Sim City 4 is a bit harder than other city building games, so if you are just getting started, it’s not the best game to pick up (I recommend Sim City 2000 instead), but if you are looking for some challenge it’s a must-have. This game almost reflects the life of an actual city. But if you apply a high tax rate on low-income residents, you soon see strikes on the street. For example, if you build a city with high-value residential neighbourhoods, you get more tax money without taking up more space.
My favourite thing about the game is its realism. When you start the game, the tutorials do a pretty good job of covering the basics. No list of best city building games is complete without SimCity, the most popular game in this genre. Because of its larger scale, it’s no surprise that Worlds Builder also has an exploratory element that has you sending out expeditions to discover treasure. You can also build up natural environments like forests as well as urban settlements. As farms and settlements come into the picture, you’re given a much wider toolset of options, including the ability to control forces of nature to shape destinies. How fast your city develops is directly proportional to how much real-world money you invest in it.Īre city-builders not ambitious enough for you? You might want to try Worlds Builder, which has you overlooking an entire world as its God. Free-to-play mechanics operate the same as in other titles in the genre. You’re able to engage in a certain amount of micromanagement, allowing you to plan out individual bus routes among other small-scale tasks. There is one approach that Virtual City Playground sets itself apart, though. You’re tasked with managing your city and building amenities and ensure that growth is supported as your population increases. As a mobile title on iOS and Android, the game plays out very similar to City mania, albeit with 2D sprite graphics instead of polygonal 3D. The biggest criticism we can leverage against Virtual City Playground is that it simply doesn’t do enough to set itself apart in the free-to-play city-builder segment. It’s a great mobile-centric city builder with a unique, painterly aesthetic to its 3D visuals.
BEST CITY BUILDING SIMULATION GAMES FOR FREE
While this can slow down the pace of play for free players, we still suggest giving the game a spin. This is where the free-to-play elements come into the picture-you can buy resources that otherwise take a long time to accumulate. You need to keep your wits about you and scale resource production and residential sites as population and resource pressure increases.
This list answers the questions, "What are the best city-building games?" and "What is the greatest city building game of all time?" If you're looking for a list of games like SimCity then this list is exactly what you need. Popular games like SimCity and Pharaoh are known to many, but there are plenty of great city builders you've probably never heard of.
This list includes all challenging city-building video games that have ever hit the shelves, so it doesn't necessarily have all the more obscure or new city-builder games. If you're a fan of the Settlers franchise in particular, then you'll want to check out this list of the best games from the Settlers series. If you're only familiar with the SimCity franchise, then prepare to find a ton of other games that are less known but equally as fun. Spanning the entire history of the genre, these builders are considered the best in the genre.
BEST CITY BUILDING SIMULATION GAMES MAC
These highly rated city-builder games for PC, mobile, and Mac are ordered by popularity, so only the greatest city-building games are at the top of the list.
The best city building games offer more than enough variety for every type of gamer.