The Best City-Builder Games With Roguelike Elements

The once labyrinthine city-builder genre has steadily accrued a great number of sub-genres and beginner-friendly entries, broadening its appeal and showcasing this genre's ability to go beyond simple resource management and branch out into full-fledged stories. City-builders excel at telling stories of more than just a single person, but of an entire civilization, or an entire people, and they usually do so through procedural events and colossal, far-reaching decisions that the player can make.

Related

14 Best City Builders On The Nintendo Switch, Ranked

The Nintendo Switch holds many great games, and these are the best city builders that players can enjoy on the handheld console.

Posts

By  Megan Smith

That doesn't mean that all the games in this genre have forgotten about their difficulty factor. In fact, some titles have enhanced their difficulty by fusing with another genre known for its difficulty and persistent charm: the Roguelike. These city builders in particular have Roguelike aspects that make them more challenging — but also more engaging.

5 Age Of Wonders 4

Roguelike Elements Enhance This Fantasy Title

Building cities is the key to almost any victory in Age of Wonders 4, as it simply gives the player more ground to cover, more resources to work with, and more abilities to activate. Cities are never really a resource drain, so building them up to the current maximum, and expanding them often with population and provinces, is an incredibly sound strategy to building up a strong resource base in the early game. For those going for military victories, more cities mean more units can be produced at any one time, allowing colossal armies to form in the blink of an eye.

While Age of Wonders 4 might be a title that thrives on building cities, it is fully immersed in the high fantasy genre. Delving into dungeons across procedurally generated maps is an excellent way that this game weaves Roguelike elements into its structure. Similar to most Roguelikes, the reward for delving into perilous dungeons is loot — legendary items and gold that can turn the tide of a game in the right quantities.

4 Terraria

Building A City Requires Engaging With Roguelike Elements

Terraria is one of the highest-grossing games of all time, and it's easy to see why. The astonishing variety of equipment among the four major classes makes for an incredible crafting journey as players delve deeper and deeper into the world, continuing to explore and grow stronger. Especially on harder difficulties, it's hard to avoid the Roguelike elements of Terraria. Players lose items on death in the same fashion as Mystery Dungeon titles while also being compelled to explore deeper and deeper into these randomly generated areas.

Founding a settlement in Terraria is also an incredible city-building experience, as players will constantly have NPCs looking to join their ranks as they continue to grow in both prosperity and power. Just be careful, however, as a larger settlement will attract unwanted attention from forces like goblins or pirates, who will invade and can decimate the population of any land not properly defended.

3 Kenshi

An Incredibly Difficult Roguelike City-Builder Experience

Unlike a lot of titles on this list, the fantastic Kenshi does not have a randomly generated map. It still has many Roguelike aspects, however, including its perilous difficulty and its emphasis on permadeath. A character might only be injured or maimed after a battle goes wrong, but if they should die, that's it, it's over. Once a settlement has been established and has lots of people all doing their part, this threat of death only grows stronger, as invasions begin to strike the player's settlement.

Related

Best Indie City Builders

Players who love to build cities from scratch will love what the indie scene has to offer.

Posts

By  Harry Ted Sprinks

There's a great deal of focus on production in Kenshi as a city-builder. Producing goods, and using workers to transport them to other settlements where they can turn a profit (especially if they're illegal!) Is one of the major tenets of this apocalyptic city-builder with Roguelike elements.

2 Rimworld

Roguelike Difficulty Shines Through In This Title

The endlessly replayable Rimworld is a title like no other, depicting a desperate struggle to survive in a distant world as a fledgling colony in a hostile land. Rimworld is a game that celebrates the procedural storytelling that base builders, survival games, and Roguelikes often produce. It gives players all the ingredients they need to fall in love with their characters and watch as a sci-fi story unique to their experience unfolds.

Related

RimWorld: 23 Tips For Base Building

In order to create a top-tier base in RimWorld, players should be sure to utilize these helpful tips and tricks.

Posts

By  Aly Azmy

While the game is focused on settlement building, the random events, procedurally generated map, and permadeath elements are all exceptional Roguelike mechanics that help define what makes Rimworld special to a lot of players.

1 Against The Storm

The Exemplar Of Roguelike City-Builders

Perhaps the epitome of what it means to make a perfect fusion between Roguelikes and city-builders, Against the Storm is a game like no other. It combines the Roguelike elements of replayability and procedural generation with simple but satisfying city-building elements.

New players looking to get started in this game will uncover an incredible experience of forging forward by building settlements in a hostile world, collecting legendary progression items, and fighting against a deadly and ceaseless storm.

More

Best City Builder Games With Endless Modes

City builders are renowned for being a genre where the player's imagination is left to run wild. If it can be done in a way that is efficient and opti

Posts

By  Will Buckley