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Choose Farthest Frontier if you want detailed crop planning, a larger published building roster, and adjustable survival threats. Choose Banished if you want a focused village-survival game where the lives, work, and needs of your townspeople are at the center. Both are settlement-management games built around producing food and keeping a community alive; the difference is what each asks you to manage most closely.
How the two games approach survival
Both games ask you to build a settlement, organize its work, secure food, and prepare for danger. In Farthest Frontier, the loop spans gathering, hunting, fishing, farming, crafting, trade, environmental survival, and outside threats. Banished emphasizes construction, worker assignments, inventory, crafting, trade, food from hunting, gathering and farming, and preparation for winter and disasters.
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That makes this a choice between emphases, not between a game with farming and one without it. Both provide food-producing options; Farthest Frontier gives crop planning a more explicit management role, while Banished makes labor, supplies, and the changing population especially prominent.
Where Farthest Frontier stands out
Crop planning and soil
Crate Entertainment’s official feature guide lists 12 crops and crop rotations. Players plan rotations to maintain soil fertility and address weather effects such as heat and frost, as well as crop disease. If deciding what to plant and how to preserve productive fields is part of the appeal, this is the clearer fit.
#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 variety and adjustable threats
The same developer 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 invaders and disease off for a more tranquil experience. Those are developer-listed features, not independent measures of how much content or challenge the game provides.
Workshop support
Crate Entertainment’s Steam listing mentions Steam Workshop support. That makes mod support a documented part of Farthest Frontier’s offering; the available official descriptions do not establish a fair comparison of the two games’ mod ecosystems.
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
A village built around its people
Banished’s Steam description calls townspeople the settlement’s primary resource: they are born, grow older, work, have children, and die. The community’s health, happiness, and food supply affect its growth. This life cycle gives population management a central place alongside assigning work and tracking inventory.
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Shining Rock Software’s official page frames the game around exiled travelers starting over with little more than their clothes and a supply cart. Its gameplay description points players toward construction, worker assignments, inventory, crafting, trade, food gathering and farming, and preparing for winter and disasters. The page’s practical instruction is to “Keep an eye on workers and inventory to make sure your town has what it needs.”
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?
At a glance
| What matters | Farthest Frontier | Banished |
|---|---|---|
| Core focus | Gathering, hunting, fishing, farming, production, trade, environmental survival, and outside threats (Steam description) | Labor and inventory, crafting, trade, mixed food sources, winter, and disasters (official game page) |
| Farming detail | 12 crops, rotations, soil fertility, weather effects, and disease (Crate Entertainment feature guide) | Farming is one of the listed food options, alongside hunting and gathering (official game page) |
| Published building count | More than 180, according to Crate Entertainment’s feature guide | Not stated on Shining Rock Software’s official game page |
| Threat settings | Developer guide says difficulty can be adjusted, including turning invaders and disease off | Official page mentions winter and disasters; equivalent toggles are not established there |
| Population | People are protected, guided, and involved in production and survival (Steam description) | People age, work, have children, and die; their health, happiness, and food matter to growth (Steam description) |
| Release | Version 1.0 launched October 23, 2025 (Crate Entertainment announcement) | Released February 18, 2014 (Steam listing) |
Which one should you play?
Pick Farthest Frontier if…
- You want crop rotations and soil fertility to be explicit parts of food production.
- You are interested in a published roster of more than 180 buildings and a settlement-to-city progression.
- You want documented options to disable invaders and disease, or Steam Workshop support.
Pick Banished if…
- You prefer a concentrated village-survival premise focused on worker assignments and inventory.
- You want townspeople’s aging, family formation, work, and deaths to be a defining part of managing growth.
- You are drawn to balancing supplies and food while preparing for winter and disasters.
Release context
Farthest Frontier left Early Access and launched version 1.0 on October 23, 2025, according to Crate Entertainment’s announcement. Banished’s Steam listing records its release as February 18, 2014. These dates establish release history; on their own, they do not establish either game’s current update or support status.
This comparison uses the developers’ and Steam’s published descriptions of features. It is not a hands-on assessment of performance, balance, or overall quality.
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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