Best City Builder Games on Steam
Games about planning, growing, and managing cities, services, roads, and citizens.
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1Cities: Skylines - Cities: Skylines is a modern take on the classic city simulation. The game introduces new game play elements to realize the thrill and hardships of creating and maintaining a real city whilst expanding on some well-established tropes of the city building experience.
Mar 10, 2015
In this game, you can…
- accidentally route sewage outflow into your own drinking-water pumps and watch the whole city get sick from polluted water.
- follow a single named citizen as they commute, work, shop, and chain a metro ride into a bus transfer.
- use mods to expand the playable map far beyond the base size and even fly a plane through your own city.
- lay roads from a lone highway connection and watch empty land turn into neighborhoods with homes, shops, and factories.
- rebuild highway exits and roundabouts until traffic patterns actually change and congestion drops dramatically across the city.
- draw and rename districts, then flip policies like free public transport or no high-rises to reshape how an area develops.
- build a dam that raises the river, then watch the new water level flood whatever neighborhoods you put too close.
- run buses, metros, trains, taxis, cargo ships, and airports, then tune routes so the entire transport network works together.
2RimWorld - A sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Generates stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.
Oct 17, 2018
In this game, you can…
- stockpile hundreds of mortar shells, have one cook off during a raid, and set off a chain reaction that blows half your mountain base apart.
- trap an insect infestation in a sealed room, steal the jelly, and keep repeating until the bugs are basically livestock.
- recruit a cannibal crime lord, feed him nutrient paste, surgically add retractable claws, and rename him C.A.N.N.I.B.A.L.
- start as a lone 74-year-old scientist, build cleaning robots, survive a siege, then install turrets and replace your colonists with bionics.
- watch a pet rat jump a raider, die in the fight, and still make the raider bleed out from the wounds.
- build layered turrets, combat cyborgs, and war animals, then have a horde of manhunting tortoises chew through the perimeter and overwhelm the whole plan.
- turn a prisoner into a walking happiness beacon by installing mood tech, then keep them around as a mobile morale boost.
- amputate an infected foot by hitting it with a jade club.
3Factorio - Factorio is a game about building and creating automated factories to produce items of increasing complexity, within an infinite 2D world. Use your imagination to design your factory, combine simple elements into ingenious structures, and finally protect it from the creatures who don't really like you.
Aug 14, 2020
In this game, you can…
- lay down a base blueprint and have hundreds of flying robots swarm out to build the whole thing for you.
- turn your own pollution into a trigger for escalating alien attacks, then answer with turrets, flamethrowers, laser walls, and artillery.
- watch one slow belt starve a whole smelter line, then chase the fix into new mines, defenses, trains, and a bigger power grid.
- go from chopping trees by hand to a coal-powered setup that keeps crafting grenades while you're off building elsewhere.
- tear down a working factory and rebuild the entire layout at once using thousands of construction robots.
- build a rail network that connects distant mines and outposts, then run multiple trains through it without crashes or jams.
- unlock an oil chain that forces you to refine, crack, and route multiple fluids just to keep science production fed.
- create a factory so huge you can't fully understand it anymore, with belts looping for miles just to feed one machine.
- build an automated machine empire that can run overnight while robots repair, haul, and keep production moving.
4Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - 42 Civilizations, 229 Campaign Missions, Singleplayer, Co-Op, Multiplayer, In-Game Editor, Mods, Cross-play...It is good to be the king.
Nov 14, 2019
In this game, you can…
- watch a monk convert your knights mid-fight, and they instantly switch sides.
- tell AI teammates what units to train, where to build, and what target to attack.
- play voice-acted historical campaigns like Saladin or Joan of Arc, and even run some of those missions in co-op.
- auto-explore the map with your scout.
- collapse buildings into rubble when they're destroyed, instead of just disappearing.
- queue unit production and technologies at the same time, so upgrades don't pause your momentum.
- skip the early setup and jump straight into fighting with a mode that starts after the opening minutes.
- race a campaign mission timer by destroying every castle in a city in under 30 minutes.
5Frostpunk - Frostpunk is the first society survival game. As the ruler of the last city on Earth, it is your duty to manage both its citizens and infrastructure. What decisions will you make to ensure your society's survival? What will you do when pushed to breaking point? Who will you become in the process?
Apr 24, 2018
In this game, you can…
- replace whole work crews with automatons that work all night and don't care about the cold.
- sign laws that let you put children to work in mines, kitchens, and coal piles to keep the city alive.
- build watchtowers, propaganda centers, and prisons, then run the city on fear when hope and warmth stop working.
- build a city in rings around a single coal generator.
- push the generator into overdrive as the cold keeps dropping, and gamble on upgrades before it fails.
- send scouts into the frozen wasteland for survivors and supplies, knowing the storm can wipe them out mid-trip.
- let refugees in wave after wave, then decide who gets left outside to die when space and food run out.
6Age of Empires II (Retired) - Age of Empires II has been re-imagined in high definition. With the release of Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, this product will not be updated further.
Apr 9, 2013
In this game, you can…
- convert enemy soldiers so they instantly switch sides mid-battle.
- raise the population cap to 500 and flood the map with armies big enough to change your entire battle plan.
- win without conquering everyone by guarding a king, collecting relics, or building and defending a wonder.
- mass monks behind walls, upgrade them into tanky converters, then march out stealing whole armies while they chant.
- watch monks on both sides convert the same troops back and forth until someone breaks the stalemate with a surprise demolition squad.
- set up two markets far apart and generate more gold from trade just because the route is longer.
- fire a mangonel shot into a clump of archers and flatten them all at once.
- play campaigns as famous historical leaders like Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, or Joan of Arc.
7Planet Zoo - Build a world for wildlife in Planet Zoo. From the developers of Planet Coaster and Zoo Tycoon comes the ultimate zoo sim. Construct detailed habitats, manage your zoo, and meet authentic living animals who think, feel and explore the world you create around them.
Nov 5, 2019
In this game, you can…
- have an antelope herd get spooked, jump the fence into the guest crowd, and trigger a full-on panic as people sprint for the exits.
- select breeders by multiple genetic traits, track rare genes through family lines, and end up with unusual offspring like albinos.
- rotate, overlap, and clip building pieces to make custom shops and restaurants, then save them as blueprints to reuse in other zoos.
- zoom in and just watch lemurs or red pandas roam, with lifelike animations and realistic calls.
- dig rivers and lakes, raise mountains, carve caves, and build a huge custom zoo for hours with no money pressure.
- build a habitat from scratch, tune humidity and planting, add enrichment and climbing, then watch the animal move in and thrive.
- save a custom restaurant as a blueprint, then drop it into other zoos and blend it into whatever theme you're building.
- release new generations back into the wild after breeding them, so your zoo's animals become part of a continuing lineage.
8Dyson Sphere Program - Build the most efficient intergalactic factory in space simulation strategy game Dyson Sphere Program! Harness the power of stars, collect resources, plan and design production lines and develop your interstellar factory from a small space workshop to a galaxy-wide industrial empire.
Jan 20, 2021
In this game, you can…
- lift off a planet and fly to another one with no loading screens.
- launch parts into space and watch a Dyson Sphere grow around a star, layer by layer, until it's visible from the ground.
- set up drones and ships that automatically move parts between planets while you build elsewhere.
- cover an entire planet in factories, then move on to build whole specialized production planets in the same system.
- wrap a belt line all the way around a planet's equator and let it feed projects on the far side.
- build solar panel rings and then fill orbit with thousands of solar sails.
- unlock warp travel and jump to other star systems, visit a black hole, then return with rare resources.
- save a factory layout as a blueprint and stamp the same module down across planet after planet.
9Planet Coaster - Planet Coaster® - the future of coaster park simulation games has arrived! Surprise, delight and thrill incredible crowds as you build your coaster park empire - let your imagination run wild, and share your success with the world.
Nov 17, 2016
In this game, you can…
- import your own music for a ride, then sync it with triggered signs, sound effects, and events to build a fully themed attraction.
- reshape the terrain into mountains, lakes, caverns, and even floating islands, then run coasters above ground and through underground tunnels.
- watch security cameras as guards catch pickpockets and escort vandals out of your park.
- ride every attraction in first-person, then swap to cameras around the park to watch guests experience what you built.
- download other players' full parks and coasters, then jump in and ride famous themed creations people recreated.
- time your coaster block sections so a train slides into the station exactly as the last one clears, with load and unload perfectly synced.
- use object clipping to turn random scenery into custom structures, like repurposing a snowman's pipe into a working turnstile.
- build a 300–400 foot coaster using real-world coaster styles, then test it and tweak the layout until the ratings work.
10Jurassic World Evolution 2 - Jurassic World Evolution 2 is the much-anticipated sequel to Frontier’s highly successful Jurassic World Evolution. This bold new era in the Jurassic World Evolution game franchise builds upon the ground-breaking and immersive 2018 management simulation.
Nov 9, 2021
In this game, you can…
- drive a tour truck full of guests straight through a raptor enclosure.
- build a park, release an Indoraptor in sandbox, and watch it go on a park-wide killing spree as the rating collapses.
- travel across the U.S. in the campaign to locate wild dinosaurs, then either rescue them on-site or have them captured through an expedition center.
- pause mid-breakout, send a team to tranquilize a loose T. rex, repair the smashed fence, then airlift it back before it wakes up.
- have a helicopter tranquilize a velociraptor right on the gyro track, then deal with the ride getting attacked again anyway.
- run your research and breeding by staffing named scientists with traits, skills, and rest needs, juggling who works genetics, medicine, or emergencies.
- watch dinosaurs claim territory, fight for dominance, and play out longer combat animations that change how enclosures and group sizes behave.
- get hammered by storms that wreck buildings, knock out infrastructure, and trigger breakouts that can spiral into a full-park emergency.
