When we look at the most popular games on livestreaming platforms, we quickly come across titles that capture the attention of the player and their audience through moments of action, but don’t underestimate the power of relaxing games, like New Cycle, in your broadcast.

Relax and rebuild the planet

The premise of New Cycle is simple: rebuild the planet after an apocalyptic event. At the moment, the title is in Early Access, so there are some limitations in its gameplay options, but it is still quite complex in its gameplay.

Yes, even though it has a survival tone to it, the game is very relaxing, indeed.

When starting out, everything may seem too easy. You build facilities to improve the lives of your small but growing population.

This calm and relaxing atmosphere here opens up large windows of possibilities to talk to your audience, not only about game decisions, but about various subjects. And that’s the positive point of relaxing games like New Cycle: they’re almost like a background for good conversations between the streamer and their audience.

But make no mistake: as you advance through the technological ages and unlock new facilities, your population also grows and demand for it starts to become a little more worrying.

Here, being aware of the resources of your growing city is the key to success and the larger your population and your city get, the more complicated managing your resources can become.

The objective is to keep your population alive and developing until the end of days (and if possible even beyond them). And that end will come, rest assured.

Explore the world of New Cycle

Obtaining resources to help develop your population and city is not restricted to just the map you receive at the beginning of the game, you can also explore the post-apocalyptic world of New Cycle.

Despite this, the player does not have access to other regions to build as in their initial region. While this is not necessarily a negative thing, once the player reaches the construction limits of their land, the game is over, we can say.

It’s very interesting to watch the growth of your city and its population and this ends up being addictive for the player, especially for those who like simulation/construction games like New Cycle. And with that, you’ll always want to come back to the game to continue evolving your post-apocalyptic civilization. Until a moment when there is no more news to conquer.

The population also adds a certain tone of challenge in New Cycle, as the player can often come across missions proposed by their people to improve the development of their city.

These missions are quite interesting to complete, but for the most part, you don’t directly observe a change in your city or even gain any direct rewards for completing the challenges.

The difference is in the details

While the premise of New Cycle is not necessarily new in the gaming world, after all, we have already seen several post-apocalyptic city-building and simulation titles out there. But here, the difference is in the details.

With very beautiful graphics, New Cycle is really pleasing to the eye. Everything that happens on screen is well thought out: a tree that is cut down to obtain wood does not disappear in a simple animation, it stays there on the map until it is fully used. Although this is not something exceptional, it is interesting to see that the developers paid attention to details in this game.

The design here is nothing new either: a steampunk vibe with survival touches. It is very interesting to see the details of each of the buildings in New Cycle, from all the eras of technology involved in the game.

As a relaxing game with no more challenging modes, New Cycle may not necessarily be your first option for a livestream, but if you have a loyal audience, this game could be the perfect background for a chat session with your chat.

New Cycle

PC (2024)

Performance

Streamability

Audience Engagement

Replayability

Summary

As a relaxing game, New Cycle can be the perfect background for a chatty livestream with your audience. But make no mistake, there is a challenging tone to this game that may require a lot of attention and management skills from the player.

3.5