City Of Jade: Imperial Frontier
Not recommended.
I’ve played the game several times with varying strategies and each time failed to figure out a way to build a sustainable city. So after 18 hours of game play, and discussing with other friends who have played, I believe that the balance of the game is broken. I’ve tried to contact the devs but they’ve not responded.
– Real player with 50.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time Strategy Games.
no
– Real player with 22.5 hrs in game
Viridi
Disclaimer: I beta tested this game.
Viridi is exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a little virtual garden where you watch your plants grow.
The gameplay itself is minimalistic. Apart from planting your succulents, watering them, and zooming in to sing at them, there’s very little else you can do. It’s supposed to be a very zen experience — similar to keeping actual plants — so if you expect more interactivity than that then this is not the game for you. I usually had it on in the background while I went on with my day as always (hence my exorbitant playtime), but you don’t need to leave it on all the time. Your plants will grow just fine while the game is closed as well, so if you only want to spend 5 minutes a day checking up on your plants, then you can do that too. As you can see the joy of the game doesn’t lie within its interactivity, but rather within owning a virtual garden in itself.
– Real player with 302.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time Simulation Games.
Inch by inch… Calmly
snail crawls around the pot. Zen.
Watching grass grow.
…………
In real life I’ve killed more plants than I can (or would bother) count. In Viridi I can feel like an expert gardener, and without a stress of real gardening. Au contraire - it is an awesome stress reliever (and believe me - I know about stress!).
This game requires a really low level of skills, there’s no steep learning curve, you don’t have to spend hours trying to beat something or find some other-thing or figure out some puzzle. You just open the game once a day (or even not every day, or maybe 2-3 times a day - up to your liking), water your plants and pluck weeds. Once a week you get a free seed that you can add to your existing pot, or keep it for the future, or trade with other players.
– Real player with 204.0 hrs in game
Sumerians
If you like games like Caesar, Pharaoh and Banished you’ll be right at home!
II feel the game is a good mix between those titles, I really like how Sumerians basically gives up proximity as a rule for assigning people to jobs, which allows you to build prettier cities.
Production chains are dependent on “transporters”, once you get the hang of how they work it’s relatively easy and satisfying to set up chains and different types of economic areas and keep everything tidy and functional.
the only downsides I found are the fact the game begins slowing down quiet a bit after 1k population, however by reducing graphic settings will help, particularly the number of “agents” (NPCs) on the map, that said the game itself still runs fine up to 25k in my personal experience and I’ve seen some people saying they had no problems at 60k.
– Real player with 34.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Real-Time Simulation Games.
Great concept, though it still needs a ton of optimization work.
Just as an example,
I currently have a city with about 5,000 people. I also have a ton of state farms (grows grain which is the currency and food for your people). Earlier in game, when I had only about 1,000 people, one state farm could easily handle a full field on it’s own when fully staffed. But now that I’ve reached such a high population, it seems like my people have gone stupid and can’t even handle a quarter of the same field they used to be able to grow.
– Real player with 15.4 hrs in game