The 14 Best City Building Games of All Time, Ranked

City-building games give players the freedom to design their ideal towns and cities as far as their creativity can take them. But of course, running a city is not just about building residential and economic areas, and a mall or park in between. Such games require planning and resource management to ensure their cities and their denizens prosper.

But of course, there has to be a balance between managing resources and having fun, and some city-building games do just that, much to the delight of their players. Here are some titles that balance fun and fundamentals when it comes to city building.

Updated September 9, 2024, by Hamza Haq: While the city building genre is more niche compared to open-world games or ARPGs, there is more than enough variety to satisfy every gamer’s needs. Classics like Civilization and SimCity will always have their place among the all-time greats, but newer titles are no slouches either, innovating in the field with unique mechanics and new ideas.

14 Townscaper

Metacritic Score: 69

Townscaper is one of the more addictive sandbox city-building games that players can experience. It’s notable for the strikingly endearing Swedish architecture that pops out as players start laying out their towns across the available space.

The game allows players to stack up structures and create larger-than-life towns that capture the European towns that have brick-laden houses and streets. Changing the colors of houses, creating archways and lighthouses, and seeing how high a player can stack a building make Townscaper a relaxing and engaging game that urges players to squeeze their creative juices.

13 Aven Colony

Metacritic Score: 65

• Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
• Release Date: July 25, 2017
• Developer: Mothership Entertainment
• Genre: City Building, Strategy

A truly out-of-this-world game, Aven Colony sees players colonize an alien planet as best as they can. Players land on a specific area that has its own challenges: a frozen landscape, a vast jungle, and an arid desert, to name a few.

Then there’s also contending with the alien lifeforms that may wreak havoc on players’ settlements as well as weird weather that can severely affect players’ cities. Such hazards need to be dealt with on top of keeping their colonies well-fed and becoming prosperous.

12 Manor Lords

Opencritic Score: 72

Manor Lords is a medieval simulation and city builder game where players assume the role of a local lord tasked with populating a large swathe of land with a thriving settlement. Sticking to its roots, the entirety of the game takes place in the medieval era, with the lord’s main concerns being keeping the settlers happy with food, shelter, entertainment, and jobs to earn money.

From the city builder’s aspect, the players decide how to place housing, build roads, create farms, and more. The building system is robust and fits together seamlessly for a neat look. In each campaign, players can also choose to conquer surrounding regions and build new settlements there, creating completely separate entities that don’t rely on each other to survive.

11 Banished

Metacritic Score: 73

• Platform: Microsoft Windows
• Release Date: February 18, 2014
• Developer: Shining Rock Software
• Genre: City Building

While most city-building games have players start from nothing, Banished ups the ante a bit more by having players start with nothing in the Medieval Era. Being banished to the wilderness to fend for themselves, players have to create a small village and work on it until it becomes a veritable city for traders to come in and set up shop.

But apart from making their cities prosperous, players also need to manage their villagers: they will get old, contract an illness, and spread them around. It’s up to the players to oversee who lives and gets shunned in their towns to keep their townsfolk healthy and in good spirits.

10 Caesar 4

Metacritic Score: 74

• Platform: Microsoft Windows
• Release Date: September 28, 2006
• Developer: Tilted Mill Entertainment
• Genre: City Building

For players who want to experience what it was like to be a city planner during the Roman Empire, the Caesar games are just the game for them. Sporting an isometric view, players can plan out how their eventual city-state would look and ensure they would bring prosperity to their domain.

Managing the four ratings of Culture, Prosperity, Peace, and Favor is essential to progress through the games: This is easier said than done, though, since decisions made by players are crucial to keep these ratings at optimal levels.

9 SteamWorld Build

Metacritic Score: 77

SteamWorld Build is a clever city-building game that is set in an old-western world inhabited by quirky yet endearing sentient robots and automatons. Players are tasked with building a bustling city from scratch and making it self-sufficient by adding different kinds of industries where its robot inhabitants can work and produce various goods and services.

Apart from this, players are also given a storyline quest of collecting parts of a rocket to repair it and use it to leave the planet. This part of the game involves players diving deep into different mining areas, collecting resources and raw materials for their industrial buildings, and dealing with some unwanted and dangerous underground denizens en route to finding the missing rocket parts.

8 Surviving Mars

Metacritic Score: 77

When city management on Earth feels old, why not go to Mars? Surviving Mars gives players the opportunity to create a colony on Mars and make it as livable and self-sufficient as possible. This can be done by either employing manpower or using machines to do the terraforming and other tasks for building a settlement.

That said, colonizing Mars provides unique challenges: since there’s no breathable air, players have to keep that in mind when preparing their urban planning schemes. Having renewable sources of electricity and finding water are also important to keep the city up and running.

7 Tropico 6

Metacritic Score: 78

The Tropico games have players take control of a tropical island: it’s their job to make their island and its citizens happy and economically thriving. There are many factors that players need to keep an eye on which industry is the best for their locale, what resources they can capitalize on, and the community’s morale.

It is up to the players whether to dive into industrializing and get more shipyards, or focus on one or a diverse agricultural product to get their island economy started. Some can even use the island itself and make it a tourist destination by building establishments that attract tourists to get capital.

6 Pharaoh: A New Era

Metacritic Score: 79

• Platform: Microsoft Windows
• Release Date: February 15, 2023
• Developer: Dotemu
• Genre: City Building

The era of Ancient Egypt is filled with mystery and magnificence: many people ponder what it was like to live during the time when the Ancient Egyptians were at their prime and were building awe-inspiring monuments like the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx. Those same people can experience that and more when playing the Pharaoh games.

Since the setting of Pharaoh is in Egypt, players have to familiarize themselves with what resources were used for city building during ancient times. Players are tasked to build their kingdom and ensure its people are happy and that the Egyptian culture is prominently displayed for everyone to marvel at and respect.

5 Anno 1800

Metacritic Score: 82

The Anno games have made their unique gameplay mechanic of merging RTS and city building to much more successful. Incorporating their resource management and building mechanics in different era settings made each title a unique one since players have to get familiar with what resources were available during such eras and how to make them profitable.

From the Age of Sail to the distant future and some eras in between, the Anno titles have players deal with era-related challenges of city planning and resource management to much critical acclaim.

4 Frostpunk

Metacritic Score: 86

While all city builder games have a resource management aspect to them, it’s very rare for a game to destroy all of a player’s hard work in building a thriving city in an instant. Frostpunk does exactly that, turning the relatively cozy city building genre on its head by adding hardcore survival mechanics on top of it.

In Frostpunk, the goal is not to create a thriving metropolis; surviving is the best players can hope for. Faced with a nuclear winter, humanity is on the brink of extinction, and the city is the last bulwark before the final tipping point. Resources are rare and coveted; mining for them is arduous, and finding willing labor to take on this grueling task is harder still. Frostpunk also weaves in narrative elements in the gameplay, keeping the matter of humanity’s continued survival from simply becoming a numbers game.

3 SimCity 4

Metacritic Score: 84

The granddaddy of city-building games, the SimCity titles made urban planning fun and exciting for the majority of players. Planning the residential area, business district, and other city features players might want to add is just part of the fun these games provide.

Once players have either properly planned out their metro or would rather start again, they have the option to simulate various natural and unnatural disasters to lay waste in their cities. This comes in the form of hurricanes, typhoons, wildfires, and even an alien invasion.

2 Cities: Skylines

Metacritic Score: 83

Many consider Cities: Skylines to be the successor to SimCity, and for good reason: it took most of the mechanics of existing city builder games and made them more accessible and intuitive. Cities: Skylines has players create their cities from scratch and provide their residents as many creature comforts as they can to keep them happy.

The more milestones players reach, the more new items they unlock and can build on their sprawling city. Expanding the city limits feels rewarding, especially when players manage to purchase more land and connect them via roads or highways. Capitalizing on available natural resources also allows their cities’ economies to grow and make living there a good choice.

1 Against The Storm

Metacritic Score: 92

Against The Storm is a fun title that mixes city building and the roguelike genre into one neat package. It has a simple premise: as the Queen’s Viceroy, players are tasked with establishing settlements in various locations within the territory of the Smoldering City while also trying to seal certain areas to halt the Blightstorm that’s been ravaging the world.

Locations players will begin their settlement vary in terms of what available resources they contain. Players will have to decide before their excursion and during their run which types of villagers and buildings they will need to maximize the limited resources they have and gain Reputation points. This simple loop can get addictive since no one run is the same, and seeing how well a settlement thrives amid tumultuous storms feels rewarding.