Best Colony Sim Games on Steam
Games about managing settlers, needs, disasters, work, and emergent community stories.
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1RimWorld - 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.
2Oxygen Not Included - Oxygen Not Included is a space-colony simulation game. Deep inside an alien space rock your industrious crew will need to master science, overcome strange new lifeforms, and harness incredible space tech to survive, and possibly, thrive.
Jul 30, 2019
In this game, you can…
- see gases behave like real layers, with oxygen drifting, carbon dioxide sinking, and rooms turning into live pressure puzzles.
- build a closed-loop bathroom where toilets flush into a tank, sewage gets treated, and the whole colony runs on recycled waste.
- turn a steam vent, a cold biome, or a magma lake into an engine: melt ice by accident, boil sewage into steam on purpose, and pull clean water back out.
- trigger a domino disaster by digging one wrong tile and watching your water supply flood straight into sewage.
- run out of oxygen, switch to water-based oxygen, add coal for power, then pile on more machines that eat that same water and power until everything depends on everything.
- move heat around the asteroid with cooling loops, pump super-cold liquid through walls, and redesign farms when rising temperature starts killing crops.
- launch a rocket to space after hundreds of cycles of building, surviving, automating, and finally reaching the top of the asteroid.
3Frostpunk - 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.
4Cult of the Lamb - Start your own cult in a land of false prophets, venturing out into diverse and mysterious regions to build a loyal community of woodland Followers and spread your Word to become the one true cult.
Aug 11, 2022
In this game, you can…
- tell a follower about the afterlife, let them volunteer to die for you, and watch a tentacled void drag them away mid-ritual.
- recruit enemies and even bosses you just defeated, then decide whether to marry them, humiliate them, chain them up, or keep them working.
- start a romance quest for a follower, botch the love spell, still hold the wedding, and then get asked to arrange a fight to the death with their crush.
- get executed as a sacrificial lamb, then get resurrected by an imprisoned god who hands you a crown.
- build a cult camp with farms and kitchens, then sprint back from dungeon runs to feed, shelter, and sermonize so your cult powers up combat.
- marry followers, kiss them for loyalty, then sacrifice or resurrect them later when it suits your cult.
- revive a dead follower, gift them a longer lifespan, promote them into leadership, then imprison and re-educate them when they resist.
- run fast combat dungeons where you swap weapons and curses on the fly, stack tarot-style buffs, and learn bosses' patterns to topple four bishops.
5SPORE™ - Be the architect of your own universe with Spore, an exciting single-player adventure. From Single Cell to Galactic God, evolve your creature in a universe of your own creations.
Dec 19, 2008
In this game, you can…
- start as a microscopic cell, eat your way bigger, and end up running a spacefaring empire.
- design a species from scratch, then watch those body choices change what you can do in every later stage.
- spend days befriending the Grox, succeed, and trigger a galaxy-wide dogpile because everyone else wants you dead.
- try to befriend another creature by dancing, get laughed at, and decide to make it extinct instead.
- build a tribe, craft tools, equip weapons and instruments, and either conquer neighbors or win them over socially.
- take over a planet in vehicles, pushing conquest through military, economy, religion, and trade.
- reach space and get an explorable galaxy of star systems where you can trade, conquer, and hunt for artifacts.
- create your own missions and custom adventures with an in-game editor and play them like mini campaigns.
6WorldBox - God Simulator - WorldBox is the ULTIMATE god simulator and sandbox game. A petri dish for your fantasy civilizations. Create your own world or destroy it using many powers. Watch civilizations grow, form kingdoms, colonize new lands, sail to far continents, wars to ignite, empires to fall and towns to burn!
Dec 2, 2021
In this game, you can…
- give grasshoppers sapience with monoliths, watch them churn through a hundred kingdoms in a year, then somehow invent agriculture and windmills.
- curse the world so every death leaves a wandering wraith haunting the land for the rest of history.
- drop a landlocked orc tribe into a mountain bowl and watch them still research boats and set up maritime trade routes.
- watch cats become a shoreline empire so influential that other species start naming their children and cities in catlike words.
- build a wall between two civilizations, fast-forward time, then smash it down and trigger instant mass slaughter.
- give a single person immortality and every trait, make them king, and watch them conquer a 78x53 landmass while surviving plagues and gods.
- edit the genes of an entire species at once, then watch them develop their own building style and start conquering other civilizations.
7My Singing Monsters - Dive into the Musical World of My Singing Monsters! Breed them, feed them, listen to them sing! Breed & collect a menagerie of Monsters, each a living instrument! Build your paradise across 35+ Islands, customize your world, and enjoy endless music! There's never a dull moment in the Monster World!
Mar 24, 2021
In this game, you can…
- build a song by placing monsters until new melodies emerge and the loop turns into a full island-sized composition.
- mute individual monsters or change their volume so the same island plays a different arrangement on demand.
- move your monsters into a separate battle island to fight in quest-style turn-based battles and win new costumes.
- breed monsters with hatch times that range from hours to weeks, chasing rare results with tiny odds that can take repeated attempts.
- send monsters you've raised to a separate Gold Island, then start rebuilding new ensembles back on your other islands again.
- play daily minigames like memory, spin, and scratch to earn rewards while the monsters shout their sounds back at you.
- set up coin-earning monsters and place mines that generate diamonds each day, then reinvest into more islands, buildings, and upgrades.
- collect over 250 monsters with unique sounds, then watch your island become a living chorus as each one joins the track.
8Banished - In this city-building strategy game, you control a group of exiled travelers who decide to restart their lives in a new land. They have only the clothes on their backs and a cart filled with supplies from their homeland. The townspeople of Banished are your primary resource.
Feb 18, 2014
In this game, you can…
- accept nomads into a town hall and watch your food reserves collapse overnight.
- run out of tools and have your economy grind to a halt within a year.
- have a lone 22-year-old woman become the foundation of a town for 60 years.
- watch a fire jump barn to barn and wipe out 20,000 food.
- get one missed harvest and end up with people starving and freezing before you can grow food again.
- survive a brutal mountain start where the last person finishes a house just in time.
- lose your entire winter-coat supply because a sick herd forces you to slaughter all your sheep.
- watch a town recover from near-extinction because three survivors were still alive at the end.
9Kingdom Two Crowns - Gather coins, build defenses and reclaim your fallen Kingdom. Explore and uncover secrets, unlock new technologies and protect your crown versus waves of Greed monsters that come at night. Kingdom is a solo or co-op micro-strategy and tower defense game set in an atmospheric pixel world.
Dec 11, 2018
In this game, you can…
- prepare an assault force, enter a portal, and set off a bomb that destroys the cliff portal and permanently changes the island.
- swap to a different monarch mid-run by paying coins at a stained-glass building, and each one has a unique power.
- turn into a swarm of bats and zip across the land at high speed.
- create a duplicate of yourself a short distance ahead, then stack it with a mount ability for a doubled combo.
- freeze a whole wave of enemies in front of you for a few seconds, buying time to escape or let your archers clean up.
- build the boat once, then hop in and travel between islands while keeping much of your progress.
- upgrade peasants into organized squads with squires and knights, then send them out to clash with portal enemies instead of just defending walls.
- ride an undead steed that summons barriers to block enemy advance, or use a giant beetle mount that lays traps.
10Against the Storm - A dark fantasy city builder where you must rebuild civilization in the face of apocalyptic rains. As the Queen’s Viceroy, lead humans, beavers, lizards, foxes, and harpies to reclaim the wilderness and secure a future for civilization's last survivors.
Dec 8, 2023
In this game, you can…
- pause anytime, pick up most buildings, and relocate them without penalty to rebuild your whole layout mid-crisis.
- open a new glade and immediately get stuck with a timed curse or ruin you have to deal with.
- draft only a few random buildings each run, even if they don't match what you can currently make.
- burrow through the forest to uncover new glades.
- burn down an abandoned temple or restore it for different consequences and rewards.
- turn one food into many by swapping ingredients, like making skewers from meat, eggs, mushrooms, or larvae.
- run one town with multiple species that want different luxuries and excel at different jobs.
- win a settlement, take permanent upgrades back to your hub city, then launch another expedition with a totally different opening puzzle.
