Perhaps so. It took me many tries to get my first town right. I wasn't building houses, so children weren't moving out and populating - meaning my first several villages consisted of the original villages surviving long into old age and dying off, leaving an empty ghost town. It wasn't a great start to my career as god over the tiny populace.
To make things worse, I couldn't gather enough food. Children died of starvation and from the cold and I couldn't help but feel somewhat responsible. Eventually though, I got my act together and learned the trick to cultivating a successful town and raising a happy and healthy population within the game. The reward is to simply maintain that state throughout gameplay.
The idea is that you start off with a group of exiled travellers to restart their lives in a new land. You start with only the clothes on their backs and a cart of supplies from their homeland. The trials are surviving winters with warmth and food - but cutting down wood to make firewood means reducing the habitat of local game such as deer, resulting in less food. Also, cures for new diseases can only be found from forests which have been around for long enough.
Wandering nomads may wish to join the town, but may introduce new diseases from far off lands. It's up to you to carefully manage the town's populace; who does what job, keep them fed and healthy, and deal with catastrophes such as livestock infections or tornadoes. Success or failure falls down to resource management.
The game was developed by Shining Rock Software, a one man studio consisting of Luke Hodorowicz. He has done a fantastic job in balancing the game. It can only be admired, from my viewpoint, and I recall even Blizzard developers tweeting about the impressive feat.
I've since learned the ropes behind the game and love the idea behind it. It's relaxing to play and you can easily invest hours into it (well, once you learn how to prevent children dying, that's never fun).
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