New City Building Sims To Watch Out For

City-building games are timeless because their mechanics easily put players into flow states. Gamers can get lost in the loop of planning zones, researching services, developing policies, and ensuring logistics run seamlessly. Watching cities progress and discovering new ways of improving systems is enough for players to clock in monstrous hours to the same game for years.

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Studios find new ways to refresh the genre, to the point that some games are used to research and simulate real-world urban development policies. Others marry city building with related genres to add spice and new challenges or give players great new settings to play in.

Updated on January 2, 2024, by Rie Takumi: As 2023 rolls into 2024, the number of amazing new city-building titles increases. Each title has something new to offer and usually has a big secondary mechanic that distinguishes it from competitors. It could sometimes be a great siege or horde mode, while other titles trade on economics and realistic policies. A few titles have moved on from the early access stage and are ready to be released as full games in 2024. Gameplay footage and early reviews from beta players show promise in these games. With a welcoming city-building community, these games are primed for primetime and long-term sales.

12 Night Is Coming

Full Release Coming 2024

Yet another game slated for 2024, Night Is Coming combines settler-like city building with horror to create a tactical survival sim.

Most of the day is spent on settlement building and management in the Carpathian Mountains. Settlers are assigned to gather, mine, and create resources, or build homes and defenses, in addition to learning crafts to improve both individuals and towns.

Training settlers becomes important when night or adverse weather comes. Waves of monsters inspired by Slavic mythology will attack settlements unless their baron is destroyed first. Avoiding these hardships comes at the price of harder, and deadlier, encounters.

11 Celestial Empire

Chinese City Builder Coming In 2024

Built on Unreal Engine 5, Celestial Empire looks crisp and impressive as a work inspired by Chinese history and aesthetics. Everything in its visual teasers would not look amiss alongside other shenmo or works centered on gods and demons. Even the floating world teased in trailers looks like a challenge waiting to be conquered.

At its core, Celestial Empire is about improving a city’s condition as its appointed governor. Planning infrastructure, trade routes along the Silk Road, and managing relations with gods and demons are key to a successful run in this game.

10 Laysara: Summit Kingdom

Early Access To Full Game On April 2024

Most city-builders start in plains or generally flat landscapes. Laysara: Summit Kingdom does away with that to start at the literal top. Quite OK Games’ first rodeo challenges players to create a thriving mountain society that can be struck by avalanches, thunderstorms, and other natural disasters at any time.

Resource management is important to keep villagers on all three levels of the mountain thriving. Do players use their precious materials to create artificial avalanche barriers, or focus their efforts on improving transport networks? Should they risk going to the peak early for precious resources?

Potential players have time to decide, as the game has no precise release date aside from a general 2023 release window. A demo is live on Steam and GOG for download.

9 Gord

Mixed (417 Steam Reviews)

Gord, like Night is Coming, puts players and their settlers in perilous conditions where they must fight to save their tribe. Similar Slavic horrors lurk in the dark, though they can be conquered through melee and powerful spells. Their defeat is also crucial to overcoming Scenarios, or objectives set in this procedurally generated world.

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Between fights and Scenarios, managing the tribe’s growth and sanity also poses challenges. Death, hunger, illness, and other negative scenarios impact a settler’s sanity, which can cause them to break down or flee. Building a safe city with essential resources will keep populations healthy and give players more time to accomplish goals.

8 Cities: Skylines 2

Mixed (30,737 Steam Reviews)

Eight years after the genre-defining original, Cities: Skylines 2 brings new features, upgraded tools and AI, and expanded elements to the table.

Road and zoning tools, public and cargo transportation, traffic AI, and city services now have more nuanced mechanics that improve their base functionality. Skylines 2 also added climates to complement its four seasons.

Climates are unique to each of the 441 map tiles and will interact with all four seasons. As a result, players have to contend with weather-related challenges while planning their city. Changes to the economic and production simulations also test players’ abilities to plan a great city.

7 Landnama

Mostly Positive (293 Steam Reviews)

Landnama is a Viking-themed crossbreed of a dungeon crawler and city builder. Exploration, expansion, and survival govern the player’s actions as they settle hostile land uncovered per hex tile. Time is of the essence as the Winter’s Toll approaches, making every clan’s contribution valuable.

What could surprise players is its lack of combat. All hostility players face comes from the challenge of building settlements that can withstand the harsh toll of winter. Sonderland, the developers, even encourage players to take breaks and take in the music and art as they check on their clans.

6 Pharaoh: A New Era

Mostly Positive (3,359 Steam Reviews)

Pharaoh: A New Era is a remake of the 1999 Sienna Studios city-builder Pharaoh. Though it remains faithful to the spirit of the original, it implements quality-of-life improvements and updated graphics to welcome new and returning players to Egypt.

However, its classic feel and mechanics are what make it special. Its steep learning curve is offset by an informative and straightforward UI, and gameplay primarily focused on creating a flourishing city by the Nile. A New Era also tracks the Nile’s floodings, allowing players to plan around it.

5 Desynced

Very Positive (934 Steam Reviews)

Although sci-fi-themed, Desynced takes place on a wide planet full of lush forests, scenic desserts, and meadows teeming with alien life. Players must send their drones, led by their AI ELAINE, to this planet to look for a suitable, resource-rich place in which they could build facilities to fix their ship.

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Exploration and automation are key to advancing in this game. Advanced customizable parameters, drag-and-drop scripting, and logical pathing will aid players as they master resource management and complete objectives. Its online multiplayer mode will make the game easier, or more challenging, depending on what kind of fun players are looking for.

4 Ratopia

Very Positive (1,725 Steam Reviews)

Ratopia is somehow a mix of Don Bluth-style cute animals, Terraria, and Thronefall. Players control a leader among Ratizens and must ensure that their people are well provided for. Aside from building functioning cities, players must also create detailed tax policies and discoveries to advance their rat city.

Players also have an incentive to explore their world through tunnels. Expeditions uncover new lands, schematics, and resources. However, it can also lead to apex predators awakening and bringing trouble to the colony.

3 Pioneers Of Pagonia

Very Positive (1,813 Steam Reviews)

True to its name, Pioneers of Pagonia plops players in the middle of an archipelago to help develop settlements after a cataclysm destroyed colonies. Traveling island to island, players explore the map to establish territories, find resources, plan logistics, and secure alliances with villages to unite the archipelago.

Unlike The Settlers, lead developer Volker Wertich’s old work, Pagonia does not have RTS controls. Combat, patrolling, and even a village’s development will depend on the player’s city planning and decision-making skills. Learning the game’s core systems is important as each map is procedurally generated and unique to each playthrough.