Caesar™ 3
The “Don’t Escape Trilogy” is a collection of three short first-person point-and-click adventures with static screens (no camera movement, no scrolling). The games share a creepy atmosphere and a few gameplay mechanics, but are otherwise unrelated. In the first game, you play a werewolf trying to lock himself away before a full-moon night, so that he won’t kill anyone when he turns. In the second game, you’re trying to barricade a house and protect yourself from a zombie horde. In the third game, you’re the only surviving crew member on a spaceship and need to stop “something” from getting out.
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Strategy Rome Games.
Even though the entire trilogy is available for free on Armor Games, I chose to purchase this game series on Steam because that’s how amazing ScriptWelder really is. The Deep Sleep and Don’t Escape series were some of the first PC games I ever played, and I have ScriptWelder to thank for making my early experiences so magical. I have followed each and every game you have published on AG, hunted down every achievement, set of choices, and walkthrough I could find… simply, because every single second I spent in any of your games was one of either awe, wonder, fear, or curiosity.
– Real player with 5.1 hrs in game
Zeus + Poseidon
One of my favorite childhood games to play, though I’m not quite certain it works as intended, be it because of steam or windows 10. The game launches in fullscreen by default and messes up my screen resolution when doing so. It does feature an in-game windowed mode that fixes this…but this renders the user interface on the right (through which the game is played) mostly unreadable, and it also squishes the text to make it difficult to read.
Additionally, I am uncertain the gods are properly rendered. I remember them when I played the game on disk them appearing instantly; it can take them over a minute to appear now and their animations for anything (be it attack, curse, or blessing) are equally as slowed.
– Real player with 179.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Strategy Colony Sim Games.
Oh boy, oh boy…
It finally happened. One of my top 5 games of all time recently got released on Steam. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent playing the main Zeus & Poseidon campaigns, let alone the custom-made ones.
The pinnacle of city builders that started with Sierra and ended with Impressions Games: The Caesar series, Pharaoh (& Cleopatra), Zeus (& Poseidon), Emperor - Rise of the Middle Kingdom, and even Children of the Nile (even though I never quite got into it). Pharaoh is also available in Steam now, so make sure you check it out, too!
– Real player with 94.5 hrs in game
T-Minus 30
Fantastic little game, built by two devs who show their passion in this game and backed by the people who made SUPERHOT. Definitely worth a look.
You have 30 minutes to save as many people as you can. You get to build roads, logging camps, mines, power, tear down buildings, scavenge, and more resource collection and management with time pressure hanging over you. It’s not as intense as FrostPunk, nor is it meant to be. It’s something for when you have 30-60 minutes and want to play something that’ll challenge you but not overwhelm or stress you.
– Real player with 25.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Strategy Base Building Games.
[url] If you enjoyed this review please click the link and then click follow on my curator page. [/url]
T-Minus 30 is a unique take on the city building genre. You are trying to gather enough resources to get the remaining survivors off of Earth before the world ends. Each run lasts for only 30 minutes and you feel the pressure as the time ticks down closer to closer to the end.
There are multiple types of rockets to build that will allow you to have various strategies to evacuate. Do you concentrate on the most advanced rockets that hold the most people, even though they cost the most resources? Do you try to focus on the nature based ships that are cheaper to build, but require a complete water distribution system? There really isn’t a wrong way to play T-Minus 30. Trying to chase higher places on the leader board is fun as well.
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Pharaoh + Cleopatra
First of all, please understand that I have no nostalgic attachment to this game. I did not play it as a kid, I did not even know about it until last month when i did a search on steam for any Egypt themed games (because I love Egypt.)
This game is fantastic. It’s so fun to be able to build an ancient city from scratch, and see it go from a few slums to a bustling paradise. I easily spend multiple hours playing this game without realising it.
There are many levels to play, each with different city goals. My favourite part is adding plazas, garden, and different statues to my city to make it look really stunning. The graphics are loving crafted and look beautiful. I also like that there are only minimal military gameplay in this, that was always my least favourite part of any society- building game like Civ or Age of Empires. Just leave me and my city in peace!!
– Real player with 196.7 hrs in game
This is of course a cult classic.
Compared to Caesar 3:
-
too toxic colors, liked Caesar 3 much more
-
buildings also less beautiful in my opinion
-
significantly refined mechanics allowing clearer gameplay (water walker, bazaar lady capacity and many more)
-
more difficulty (mainly in more space constraints)
-
great monuments
And now how to make it playable:
0. Check out the HD patch guide in the hub and use it.
1. Use WinXPSP2 compability, Reduced color to 16 bit, Disable fullscreen optimizations, Run as admin, Program DPI, High DPI override. Not sure that everything is needed though.
– Real player with 147.9 hrs in game
Foundation
I love this game.The music is amazing and using your imagination to build big cities and castles is way fun 3
– Real player with 282.6 hrs in game
Your game now sucks. I’ve never seen updates that make the game more complex and convoluted to play. Great job!
– Real player with 117.8 hrs in game
Tropico 6
Fun game if you like running a city
– Real player with 998.6 hrs in game
One of the best mission based city-building game, ever!
– Real player with 199.9 hrs in game
The Immortal Mayor
This is a really cute and beautiful game with a fun concept. I was interested mainly because it kind of made me think of Black & White which is a game I miss so much. But also, the unique setting of ancient China with a mix of Eastern mythology. This is not a style I see often in these kinds of games, and I find it refreshing!
In its current state I believe the game is enjoyable and still playable, but it is far from perfect and needs a lot of work. For instance, the balancing and management of resources seems a bit off and I still don’t have a consistent grasp on how to get it perfect. Any wrong move it seems your town will crumble in minutes. The current guide is wordy and doesn’t really cover it all. It took trial and error to figure out how to find a balance and how buildings worked with attributes from decorations.
– Real player with 51.9 hrs in game
Super super nice game. Chinese city building theme (OMFG) is just simply my sweetest dream.
Really interesting and creative way to upgrade buildings, which I have never experienced before.
You can simply move a mountain away to get more space (since you are GOD in this world :D) and add more resources for your people to exploit
OMG I just love it…
However, there are still a few things I need to mention:
- The most annoyed thing is when you want to find a building that you have built (let say Tea room), you have no tool to find it but only your bare eyes. It really takes tons of time especially when the building is upgraded (its appearance will change).
– Real player with 47.6 hrs in game
Hearthlands
Hearthlands – A Blast from the Past
Sergio and Simon make a stunning debut on the PC with Hearthlands. You may be familiar with their work already under the company Artefact Games, a small indie mobile games development company, which they co-founded. Don’t let that fool you, as Hearthlands is perfectly suited for computer play. Hearthlands is a fresh take on the old city building genre of Impression Games’ titles such as Pharoah, Zeus, Empire, and Caesar. It doesn’t feel like a cheap copy pasta either. It builds on the genre in every way possible and has become my favorite in the entire genre.
– Real player with 80.6 hrs in game
So I’ve been diddling around with this game for a couple of hours. I’ve played the first two campaign missions and the tutorial.
This is actually a really good game. It’s a cross between Stronghold, Banished, Anno, and Settlers, with some of the better parts of each attached to them.
You have a plethora of options when building your city, and there doesn’t seem to be anything completely deadweightish. Everything is necessary. It’s pretty intuitive how it all works, with your little settlers running around and picking up what they need.
– Real player with 37.6 hrs in game
Endzone - A World Apart
Good concept, well developed scenario, extensive tutorials possibly the best I’ve seen in games I’ve played, nice graphics, random system generated maps for new environment every time, simple game mechanics with standardized keys, many options for difficulty levels including custom settings, fun achievements, good balance of resources, mix of post apocalypse survival with city building, some fighting of raiders but can be turned off in settings if you only want to do survival or city building, many different side missions with interesting bylines, prosperity DLC is nice but I still think we should not have to pay for it as it doesn’t change the game enough, played 280 hours but still have some things to try and haven’t completed all the achievements yet. Overall very good game.
– Real player with 333.7 hrs in game
Endzone is a city builder in an apocolyptic world. It is a tougher challenge than other games in the same genre. Mistakes can lead to punishing death spirals in communities. But it is rewarding when all goes well overall.
The colour palette of the game is dreary and this can make finding particular buildings difficult to do, especially in the late game when buildings are crowded together. There is no search function for building types which is definitely a drawback.
The latest expansion, “Prosperity”, does not offer much – a few new buildings and missions – you miss little by sticking with the base game.
– Real player with 251.2 hrs in game
Medieval Kingdom Wars
I like the game. In fact, I like it a lot. There are very few things I could personally complain about, in terms of gameplay mechanics, or graphics. If I wanted something different, I’d simply play something else, instead of asking for this game to be changed to the point it’s no longer the same game.
The reason for the negative review, would be that I’ve almost completely lost faith in the the developers, as well as any hope of improvement on what is currently something non-playable for me. And the reason I’ve lost faith in them, would be due to their approach on how they handle things.
– Real player with 142.0 hrs in game
Medieval Kingdom Wars is a Grand Strategy/RTS game that reminds me of a mix of a very simplified Paradox campaign map, with Total War elements, and then very Age of Empires style real time battles in a battle map. This game has a really cool concept, I’ve always wanted a game like this, and after reading the description apparently the 3 man Dev team always has as well, and they’ve made a pretty neat little game. What it lacks in complexity and depth it makes up for in pure fun, and it is fairly addictive as well. It’s not as immersive as a total war game or a paradox game, you won’t really feel Super in the 14th century, as many of the units are still fairly generic, but the devs are CONSTANTLY updating this game, and it’s always getting better with every update. Okay, lets do a quick rundown of it’s features and then some pros and cons:
– Real player with 54.3 hrs in game