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
Read More: Best City Builder Sandbox Games.
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
Pharaoh: A New Era
Immerse yourself in the history of Ancient Egypt with 50 missions and over 100 gameplay hours in Pharaoh: A New Era, a remake of Pharaoh (and the expansion Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile), one of the best city builders from the golden age of Sierra Entertainment. Stone by stone, build your city and manage all aspects of its development to ensure it prospers and makes you a powerful and revered Pharaoh.
Develop your city by cultivating the fertile lands along the banks of the Nile valley. Erect the iconic monuments of Ancient Egypt, including the pyramids, the Sphinx and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Build temples and mausoleums to help manage all aspects of your city’s health and culture as well as the predominant polytheistic religion of the time.
Ensure your city is prosperous enough to deal with economic or political crises, or even plundering by enemies. A Pharaoh takes care of its people and does whatever it can to earn the favour of the gods.
Pharaoh: A New Era celebrates 20 years since the release of the famous franchise with a complete remake, including more than 50 playable missions and over 100 hours of gameplay. Rediscover the map and mission editor mode that allows you to shape your very own Egypt over thousands of years.
The “Campaign” mode teaches you the game basics while allowing you to experience a unique story in the heart of Ancient Egypt and explore all aspects of life in a thriving city.
You have everything at your disposal to build an entire city and manage all its fundamental elements to ensure it flourishes: the economy, internal and external trade, culture, health, agriculture, education, etc. To help you monitor your progress, various indicators show you the overall well-being of your city and its residents.
The journey back in time is really brought to life with this Ultra HD remake, which upgrades the gameplay mechanics to modern standards and completely redesigns the captivating soundtrack and gorgeous isometric 2D graphics.
● Rediscover the classic city builder Pharaoh and its expansion, Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile, in an all-new remake
● Explore Ancient Egypt and its 4,000 years of history across 50 missions
● Marvel at Ancient Egypt’s most iconic and beautiful monuments with completely overhauled Ultra HD graphics
● Erect the Egypt of your dreams with the map editor mode
Read More: Best City Builder Trading Games.
Burrowburrow
The Naked-Moledragon has hatched and turned society upside-down! It’s up to you to create a town and build a community with the local animals you’ll meet in your travels through a magical but dangerous wilderness!
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Complete freedom to create your own town – Build your village tile by tile, customize and change the world around you
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Make friends with local animals – Meet different villagers with their own stories and personalities
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Solve problems your way – use elemental forces like water, fire, and ghosts to find creative solutions or cause general chaos
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Spend your days in a living and growing world – Plants, fungi and monsters will all propagate and grow over time leading to a dynamic environment
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Survive the forces of nature – Watch out for wild fires, thorny bushes, explosive berries, sentient fungi, and unspeakable monsters
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Have a unique experience every playthrough – Experience procedurally generated worlds with meaningful gameplay differences every play through
Read More: Best City Builder Exploration Games.
King of the Universe
In the 24th century BC, the Sumerians have turned the land of Mesopotamia from a simple Cradle of Civilization to the home of empires. It is your mission to take control of the kingdom of Kish and conquer your enemies, in order to become Lugal Kiški, King of the Universe.
The Sumerians, or “the black-headed people” (Sag̃-g̃i-ga in their native tongue), were the first people to invent both civilization and writing. Their well-organised and state-run societies make the perfect setting for a strategic video game. In King of the Universe, you will not only try to conquer your enemies, you will also have to take care of your own people.
Through military means you gather land and slaves, and through economic means you build new structures for your people. If your citizens do not produce enough supplies to quench your war machine, you will fail. If you do not protect your citizens from foreign invaders, you will fail. This game is about balance, and only by finding it will you become King of the Universe.
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Tiles
Claim tiles and build or destroy structures. Watch your people go about their day-to-day lives.
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Wealth
Garner Silver and resources, such as Food, Metal and Tools.
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Troops
Build an army, and order your soldiers around. Follow your individual troops with the camera.
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Slaves
Collect slaves when conquering foreign land, and use these to build new structures in your kingdom.
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Citizens
Keep an eye on the hunger and health of your people. Make sure every class in your kingdom has enough money to survive.
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Pricing
Decide the prices of wares in your kingdom, to control the economy to ensure profits for your state.
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Trade
Buy and sell with the other empires, to build relations and gain an extra income for your war machine.
World Up
World Up is a First-Person game where you progressively build up a pre designed map. Gather resources, upgrade buildings, and/or craft materials.
Each map will depend on how resources are gathered such as gathering farming foods, chopping down trees or mining
Megacity Builder
like the older city building games but with a national twist. incorporates multiple little cities to run a country. can really get lost in the constructing and managing
– Real player with 42.3 hrs in game
Fantastic game! If you like lite sims, then this is your game.
It’s got a very detail orientated design for a game as lite as it is, its mechanics are nuanced and unique.
I strongly advise this game to anybody who is a fan of unique sims.
It has a bit of a learning curve, but never fear, its worth it!
– Real player with 18.7 hrs in game
Festival Tycoon
I really like this game and I had it on my wish-list for a while coming up to the release date.
When I first started playing it really felt like a community driven game which is really nice to see, like what I mean by this is it’s not hard to get in direct contact with the developer to talk about the game and that’s pretty damn cool.
From being in the Discord server, the community along with the developer are both really friendly. Johannes (Developer) Is a really friendly and co-operative person and can take feedback really well and is on top of any bugs/issues very fast. His response time is a lot better than 90% of developers I’ve contacted and when I had an issue it was fixed within an hour. So that’s already a plus for me, even if I didn’t enjoy the game.
– Real player with 44.4 hrs in game
If you are reading this in six to twelve months time, this should be an instant buy if you play tycoon games. This is a fun and highly enjoyable tycoon game that I have had a fair bit of enjoyment out of. If you are reading this in October of 2021, my advice would be to wait six to twelve months. The base of this game is fantastic, it is a bit lacking in content though, and can become quite repetitive due to the lack of content (especially in the choice of festival sites), as well as a couple of bugs which do make gameplay harder to enjoy. This is quite typical for an early access game, of course, but it does need to be mentioned. However, unlike some other early access games, the developer is super on top of things and does a great job at communicating with the audience, so I have no doubt that there will be in the very near future new content to keep it fresh and challenging, as well as constant bug fixes. Overall, this should either be a get this game, or will end up being a get this game.
– Real player with 22.7 hrs in game
LOGistICAL 3
I simply can’t recommend it because of its really bad UI/UX design, the enormous amounts of bugs and almost complete lack of documentation.
– Real player with 101.3 hrs in game
I’ve been playing LOGistICAL on and off for almost two years now. This entry is another really fun one. The series has come a long way since the first entries, which are all still very enjoyable. I recommend you try them all.
– Real player with 86.5 hrs in game
SimCasino
I honestly am upset giving this game a thumbs down because as the game progressed through the early access releases, it honestly looked like the structure of this game was going to build up into something great. Sadly, the dev team have taken this project into full release much too early and I worry that everything that at first glance might seem like placeholders are, in fact, here to stay.
There is no variety in guest appearances; just the same pallet swaps of hair, skin, shirt and pants. This also includes any entertainers you hire or VIPs you invite to your casino; they all just blend together without any kind of visual differences to make looking at your casino population grow from a few dozen people to thousands all that interesting. And it just feel like a massive shame that the magician you hired to preform on stage is dressed the same as everyone in the audience.
– Real player with 74.3 hrs in game
For an early release this is pretty good. It has it’s issues and needs a lot more content but it’s definitely worth giving a try if you enjoy sim tycoon style games.
That said currently (12/31/2020) there are some things that could be improved and I’m going to give a list of suggestions below in case the developers actually read these reviews:
- My clock display is set to a 12 hour clock but peak hours are still listed in military time.
*The minimum pay out for a slot machine grand prize is 10 dollars but we default to penny slots. If they are paying a penny one dollar is a huge return, minimum payout should be based on the cost per pull. Also, why is the AI spending ten dollars a pull for a game with a 25 dollar grand prize? That’s insane.
– Real player with 52.2 hrs in game
Little Kingdom 2
Game is fun to play although since the Latest update both my friend and I have found ourselves unable to load the game.
– Real player with 17.5 hrs in game
Pros: This game is a very neat indie that with a group of friends can become quite the fun bout, its all about attrtion so no actual units and it makes for a unique strategy game for a hotseat adventure!
– Real player with 16.1 hrs in game