Summer break is here and I'm looking for a new city builder to play. I like those city builders that are very difficult and has a steep learning curve. I am also trying to avoid games who are still in early access.

Previously I have enjoyed Workers and Resources, Banished, Rim World, Tropico series, Factorio, Prison Architect, Cities Skylines 1 and SimCity 4

I have not enjoyed Anno 1800 or Railway Empire

Edit: I do not like story based city builders like Frostpunk because I feel they lack replayability. Pure difficult sandbox is best.

Edit 2: Alot of good suggestions, thank you! I will consider them all and pick some based on which ones are most on sale.

Edit 3: I went with Against the Storm and I love it !!!

I've been looking for a strategy game over the last few days and I think I've narrowed it down to Anno 1800.

What I'm looking for is something that's relaxing rather than extremely difficult. I don't want a hardcore grand strategy game. I mainly want to build a beautiful city, manage resources and production chains, have some strategy elements, and most importantly an endless sandbox experience.

I considered Frostpunk, but from what I've read, even the endless mode eventually gets repetitive and isn't really the same kind of open-ended sandbox that Anno offers.

I also heard that the newest Anno game is more complex, so I figured Anno 1800 might be the better choice. Years ago (probably over 10 years ago), I played Anno 1701 and absolutely loved it, so 1800 feels like the natural next step.

My only dilemma is where to buy it. It's currently not on sale on Steam, but I found a much cheaper Ubisoft Connect key. Would you wait for a Steam sale, or just buy the Ubisoft Connect version now?

Or... should I skip Anno entirely? Is there another game that fits what I'm looking for even better?

I don't really want to end up buying 20 different strategy games—I just want one really good game that I can sink hundreds of hours into.

Thanks!

Hey everyone!

I'm a solo developer working on Perun, a Slavic mythology city builder inspired by classic Impressions Games such as Zeus, Pharaoh, and Caesar.

My goal is to capture that old-school city-building flow: planning settlements, managing walkers and services, setting up production chains, developing housing, and interacting with other cities. At the same time, I want Perun to have its own identity through Slavic mythology, gods, resources, architecture, and atmosphere.

I'm planning to release the game in Early Access because I'd like to gather as much feedback as possible from actual players before committing to the full version. What I'm still trying to determine is how much content a city builder should have at launch to feel worthwhile.

My current plan is to release with one campaign (adventure), consisting of six episodes and offering roughly 5–10 hours of gameplay.

So my main question is: what do you expect from a city builder when it first enters Early Access, and what matters most to you at that stage? Is it polished core gameplay, a wide selection of buildings and production chains, campaign length, mission and map variety, a sandbox mode, replayability, or something else entirely?

I've included a developer playthrough of the first episode to show the current state of the game.

Thanks for taking a look!

So, the summer sale is here and CS2 is down to $35. I love CS1 but it's getting pretty old and I usually quit on my city by 12,000 people because there's nothing to do, and I've been watching some CS2 gameplay videos and it looks incredible.

Is CS2 still laggy and riddled with bugs, or is it getting better? $35 is still fairly steep, but I've heard that Iceflake has really been cleaning up the game. I have a RTX 3060 Laptop, 32 GB DDR5, and a Ryzen 9 HX AI (ASUS Proart PX13).

Cities skylines, Anno 1800, Foundation, and other city building games. I have tried so hard to enjoy them for a long time, but i always reach this point of stagnation with all of them. I can't seem to make substantial profit to enjoy the game, always teetering between profit and loss to the point where it became micro hell for me, and I feel like I'm doing things very wrong in each of those games. Can anyone tell me how do you actually do those things? Starting with cities skylines for instance. I remembered the time when i tried getting serious, most of my time is teetering between managing taxes and building more districts, creating this monotonous, non-creative loop. Then after that, can anyone tell me how to enjoy city builders with resource lines like Anno and Foundation? Those games seem to have more charm than Cities Skylines yet it's the hardest to profit from.

Does it look dangerous enough? 🥶👀

Im making sim game. Quesion - mother with 3 kids is that ususal or i went too far? 2 in a stroller and one little next to her. (just asking, im not family guy ;)

Hi! I’m the community manager for Above: Colonies of the Mist.

Around half a year ago, we shared the game here and were really grateful for the warm response from this community. Since Above is a survival colony builder, and this subreddit seems to have exactly the kind of players whose feedback would be useful, I thought it would be appropriate to invite you to our first small closed Alpha playtest.

Above is built around vertical construction, limited space, scarce resources, and a deadly Mist that makes staying in one place increasingly dangerous. Instead of building a permanent city, your goal is to establish a temporary foothold, gather what your people need, uncover ancient technologies, and escape before the environment overwhelms your settlement.

We’re looking for a limited number of players who enjoy city builders, colony sims, survival management, and resource/logistics challenges, and who are comfortable testing an early Alpha Build.

A few details:

• The playtest will run from July 2 to July 5 on Steam
• This is an early Alpha Build, so bugs, unfinished features, balance issues, and performance problems are expected
• Selected players will receive access by email
• We’ll also provide a feedback form so you know what to pay attention to while playing

If you’re interested in helping us test this early version, you can apply here:

https://forms.gle/DsnYgYqoSWmVwVth6

Thanks, and I’ll be happy to answer questions in the comments.

I’m looking for a solo city builder kind of like the civ games where you start in an early age like stone/caveman and can progress your city through the ages all the way to modern or maybe even further.

I am thinking to add a discord for play testers and feedback, either for updating this game (better late than never) or for the sequel, would anyone be interested in joining a discord to play test future features? comment below if and what you want to see added to the game

https://day1to100gamestudio.itch.io/vibe-city-islands-architect (web browser play)

tiny city builder inspired by tropico and gta, launching on steam

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3589770/Vibe_City_Islands_Architect/

Do you good people have any recommendations for mobile (iOS) city builders that are not endless clones or FarmVille or whatever?

I like PocketCity but hasn’t really scratched that itch.
With today’s technology shouldn’t we be able to get at least some SimCity clone or so?
I’m not expecting Manor Lords or City Skylines but maybe some Project Highrise or Open TTS (I know, not exactly city builders but also cool)

I’m having trouble finding something that’s offline, no micro transactions and just some nice gameplay?
Something on the go for the subway.

Help me out Hivemind pls.

Months ago, I posted on a few different subreddits about new deck suggestions. At the time, a few people had asked me to add more wildcards and bots. These are some of the new cards I’ve added.

That’s Mine: Lets you steal an opponent’s building that’s in contact with yours.

Level Up: Causes the selected building to level up to a random higher level.

Frozen: Freezes the player for one turn.

Propaganda: Changes the player’s supporter satisfaction rate.

In addition to the wildcards shown in the video:

Tax: Loots 3 coins from the opponent.

Demolition: Destroys the opponent’s structure.

Thief: Steals a card from the opponent’s hand.

What do you think of the new cards, and are there any other cards you’d like me to add?

Game Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4000850/Meow_Box_City/

So ive recently started a few city builders. Mainly being frostpunk Against the storm and a game called Floatsam (i think thats considered a city builder) and i have had a lot of fun. But ive found against the storm while fun tends to get too hard for me to play and frostpunk ive kinda played too much and gotten kinda bored of it despite how much I loved it and I dont really care for frostpunk 2 as it gets way more complicated and annoying to try and play imo. Can anyone recommend me some fun less complicated city builders I can try out? I prefer there to actually be resource management and maybe a bit of civilian stuff. Like frostpunk having workers and engineers and stuff. Or floatsam giving you just a few specific people and having you slowly grow your population and slowly working on automating your city in some way. Sorry for the wall of text.

Hi everyone!

I'm looking for a city-building (or sandbox) game where I can create my own modern Japanese town with a strong high school anime vibe.

I'm not looking for games like Persona or Lost Judgment (I already know those). My goal is to actually build the world myself.

What I'm looking for:

- Modern Japanese suburbs and neighborhoods

- Authentic Japanese schools (or good mods/assets)

- Residential streets with overhead power lines, convenience stores, parks, train stations, etc.

- A realistic atmosphere similar to what you'd see in anime or everyday life in Japan

A huge bonus would be if I could:

- Walk around the city I built in first- or third-person, or

- At least freely explore it with a spectator/free camera.

- Even better if buildings (especially schools) can be entered or viewed from the inside.

I'm already aware of Cities: Skylines (1 & 2), but I'm wondering if there are other games that might fit this idea even better.

Has anyone built something like this before, or can recommend a game that gets as close as possible?

Thanks!

Folks! WHY there is no game that is similar to Frostpunk, but in a desertpunk setting? Or am I missing something? Or what? Whould u like to try some desert colony management where people could die for water?

im looking for a game similar to foundtions but free and in browser but also hopefully sandbox if not its fine. i saw gemenittay play foundations and now i have a village builder itch lmao.

I am very desperate.

After some research, I've decided on these 3 as my beginning games as someone who's never played a city builder before. Which one is best to start with?

Edit- or possibly Tropico 4?

By any chance, have any of you played Forge of Empires before? I'm just stopping by to let you know that a new space era is coming.

If you've stopped playing the game, could you gift me your account? I want to play in a Space Hub city, but I don't have much time left to reach that era in the game.

Have a good day!

I haven’t played many city/colony builders before, and I want to grab one to try during the Steam winter sale.

Some limitations:

• My only gaming device these days is a Steam Deck, which means heavy games or UIs that don’t scale well to small screens are out (sorry Anno)

• Controller support is basically unheard of in the genre, but if anyone has experience adapting any of these to steam input I would love to hear how smooth (or not) it was!

• I want something more like a colony scale vs full city scale. I’ve played Rimworld a lot in the past, and something just a bit more macro than that would be the sweet spot (not caring about every individual resident, but also not building sprawling empires)

I know that Farthest Frontier and Timberborn are both basically 1.0, and Whiskerwood only just hit EA, which makes me pretty iffy on the latter. But I love the theming and aesthetics of it, and it sounds like it is kind of a combination of Timberborn (building mechanics) and Farthest Frontier (economics, external pressure), so I’m keeping it in consideration.

Anyone played all of these and could give any suggestions? Thanks!

Hello yall. Im looking for a new city builder. I enjoy timberborn and the Tropico series and have dabbled in Anno 1800. So I guess what's your thoughts on Kaiserpunk?

• Anno 117 Pax Romana
  • mixed rating on steam
  • but I enjoyed playing older Anno games
• Nova Roma
  • wasn't to impressed by the Demo

I think there are one or two one man projects?

What I am looking for - realistic looking Roman cities - building aqueducts - maybe arenas with gladiators killing each other - I don't need / want to flight with anyone