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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Shanty town just came out, sounds like you could like it.
If you’re not adverse to old games, try The Settlers 2. Both the gold edition and the 10 year anniversary edition are good (and despite being called “edition” are rather different).
The Settlers is a slow game, there’s no Zerg rush. It’s also cute and cosy - but with a surprising depth in economics and supply chains.
The campaigns have levels ranging from tiny to elaborate. Challenges range from simply exploring the map, over defending against an enemy, to managing limited supplies.
You may want to give an Anno game a try. Best recent one is Anno 1800, but Anno 2070, 1404 and 2205 are great as well. In these you manage population levels, needs and logistical chains instead of traffic.
Or maybe look into more survivaly city builders like Kingdoms&Castles, Nova Roma, Farthest Frontier or Banished.
If you want more puzzle than city builder then there’s Terrascape or Dorfromantik.
Finally, you may enjoy Railgrade or Train Valley 2 - these are not city builders, but tycoon games with a mission structure, strict confines and puzzle mechanics.
Edit: Oh and forgot Ixion. Absolutely superb story based scifi space station builder. Really really nails the vibe.
Its funny how City Skylines 2 completely destroyed my interest in that kind of a game… I used to like them. But even the meny was lagging in that game. Just completely unpolished turd of a game.
Caesar 3 has different “levels” where you have different cities and have to meet different demands from Rome with them. If you play this game I highly, highly, highly recommend using the Augustus mod from the get-go to have modern quality of life features. Also look up some tutorial videos as there are some counter intuitive mechanics.
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.
Aaaaand now I’m reinstalling Tropico 6 for the umpteenth time. Such a great game and has the best soundtrack of any city builder series.
I haven‘t tried 6, but I loved 4, it‘s my fav city builder ever (altho kinda easily exploited lol) and I liked 3, but I bounced off of 5 so hard that I never gave 6 a chance. I definitely recommend 4 though…
I played some 4, but like 6 a lot more personally. A lot of folks still prefer 4. 5 I think feels like the worst of both worlds or a stepping stone from one to the other. The big thing I like about 6 is that citizens actually have to travel to buildings to work or use services.
In Tropico 4/5, a clinic may have a capacity of 200, so if your population is 350 you need two clinics placed anywhere, which I think makes city planning a little boring because you could just have a clinic corner where you build all your clinics as needed. In 6 a clinic has 8 visitor slots, and when a citizen needs healthcare they claim a slot and physically walk or transit across the map, enter the clinic, then spend some time there before leaving and freeing the slot up. This means you could build a couple clinics far away from each other so citizens have less distance to travel to the nearest clinic, or you could have one in your population center, but invest in making that building high quality so when a citizen leaves with a higher healthcare value it takes longer before they need to visit again, reducing the overall demand and making the visitor slots go farther.
It lends itself toward building actual neighborhoods where they are needed which I like!
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
Oxygen not included, timberborn, anno.
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.
I’ve been enjoying The Crust quite a bit. Timberborn. Frostpunk etc
Not sure if they fit your needs though
Timberborn looks great!
You might like Frostpunk
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.
If you are ok with factory ish games, I really liked the level based nature of “mindustry”. Factorio is more “you have any space you need, nature bends to your will”. And mindustry does some stuff where it’s similar production chain puzzling, but you are hard restricted by space. Which improves the puzzling, because not all solutions will fit everywhere.
Otherwise I would also recommend against the storm.
Workers and Resources Soviet Republic is an automation simulator masquerading as a city builder.
The most played game right now on my Steam account is Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic, an automation game disguised as a city builder, with obscenely detailed mechanics. You don’t buy buildings, you have to have functional construction industries to set them up. You don’t magically draw colored lines to set up bus routes like in SimCity, you have to buy buses at the border one by one and then set up a maintenance schedule. You don’t highlight a dark patch on the map and suddenly have a metallurgy industry like in Cities: Skylines, the fuck you don’t, you need to set up a coal industry and rail transport over the course of thirty odd hours before you start cranking out steel. And that’s without even considering food production, alcoholism management, pollution from the necessary chemicals industry, storage and handling of fresh meat, and of course, citizen loyalty to the Party. It’s a fucking insane game by and for people who probably have to be insane themselves.
I wrote that in a post about my strange relationship with games and media in general in my blog a few weeks ago.
Definitely one of the most distinctly engrossing games I’ve ever played. Seriously. Your cities will be ugly as fuck because it’s genuinely difficult to progress.
Reading your post over again maybe it’s a bit on the extreme side and not what you’re asking for. This is the most extreme city management I’ve ever played. Your sewers have to flow downhill, citizens driving in personal cars is something that happens after like 300 hours, if you sell too much oil too fast you can make oil cheaper on the global market and lose money. I hate it, I’ve wasted my life on it. It’s great I want to play more.
