Boppio
Boppio is a factory building game that takes inspiration from other games in this genre but does have its own unique flair. The pipe/tube system with its automatic routing feature makes it easy for even beginners of the genre to hop in and start building. As expected for an early access game, there is not a lot of end game content yet, but given the content that already exists it is a steal of a deal and well worth the purchase. I also believe the developer has already planned out and is working towards the next major content patch which is an even bigger bonus.
– Real player with 28.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Early Access Games.
The solo dev (John) behind this game couldn’t care more about this game and his community. He streams development on twitch 5+ days per week and is constantly engaging with the players and responding to all types of feedback.
Gameplay is obviously inspired by factorio, but the replacement of belts with tubes, creates a significant enough gameplay change to really alter the way you think and play and has lots of room to be expanded upon.
As of launch, the game is currently light on content, that said, having been following and playing through this game for the 6 months prior to steam release I can attest to that the rate of development and know a lot gameplay, content and bugfixes will continue to flow over the course of Early Access.
– Real player with 11.5 hrs in game
BoomTown! Deluxe
The game seems great and it has so much potential to be a great game, it’s just a shame the developers couldn’t decide on a game element and instead they dumped way too much mechanics into the game and none of them has the QOL aspects to truly make this a great game. The game sells for a decent price making it a worthy purchase you will get more than your moneys worth of fun and entertainment from this game, so this game is worth it from the get go, i just wished they did more with this game it really has the or in this case had the potential to be something quite unique, so whether you want the game or a +1 in game count or perfect games you have it here with this title.
– Real player with 32.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Management Games.
To preface this, I won this on steamgifts.com.
Boom Town is a fairly simple simulation game where you build a mining town and go mining using explosives. You essentially pick out the spots on the map where you think there is gold set explosives then drive around the map with your truck to pick up the gold. You then take your profits improve your truck, the town, and your explosives.
The concept is pretty simple and as well as the gameplay. There isn’t much of a fail state, it is more of just trying to complete the scenario as quickly as possible. The games mechanics all seem to work properly together and it is a fun relaxing game. There are some issues however, notably that it is a grindy game and the core gameplay isn’t that good to keep you wanting to come back to it time after time.
– Real player with 7.0 hrs in game
Aground
[DEMO CONTENT] One year ago, I came across a very interesting-looking web game called “Aground” and I was fascinated by the idea of playing a game reminiscent of “Minecraft” or “Terraria” directly in my browser. It starts like every other survival game: gather resources, build a shelter, upgrade your equipment and improve your efficiency.
But, the demo for the game had a lot of content to offer, so much so, that it felt like a fully fledged out game! I was really mesmerised when I later on found out that you could build advanced industrial gear, like guns or battery-powered equipment! After a while, I also discovered that there was a magic portion to the game and that it had an island and quest line dedicated to just that, which gave me access to enchanted equipment and unique materials. For a demo, the game has an unbelievably vast amount of content to offer, more than in any other demo I’ve ever seen before, you surely won’t regret giving it a try! ;^)
– Real player with 327.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Exploration Games.
I love this game so much especially since I think it’s an indie game by three people and it’s only $10 as of when I bought it. I’ve already spent 30 hours playing and I’ve restarted a few times because I wanted to optimize my approach. What really got me was the free game on various flash sites and the playable demo which alone is around 7-10 hours depending on gameplay style.
I love the story so far, the graphics appeal to me since I’m an old school gamer (think late 80s, early 90s) where gameplay is much more important than flashy graphics wanting 160 fps. There is a story in it as well which is nice, but doesn’t take away from the game if you’re the sort who doesn’t like reading much, but it’s actually a pretty neat story. One thing I’d like to have the cutscenes as a replayable option in the menu when you unlock them. The music adds to the game and has atmosphere to it.
– Real player with 118.8 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
AstronTycoon2: Ritual
I am playing the game for a while now and really enjoy it. At the first glance there were a lot of things going on so it took a while to understand villagers behaviour.
Game is very well balanced and have good pace. At the begining possibility to play on slow speed allowed me to absorb and admire nice nature and sun rises :)
Later on when making new buildings, harvesting or cutting wood I preferred max speed. At the later stage of the game, I just slightly changing villagers behaviour through economy interface and focusing mainly to build my own Stonehenge.
– Real player with 80.4 hrs in game
I love this game. I found it pretty intuitive, got stuck a few times but I figured it out. The motto of this game is KISS, Keep it simple, stupid. It has a basic recipe that once learnt permeates the game and allows you to progress at a good rate. I didn’t get all the achievements on my first play through and I learnt so much about where I should place things that I absolutely have to try again and I want to start from the beginning because, it’s just that much fun to play!
I can understand why some gamers may be frustrated with the game however I believe that has more to do with the current culture of gaming more so than the game. What I mean is, people are used to games that are tedious and arduous in nature. This game is casual, it has simple mechanics that are straight forward. If you can’t maintain enough herbs, consider that every time they are watered, they grow. If you plant 100 plants then your workers have to water them to full and then chop them, it is inefficient. This is the first lesson of the game. If you cannot figure out that the management style is about efficiency, then you will not enjoy this game.
– Real player with 61.8 hrs in game
EndZ Village
This game is a city builder that’s awkward to navigate and very confusing to play. The tutorial tries to provide some instruction, but it gets stuck on steps or doesn’t say what to do next. My villages seem to stop building and crafting. In the end i gave up playing on day 83 with 310 villages as i could not seem to get anything crafting or building. The zombies would attack but i could not fight back as my supply line has stalled. It looks like the last update this game had was in Dec 2019 so not sure if this game has been abandoned or not. I hope not as its got potential to be a good game. If your thinking about buying this game i would hold off until the game has been updated and they have fixed a few more bugs.
– Real player with 8.9 hrs in game
In this video I take a look at EndZ Village, a pixel art civilisation building game.
I had a really fun time trying this title. It adds the zombie twist to colony building games. It takes some trial and error to learn all the aspects as the tutorial abruptly ended on me but that allowed me to freestyle and figure things out myself which turned out to be fun anyway. You do need to get a few things right or you will just halt your game, like processed wood will run out if you don’t build a wood processing plant early and when you run out you can no longer build a wood processing plant because it requires processed wood to build, but it all adds to the fun and gives some replay. I played some more for my own pleasure, not recorded, and ran into power problems. I wasn’t able to figure that out yet but the game is still progressing and there is always the discussion groups on Steam if you really need to figure something out. I’m sure someone will help.
– Real player with 2.0 hrs in game
Voxel Farm Island
Just another crappy mobile port. With diamonds and time to wait and stuff like that. Game is ugly and very child oriented. Characters are totally shallow AND THEY ALL SPEAK LIKE THIS IN FULL CAPSLOCK.
Never asked for a refund so fast.
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
InfraSpace
Lots of reviewers are throwing out comparable games. The first thing that came to mind for me was Anno 2070 but with actual traffic and less frustration. I loved that game, so this is a plus. I also got a huge whiff of Surviving Mars, again with actual traffic and less frustration. I was not a fan of that game, so I’m happy to say I enjoy InfraSpace more. If you liked either game, you’ll very much like InfraSpace.
If you enjoy solving traffic problems or even just watching traffic in Cities Skyline, then this will appeal to you. If you enjoyed solving logistic problems in Shapez.io, this is a must have. If you strive for logistical efficiency and optimization, well that’s most of the game.
– Real player with 77.5 hrs in game
At this time, I DO recommend this game, but, there are still lingering issues that I’ve found. See bottom of post for my “rant”.
[EDIT-Seems as though the #48 news corrected the issues I was experiencing. Everything else looks to be “my” problem with the routing and design of the roads]
Things I like:
-
I like having a system that I have to continuously replenish, such as the residential zones.
-
I like how in order to grow the residential, you need different components to create more dense areas
– Real player with 42.9 hrs in game
Malmyr
I stumbled across this recently, and have been enjoying working through the campaign. I give this a thumbs up primarily because of the enthusiastic and helpful developer responses to questions I had, and I feel I got my moneys worth of entertainment value. These guys deserve some more attention for their efforts. It is a game that I “like” but don’t “love”.
Malmyr offers some quite different mechanics to what you would normally expect, though not all of those are necessarily positive things (it is very mouse clicky) and can take some getting used to. Kind of revealing is the lack of a lets play series out there - people tend to bounce off it after a few hours I think. Fundamentally the game is more of a puzzler than a true building game - space is limited and the randomly generated tiles can require some planning before you commit to building. I am hoping to finish the campaign, I am always a sucker for trying to “finish” a game. I haven’t tried the sandbox mode though I may give that a quick shot once I knock off the last two missions, we shall see. I just have too many other games that are begging for my time and this just doesn’t have that magic X factor or depth of strategy tp keep coming back to.
– Real player with 77.2 hrs in game
Malmyr is THE game you’ve been waiting for a long time! What a pleasant surprise!
Malmyr is the perfect mix of real-time strategy and puzzle game. Because in Malmyr building your city is not made as easy as in other building games. Instead, you have to ensure an always sufficient flow of raw materials through increasingly complex road systems. but malmyr always remains clear, fair and, above all, relaxing. Relaxation is the perfect word to describe malmyr. You have no time pressure, you can correct mistakes at any time without losing your progress.
– Real player with 23.8 hrs in game
Space Colony: Steam Edition
I really like this game. It has been described as The Sims in Space. I have never liked The Sims games as I find that they are far too repetitive and boring. Space Colony is a good building game, The Sims element is that you do have to be aware of the needs of your operatives to improve production. This does give an extra twist to the game that you have to think about and some of the challenges are based around ensuring that your crew are reletively happy or they won’t work.
Any Building Sim worth it’s salt should have an element of ensuring that you are providing basic things, such as food, so I don’t find this particularly strange, as some have mentioned. Making sure your crew does not go mad while on an abandoned planet does give the game an additional challenge.
– Real player with 102.4 hrs in game
well i dont know what to say, i really want to like this game but its more about mini managing all of the peoples quirks than it is about building a colony. the maps are very small so building is limited even in sandbox mode. there are numerous objects on maps that cannot be removed (maybe by bombs in free mode ?) forcing you to make odd looking and crappy base layouts in most cases.
alot of the quests are just kind of gimmicky, in a previous scenario you will unlock items for the quest, yet the very next quest acts like you never used them before just to make certain quests “seem” harder. although there is an option to download user made content so thats a plus.
– Real player with 40.5 hrs in game