Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic
Given 9,221 hours with W&R:SR, it seems I like this game. Right now, I’m enjoying the 1908 early start and the steam-powered vehicles from the mods. I recommend the game.
– Real player with 9682.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Building Games.
After almost 1000h in game, I can say it’s undisputed champion among city builders. And it’s still EA.
Currently, the main drawbacks, especially in comparison to competition:
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lack of comprehensive tutorial or training missions to explain game mechanics in painless way - beginners need to browse forum or ask its users for help
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some bugs,
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graphics are rather inferior, comparing to CS - it’s not really a game to make beautiful screenshots,
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certain mechanics could be reworked.
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probably game will need more optimalisation before you’ll be able to build 100k citizen metropoly
– Real player with 970.8 hrs in game
Before We Leave
I have personally been enjoying this game very much! I appreciate that I don’t need to worry about war or combat, nor must I consider the monetary value of my peoples (ie. slavery). It still can be challenging, and I was pleasantly surprised by the little challenges it throws your way (ex: the gremlins!). The aesthetic is very pleasing, and it isn’t very demanding graphically. I would definitely recommend this! I’ve written out some of my experiences and some tips! ♥
- The Tutorial -
Doing the tutorial is a good idea and I do recommend it, but the tutorial will take you through pretty much the whole game, or at least deep into the mid-game – this could literally be hours and hours lol. But I would suggest stopping after you have started to explore your second planet., then proceed to your own games.
– Real player with 59.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Relaxing Games.
At the time writing this I have little over 10 hours in the game! You tell me what I end up getting to :)
Check out this Let’s Play for More Visual and Audio Experince!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOdcC0ErbSc&list=PLjMDVXkLIQ3772ETUImsVXS_1AwZFdcKw
Before we leave is one the best games I have played in a long time for getting right into the game and understanding what to do. It’s not because it’s easy or simple. It’s because of the amazing job they did with the tutorial system and explaining the basics of the game.
– Real player with 31.8 hrs in game
Citystate II
Don’t buy.
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Unfinished game
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Bugs
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The “realistic economics” in this game leaves a lot to be desired and calling it realistic is laughable.
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The dev has been MIA since early October (within weeks of release).
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Developer is either a huckster or lacks any sense of professionalism.
The misrepresentation that you are buying a finished game on the store page and the fact that the developer just disappeared makes me feel as if I’ve been had. The excuse on discord by some person who is not the dev is that he has a family and he takes long breaks. Make of that what you will, but I will not buy another product from this developer.
– Real player with 65.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Sandbox Games.
You simply can’t play more extreme ideologies anymore (Left & Right) which Is kinda where alot of the fun came from. Everything needs to be balanced. It’s okay but at some point you’ll run into bugs that remove zones not just buildings and tank everything. Tbh it gets boring after it happens a few times. Oh and after many hrs my political leaning instantly went from 47-53 to 100-0 to the left which sent everyone into a riot and the whole city was destroyed. That right there is a game breaking bug. I’d honestly say buy the first one. I’m not hating btw, I actually really wanted to like it.
– Real player with 25.3 hrs in game
Reactor Tech²
A game about watching number rise. But what is life, if not watching the year count rise and your bank account dwindle?
Now, I’ve just finished my first “complete” playthrough and there are a few things I want to talk about. Let’s start with the most important: most of the negative reviews are old. The UI isn’t perfect but it’s not bad and same with the tutorial. In my entire playtime I’ve only found what I think was a bug once.
The artstyle, music and sound effects are gorgeous.
DO NOT buy this game expecting something similar to a city/base builder. Actually you build very few structures, and spend most of the time upgrading your existing buildings, changing the engineering cells and min-maxing the different configurations.
– Real player with 17.0 hrs in game
It has the marks of an interesting, fun little game, however…
Be warned:
it’s not really release-ready, regardless what they claim.
The game is full of annoying bugs and overlooked illogical elements, the controls are inconsistent, the whole thing is sorely in need of a UI/UX overview, it’s hard to navigate, hard to sort out what’s what.
Currently expansion is impossible, due to a heating issue.
And in my personal opinion it does not look good.
I’ll persist, maybe it’ll be a good game; currently it’s a beta, that’s not very playable.
– Real player with 13.4 hrs in game
乡间
Very nice game, much potential
– Real player with 2.4 hrs in game
Although this title does not support English, its playable to an extent thanks to its general city building concepts. Has promise, looking forward to if the dev adds support for English.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
Cities XXL
So right off the bat, Cities XXL is not substantially different from its predecessor (Cities XL). In my time with the game so far, I’ve only encountered two new features. Everything else, right down to the buildings available and the game interface, are unchanged. XXL hardly deserves to be called a sequel or sold as a new game. It’s a content patch, and not even a very good one.
When I first started playing Cities XL a few years ago, I was really impressed with it. I hadn’t really played any modern city-builder games since SimCity 4, and so the jump to 3-D graphics, the ability to draw curved roads, and the sheer size of the maps was enough to win me over initially. But as I’ve played the game more, it’s limitations and weaknesses have become much more apparent and hard to ignore. This is especially true in the game’s interface and controls, which are very rough and full of nagging annoyances. When compared to the much smoother and organic controls of games like Tropico 5, the modern [disastrous] SimCity reboot, and even older games like Caesar IV, Cities XL really starts to look bad.
– Real player with 76.8 hrs in game
IMPORTANT! ONLY RECOMMENDED if this is your first Cities XL title…
This part of the review is ONLY for players new to the franchise! If you DO already have a Cities XL game - skip to the second section below - or tl;dr - it’s a rip-off patch for a game you already own.
So, if you don’t already own a Cities XL game, then this game offers a lot of fun and creativity, and is arguably THE best city-creator on the PC scene at the time of writing. Unless a new offering improves on the genre, then this is the title you want, even though it’s not perfect.
– Real player with 75.4 hrs in game
City Country
City Country is a city-building game where you manage resources, population, knowledge. You control various sectors of the city like education, medicine, culture, tourism, trading.
You start at some point into the map. Citizens will equally be separated into Men/Women and Farmers/Workers. The population will be separated into 4 different categories: Farmers, Workers, Engineers, and Academics. Any population category will work on different buildings and will have a unique family house.
You have the option to produce whatever you like, and what You don’t like, you can buy it at any time, or sign a contract for a later system that automatically buys the product from another city immediately. After that, you should sell part of the production so you can take some fresh money into the city.
As a governor of the city, your job is to grow your city, improve your resource incomes, sell your resources and take fresh money, make your city better for life, and manage city sectors as best as you can.
Government Sectors
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Trading: - Sign a contract with other cities (AI) when you have less than N amount of resource, buy M amount of that resource, and vice versa.
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Education: - Decide what to learn, how long, and when to start people’s education.
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Medicine: - Improve the health of the citizens, and their lives.
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Culture: - Improve the knowledge of the citizens. And be a more attractive city for foreign peoples.
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Tourism: - Make money when you attract tourists. Build Hotels. Some of them can decide to continue to live in your city.
Develop Your City
Knowledge (Technology)
Investigate new products for future production and unlock new buildings.
Production (Resource Management)
Choose what to produce from the Factory profile.
Nebuchadnezzar
While inspired by the classic Impressions city building games, it would be inaccurate to say Nebuchadnezzar is just a reskin of Pharaoh. The game has its own mechanics that are distinctive such as the beautifully worded caravanserai or the planned market/bazaar walking routes (as opposed to the annoying random wandering of sellers in the Impressions games that required the use of roadblocks). There are a ton of resources in the game and the tiered housing levels have an interesting intertwined dependence on how these resources can be collected.
– Real player with 62.0 hrs in game
Probably the closest any game has come to recapturing the old Impressions City builders (Pharaoh, Zeus, Emperor, Caesar etc).
This type of city-builder game focuses very heavily on production and distribution of goods to supply your population, where a mistake in logistics management can cause the whole city to come crashing down. If you’re expecting something more like a SimCity or Cities: Skylines, you might end up frustrated with the strong presence of logistics management aspects and harsh penalties for making mistakes in that department.
– Real player with 61.4 hrs in game
North Frontier
North Frontier is an exciting real-time strategy game where you have to explore new lands, build cities in harsh conditions and develop them! Mine for minerals, build factories, institutes and get rewards for completing your plan!
EXPLORE TERRITORIES! Build in the tundra, on an island, in the middle of an snowy desert or even on ice floe! Show the weather who’s in charge!
BUILD FACTORIES! Pathetic ecologists say that you need to protect nature? Prove to them that they are wrong. Extract minerals, build hazardous factories and of course do not forget about a nuclear power plant there will be no consequences!
Cultures - 8th Wonder of the World
It’s still addictive as Northland; but it’s a step down. The UI is worse, you can’t “give extras to everyone” anymore; instead the game only lets you toggle a switch for giving equipment to new civilians. The weaksauce carrying/merchantry system is not improved one bit; workers lose their carriages the moment you right-click somewhere, there is no easy way to stop unload orders and you gotta micromanage all carrying processes etc. And that’s bad because this game has a lotta “carry goods” missions.
– Real player with 93.9 hrs in game
Update (original review removed, rewritten here): Would I love this game this much if it didn’t have reminiscent value to me? Probably not. Would I still, if made to play it, fall in love with the characters, be drawn into the simple yet intricate challenge of village growth and conquering objectives, and be awed at how a 2003 game looks and functions so well even today? Abso-viking-lutely.
These games are worth the dollars, but currently on sale, there has never been a better way to spend $1 in all of Steam, ever. Kick back and enjoy this beautiful world.
– Real player with 66.8 hrs in game