGY FOR ADULTS AND FAMILIES: Carcassonne pairs intuitive rules with meaningful decisions, making it accessible for ages 7+ while still engaging experienced adult board gamers.
- REPLAYABLE MEDIEVAL ADVENTURE: Randomized tile draws create a different landscape every game, bringing fresh puzzles and competitive fun to family game night and casual group play.
- TWO TO FIVE PLAYERS: Built for 2-5 players with an average 35-minute playtime, Carcassonne fits weeknight sessions at home, family gatherings on vacation, and adult board game evenings.
- INCLUDES MINI-EXPANSIONS: The base game comes with The Abbot and The River mini-expansions in the box, adding variety to the classic Carcassonne board game experience from the start.
More published building breadth and adjustable threats
The same guide lists more than 180 buildings, spanning development from a fledgling settlement toward a city. It also describes adjustable difficulty, including the option to turn off invaders and disease for a more tranquil experience. That makes Farthest Frontier a strong choice if you want a larger documented building catalogue or prefer to tune those particular threats. The available feature description does not establish equivalent toggles in Banished, so this is a documented distinction, not proof that every aspect of one game is more customizable.
Workshop support
Farthest Frontier’s Steam listing and feature guide mention Steam Workshop support. That is useful if access to Workshop integration matters to you; it does not, on its own, establish that its mod community is larger or better than Banished’s. (Farthest Frontier on Steam)
Rank #2
- Strategy game for the whole family
- Beginners to advanced players
- High level of interaction
- Easy to learn
- Playing time: 45 minutes
Where Banished stands out
The villagers are the settlement’s central resource
Banished explicitly frames townspeople as the primary resource. They are born, grow older, work, have children and die, and the town’s growth depends on keeping them healthy, happy and fed. That makes population management more than a workforce calculation: the people who produce and consume goods also shape whether the settlement can grow. (Banished on Steam)
A tightly focused village-survival premise
Shining Rock Software’s description begins with exiled travelers starting over with little more than their clothes and a supply cart. Its practical instruction is to “Keep an eye on workers and inventory to make sure your town has what it needs.” If you want a game whose central challenge is keeping a village supplied and functioning through labor, inventory, food and winter preparation, Banished makes that premise especially clear. (Banished official game page)
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Rank #3
- Build your own castle with towers, walls, and characters!
- The higher you build, the more steps your noble takes in pursuit of gold coins.
- But as each tile must match the numbers it is built on, the construction gets more and more challenging.
- Will you be the first to collect 7 gold?
Feature-by-feature comparison
| What matters | Farthest Frontier | Banished |
|---|---|---|
| Food and survival | Gathering, hunting, fishing, farming, production, trade, environmental survival and outside threats, according to its Steam description. | Food from hunting, gathering and farming; labor, inventory, crafting, trade, winter and disasters feature in the official description. |
| Farming detail | Developer guide lists 12 crops, rotations, soil fertility concerns, weather effects and disease prevention. | Farming is listed as one food source alongside hunting and gathering; the official description does not give a comparable crop count or rotation detail. |
| Published building count | More than 180 buildings, according to Crate Entertainment’s feature guide. | Not stated on the official game page. |
| Threat options | Developer guide says difficulty settings can turn off invaders and disease. | The official page mentions winter and disasters; it does not establish equivalent toggles. |
| Population emphasis | People are protected, guided and involved in production, consumption and fighting, according to the Steam description. | Townspeople are called the primary resource; they age, work, form families and die. |
| Mod support | Steam Workshop support is named in the store listing and official feature guide. | Workshop and mod-kit activity appears in Steam community material, but the official game page does not make it a central feature. This is not a comparison of mod-library size or quality. |
Which one should you play?
- Pick Farthest Frontier if crop rotation, soil fertility and weather-related field planning are major attractions.
- Pick Farthest Frontier if you want a documented catalogue of more than 180 buildings or the option to disable invaders and disease.
- Pick Banished if managing a village’s workers, inventory, food supply and preparations for winter is the appeal.
- Pick Banished if you want population change—aging, work and family formation—to be an especially visible part of the settlement’s story.
- Consider either if you want a survival-focused medieval settlement builder with food production and trade; both descriptions support that broad fit.
Release context
Banished released on February 18, 2014, according to its Steam listing. Farthest Frontier left Early Access and launched version 1.0 on October 23, 2025, as announced by Crate Entertainment. Those dates establish their release histories, not their current update status. (Banished on Steam; Crate Entertainment’s version 1.0 announcement)
Quick Recap
Best Value
- In the 2nd Expansion for the award-winning family game Carcassonne (Game of the Year 2001), merchants visit the city
- Through city fences, you will receive valuable merchandise to get extra points at the end of the game; send your pigs down the grasslands to enjoy them early and thus increase the yields of your female farmers; speed up the construction of your streets and towns with the builder - and triggers epic double trains with the right timing
- Visual refresh and content: the extension shines brightly and captivates with its modern art and graphics; the cover illustrations of the 10 extensions together form a stunning panorama
- Each expansion contains a different river plate and is fully compatible with existing games and expansions
- 7+ years, 45 minutes, 2-6 players, author: Klaus-Jürgen Wrede, German edition
Rank #4
- Unique family-oriented gaming experience with simple rules and short playing time
- Shape your city from settlement to industrialization
- A competitive Legacy Game where a player's choices made during one game carry over into the next game
- Play through 24 different episodes, or flip the game board over for a replayable experience
- Developed by world-renowned game designer Reiner Knizia, winner of a Spiel des Jahres
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