City-building games offer a wonderful mix of satisfying, relaxing gameplay and interesting strategic challenges. Watching a city grow from a few small buildings to a network of ivory towers is an awesome feeling. There are plenty of these types of games to choose from, each with their own setting, and their own ideas as to what makes the genre fun. Is it about sitting back and watching something grow?
Or is it about carefully managing a group of people to help them survive? This list has a bit of column A and a bit of column B. From chill building games to brutal management sims, these are our favorite city-building games of all time.
10 Farthest Frontier
Farthest Frontier is the newest game on this list. It's a beautiful experience with the potential to become something truly great. The game takes place in the New World; colonial America. It's the player's job to carve out a new settlement in an unfamiliar land. The game is a sort of spiritual successor to Banished and plays similarly.
This game is more on the difficult side when it comes to city builders. Players will tangle with droughts, blights, sickness, bandits, labor shortages, and other realistic challenges for a colonial settlement. There is some difficulty customization for those who prefer a more relaxing experience, but if you're like us, you want to experience frontier life — warts, plagues, and all.
9 Kenshi
In Kenshi, players explore a brutal alien world, starting off as lowly scavengers and eventually ascending to become warlords, or in our case, business magnates. War isn't the only way. The player can instead reap profits from production and trade by building a bustling metropolis in the wastes.
Of course, in Kenshi, war will come to your doorstep whether you want it or not. This adds an extra layer of challenge that makes the base building even more exciting. Location is something else to consider. For example, the Holy Nation will keep you safe, but they're misogynistic and racist. Is it worth it to build a base in their territory? Kenshi earns its spot on this list thanks to its uniqueness; this game has no right to be such a good city builder.
8 Medieval Dynasty
For those who saw Farthest Frontier and thought "This looks great, but seems too challenging for me", give Medieval Dynasty a look. The vibe in this game is thoroughly relaxing. It looks and feels a bit like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but the fighting's been replaced with farming.
Medieval Dynasty drops the player off in a wide-open medieval map with towns and a handful of genuinely interesting NPCs. Then it says "this is yours now; build whatever you want". The only real goals are to build houses, plant crops, and cultivate a life in the beautiful countryside. Some might see it as tedious or slow, but for others, the pace of the game is perfectly chill.
7 Frostpunk
Frostpunk, despite its name, is not a chill game at all. It's by far one of the most challenging games in this genre, crossing over into the territory of survival/strategy games. The player is the leader of an Arctic settlement — one of the final bastions of humanity in an apocalyptic world. The only solace settlers have against the freezing climate is a towering heat core, which they all huddle around.
To survive, players must quickly accrue resources, carefully planning the expansion of their town and deploying additional heat cores. It's not a game for the faint of heart, and first runs are generally doomed to failure. However, for those who can manage to thrive, the experience is thoroughly satisfying.
6 SimCity 4
Next, we have the classic SimCity 4, considered by many to be one of the greatest city-building games of all time. The music is great, the graphics are still pretty good; it still holds up as an amazing game. Those who boot it up looking for a bit of nostalgic fun might actually find themselves glued to the game for hours.
SimCity 4 may very well be the best game in the SimCity franchise. The series had a modern re-release, but it was widely considered a total botch, with fans lambasting its online-only gameplay. Earlier entries are a bit ugly, and the scaled-down spinoffs just don't scratch that itch for a detailed simulation. SimCity 4 is the sweet spot of the series — a near-perfect game for its time.
5 Banished
Banished is another game where the player is tasked with building an early colonial settlement and handling all the challenges that come with it. Released in 2014, Banished is a focused experience centered around careful management and battling the elements.
Building up a town is fairly easy. The game has good tutorial resources, and everything is fairly easy to understand. Watching a city grow is made better by the game's pretty graphics and relaxing soundscape. Then, winter hits, and everything goes to pot. Villagers start getting sick or starving, and suddenly half the town is gone, and you have to rebuild. It's a satisfying gameplay loop — easy to understand, but difficult to overcome. Its only real downfall is its lack of a solid endgame.
4 Prison Architect
While not technically a "city building" game, Prison Architect scratches that same itch for a logistics and management sim. A prison is a lot like a small city if you think about it. Efficiency is key when you're trying to stuff the largest possible number of people into the smallest possible amount of space.
Making it even more like a city builder, Prison Architect has players plan utilities, section off paths, manage employees, and keep their prisoners happy. The game is well-made and fun to play, and perhaps most interestingly, it doesn't hold back. Its depiction of prison is occasionally shocking, calling to mind legitimate issues.
3 Tropico 6
Glistening blue-green waves and golden sunshine meet corruption and political unrest in the Tropico series. Tropico 6, the latest installment in the franchise, is a beautiful city builder that doesn't get too bogged down in complicated mechanics.
Players take on the role of "El Presidente", who is either a benevolent leader or a cruel dictator depending on the player's choices. As a leader, they'll win (or rig) elections, support (or exploit) their populace, and enact useful (or corrupt) laws. Another interesting thing about Tropico is its historical missions. These take place in various eras across the 20th century, such as World War 2 and the Cold War, adding a fun vibe for history nerds.
2 Rimworld
Rimworld is more of a "colony management" game than a true city builder, but like Prison Architect, it's satisfying in the exact same way a city-building game is. The player commands a small squad of colonists on another planet. Over time, the colonists can build up a settlement with food, defenses, recreation, and more.
The game is described by its creators as a "story generator". It's a spot-on description. The stories make the game great. We once had a colonist get maimed by rabid Chihuahuas, causing them to go crazy and stress-eat the colony's entire food supply. Rimworld seems simple at first, but under the surface, an array of mechanics come together to create a deep, infinitely repayable game.
1 Cities: Skylines
Considered by most to be the best city-building game currently available, Cities: Skylines offers a beautiful, deep experience. It feels like the true modern successor to the SimCity franchise. Players build roads and utilities while designating areas for homes, commerce, or industry. As the city grows, features such as mass transportation, healthcare, and law enforcement will need to be added.
And at no point does any of this become too overwhelming. Cities: Skylines has relaxing, easy-to-understand gameplay considering its complexity. When the difficulties do come, the player generally feels equipped to deal with them. It's a remarkably deep game, offering unique challenges and granular customization, but it also has something for those who just want a chill experience. And it's beautiful. Virtual cities have never been so fun to look at.