I’m itching to play something like Cities Skylines, but also something that isn’t just about growing and growing, rather building within certain (spatial?) limitations and/or solving problems or something. I hope this isn’t a contradiction, but I’d also like if it had a bit more focus on individual buildings and livability rather than optimizing car traffic, if that makes any sense. I guess i’m looking for something that is a bit more than just a city sculpting sandbox, but less than a full blown metropolis-society-simulator.
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I’ve been enjoying The Crust quite a bit. Timberborn. Frostpunk etc
Not sure if they fit your needs though
Timberborn looks great!
Oxygen not included, timberborn, anno.
Others have mentioned Tropico, but I like talking about Tropico so I recommend Tropico 6. Campaign missions have unique goals and conditions that can lead to interesting decisions, like the one where you can’t build houses, everyone lives in shacks, and I ended up going a dictator direction just to keep the populace in line.
Traffic is easy to manage, just don’t make four-way intersections (seriously, that’s it). Building choice and location are important because citizens have to travel from one place to another, so even if your clinic isn’t overwhelmed it may be good to build another far away so citizens don’t have to travel across the entire island to get there.
I could go on for a while, but it’s good, and Tropico 7 is coming out later this year so Tropico 6 will likely be pretty cheap next time it goes on sale.
Against the storm sounds like a perfect fit. It’s in a fantasy setting though, so it’s quite different from Cities Skylines.
The idea is that you build a village, collect resources, and try to survive until you complete objectives. Once you’re done, you earn some permanent progression and move on to the next area to build. Each zone has its own challenges and randomly generated resources.
against the storm isn’t fun for me idky I’m always not understanding why stuff isn’t working and then missing some specific resource and losing. i really want to enjoy it though. i found that timberborn is kinda a level-based city builder as long as you decide when you’ve “won”
When you select a place for a new settlement, you can look at which ressources are expected to be produced there based on the biome. Different biomes will have different ressources, some common and others absent entirely.
As in many roguelikes, you can’t play assuming you’ll get a perfect build with what you have, in this case meaning the best resource transformation buildings. When you’re unlocking a building blueprint in a run, never choose based on things you don’t have yet, try to work with what you already have instead even if it’s not optimal. For example, choosing a bakery that produces max quality bread when you don’t have wheat or the building to harvest wheat might put you in a bad spot, where you’re hoping for a resource that never comes.
After a few games you start unlocking more buildings and permanent bonuses which makes the game a lot easier, sometimes the seasoned players forget how tough it gets in a fresh new game.
It takes some getting used to, you can play the easy difficulties until you wrap your head around the mechanics. Once I got past the difficulty curve though I found it very fun.
I was super excited to try it out, and after spending about a week binging it, I came to the conclusion I didn’t have fun playing it.
It did have a bit of a learning curve but once it clicks, you’re breezing along. It just didn’t fill my city building void.
Ooh, sounds great, thanks!
Awesome game
Pharaoh and Cleopatra are great
Not as good as Against the Storm, but I like how Tropico games are more about building through challenges than just building.
Tropico 5 is the only one I’ve played and that was a right laugh
They all are. It’s great stuff.
banished is real good. it’s a medieval village sim. it’s also 6.50€ right now.
i see everyone recommending against the storm, banished is basically “what if that game was colorless, depressing and brutally realistic”.
Appreciate you asking this question. I’ve been on the hunt for something like this. I was thinking back to how much fun warcraft three was, which while it was a base builder, it’s basically the same principle. But different levels, an actual story, etc…
A city builder or village builder following that track would be killer.
Oh man. I miss Warcraft games before WoW
Another +1 for Against the Storm. Timberborn also released recently and I lost a good bit of time to it. Timberborn has the sandbox build with multiple layers, and problem solving since you have to control water flow during three seasons (Wet, drought, tainted water) and manage resources.
I second your Timberborn recommendation. I think I heard one YouTuber describe it as “Banished, but beavers” and I found that to be relatively accurate. I also enjoy the vertical building aspect—it really mixes up what you can do with different spaces.
You’re looking for Against the Storm.
It’s a rogue-like city-builder with goals that you meet and complete in order to move on to the next set of unique challenges. You’ll be faced with unique sets of challenges per biome, unique race-based sets of needs, and times events that need to be dealt with or their consequences will have to be mitigated.
Against the Storm?
Edit: lol, seems like everyone has suggested this one
Terra Nil might be up your alley- You start in a barren landscape, you build structures to restore life to the earth. Once the land is healthy, you pack up all of your buildings, and fly them up to your spaceship, to try the same thing with the next area. It’s more of a “puzzle” game than a sim, but it’s fun, relaxed, and moves through different levels as they introduce new tech for different restoration projects.
Laysara: Summit Kingdom has a few unique twists on city building that sound similar to what you’re looking for.
Looks good as well! Lots of great reccs in this thread haha
If you are OK with historical city-builders, the campaigns for Caesar III, Pharaoh and Zeus/Poseidon, are largely level-focused. They are available on GOG and there is a really nice modern engine for Caesar III.
Based on feedback and discussion that I’ve seen (I haven’t tried it yet), Microlandia seems to mostly fit your request in a modern city-builder:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4094120/Microlandia/
Might also be worth checking out Urbek City Builder (also modern).
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1411740/Urbek_City_Builder/
I have played UCB and it does have a bigger focus on neighbourhoods and types of commercial/industrial areas. I felt that the tutorial makes it seem like it’s not a city-builder, it very much is and with it’s own game design approach.
You can play it as a Metropolis city-builder too, but there can be some annoyances with this approach (I had to design blocks for certain things for space efficiency, some blocks are available in the guide section on steam).
You might like Frostpunk
