10 Most Complex Management Games

Highlights

• Management games offer complex gameplay and prioritize strategy over graphics, making them a great choice for players who enjoy thoughtful and strategic experiences.
• Popular management games explore complex mechanics and provide a variety of experiences, making them a good starting point for players looking to delve deeper into the genre.
• Games like Football Manager 2024 and Dwarf Fortress offer deep management mechanics and complex systems, providing a challenging but rewarding experience for players.

For those that enjoy long, thoughtful, strategic experiences that often have players managing various things at once, and don’t mind games that prioritize their gameplay over their graphics, the genre of management games is worth exploring. These games provide a variety of experiences that are more complex than the average management game.

Management games can vary in both theme and mechanics, ranging from colony simulators to city-builders, all the way to more specific games about managing smaller-scale things like a sports team.

Updated December 21, 2023, by Harry Ted Sprinks: Football Manager 2024 recently released to highly positive reviews, furthering the growing popularity of management games on Steam along with the Steam version of the iconic Dwarf Fortress. It could be argued that there has never been a better time for fans of management games. Many of the most popular management games are those that explore complex mechanics, so for those who have yet to delve further into the genre, these games are a good place to start. They may not be ideal for beginners, but they’re great for players looking to take the next step

10 Production Line: Car Factory Simulation

A Tycoon Game All About Efficiency

This simulation game tasks players with managing a car factory, creating automobile production lines with careful attention to detail. The game’s bare-bones, minimalist graphical style may turn some players away, but Production Line’s in-depth management and organizational mechanics make it worthwhile.

Production Line focuses on optimization and efficiency, with a gameplay structure that requires players to plan out and design intricate production lines while paying close attention to their finances. Production Line may be a thematically dry experience, but for those who enjoy being efficient, this tycoon/management game offers plenty of opportunities.

9 Cities: Skylines

A Classic City Builder with Plenty of Depth

Cities: Skylines offers a modern take on the classic city-builder, but with a deep and complex simulation that gives players a lot to manage. In the game, players must ensure their city meets basic requirements: education, water, electricity, emergency services, and healthcare. Each of these requirements takes time, effort, and planning to get up and running simultaneously.

On top of all this, players must keep their city’s economy afloat while dealing with the needs of their citizens, traffic efficiency, assigning and managing different districts, and making sure the right policies are put in place to keep the city under control.

8 Tropico 6

Complex, Strategic Management of Archipelagos

As part of a franchise with a long history, Tropico 6 had big shoes to fill. For fans of the franchise, it did not disappoint. In Tropico 6, players take control of an island state, deciding how to lead its people over four different eras.

The game has players managing multiple islands in the form of archipelagos, connecting those islands, and managing transportation to keep their territory under control. Mostly, players will be managing their infrastructure and logistics as they steer their people in specific directions. Part of the fun of Tropico 6 is the immense freedom it gives players, though the amount of options available also boosts its complexity.

Team Training, Chemistry, Transfers, and Deep Management

This franchise’s most recent release, Football Manager 2024, is one of the best entries yet for fans of the franchise and management games, in particular lovers of football/soccer. In Football Manager, players choose a club, pick players, craft a team, and manage backroom staff.

Players will have to carefully craft their team, as well as the strategies they will employ, in order to succeed. The game features mechanics for fans in the form of the “Supporter Confidence” system, as well as several AI managers that make the game more difficult as players progress.

6 Prison Architect

Careful Planning, Financial Woes, Staff, and Crisis Management

This management game allows players to design and construct a prison, managing their budget and economy and taking in a variety of prisoners, some more dangerous than others. In Prison Architect, players will have to carefully plot out their prison, including its different facilities, cell blocks, and policies.

Players will have to manage staff, control contraband, and the everyday schedule of their prisoners to keep their prison under control and prevent a catastrophic riot. Prison Architect is a breeze to control and play, but its many systems and unpredictable prisoners make it a deep and complex experience that is hard to master.

5 Oxygen Not Included

Manage Gas and Liquid in a Simulation-Heavy Colony-Sim

This simulation game from Klei Entertainment has players managing an underground asteroid colony in space. The game tasks players with researching, managing the strengths and weaknesses of their colonists, and building a colony to suit their needs.

What’s so unique, and complex, about Oxygen Not Included is that players have to manufacture and sustain their resources. This includes oxygen (which is extremely limited), water, food, and power. Players will need to get creative to construct various mechanisms and systems for recycling their resources and ensuring their colony doesn’t suffocate or starve. Overall, Oxygen Not Included can be a highly rewarding experience, but its complexity can be unforgiving.

4 RimWorld

Manage Mental and Physical Health

RimWorld is a mightily complicated colony management and simulation game, thanks to its various AI “storytellers”, simulated psychology, and systems for interpersonal relationships. Furthermore, RimWorld’s combat, systems for planetary climate, as well as its procedurally generated worlds, factions, and diplomacy mechanics ensure that players are always juggling multiple things at once.

In RimWorld (even without its extensive DLCs), players have to carefully plan out and maintain their colony’s resources to defend themselves from raiders, keep the sanity of their colonists intact, and generally prevent starvation and death. RimWorld is brutally difficult when played with the intended storytellers and difficulty, and its unforgiving nature won’t be for everyone, but there’s a lot of potential satisfaction for those who are willing to learn its systems.

3 Amazing Cultivation Simulator

A Colony Sim Centered Around Feng Shui

Like RimWorld, Amazing Cultivation Simulator has players managing a colony from a top-down perspective, managing their different needs and defending their colony from enemies. However, unlike RimWorld, Amazing Cultivation Simulator is based around Chinese mythology, tasking players with building a sect of disciples, researching and cultivating magical powers, and optimizing their colony’s Feng Shui.

Like in RimWorld, players will manage their colonists as they build and expand their colony. Throughout a playthrough, players will gain new members, research, deal with enemies and events, gather equipment, and manage colonist priorities to create an efficient, sustainable colony.

2 OpenTTD

An Old-School Tycoon Game About Managing Transport

This open-source remake of Chris Sawyer’s 1995 classic Transport Tycoon Deluxe is a business simulation game that tasks players with earning as much money as possible. To do so, they must transport civilians and cargo via several different means: road, rail, water, and air.

In OpenTTD, players will build their money-making transport machines by managing their infrastructure and logistics on a procedurally generated map. To succeed, players must carefully construct various networks to create the most efficient transport systems that they can by overcoming the challenges of city streets, bodies of water, and mountains. The game features online co-op, PvP, and it’s also completely free at the time of writing.

1 Dwarf Fortress

An Unforgiving Fantasy Colony Simulator

This modern classic dwarf-themed game is a colony simulator that has been in constant development for so long and has a scope so large, that it has become a part of gaming legend. Dwarf Fortress is almost synonymous with the management genre, with not only a procedurally generated world but a procedurally generated history for it, too. The game has players managing the survival of their dwarves and building a fortress to defend against various creatures and other factions.

Dwarf Fortress’s complexity comes from its sheer number of systems. Players must balance the happiness of their dwarves with the efficiency and survival of their colony in a harsh world. Dwarf Fortress has never been easy to learn or pleasant to look at, but its Steam version comes with pixel art and music built-in, as well as several in-game tutorials to help ease newcomers into the game.