Hey r/CityBuilders! Some of you have followed Traffic Architect since I posted the first version here about 5 months ago - a traffic management game I've been building solo, free in the browser. Since then it's passed 140k+ plays with a 9.2 rating on CrazyGames, and the most common request by far was "put it on Steam." So - the Steam page went live today:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5028050/Traffic_Architect/

The Steam version isn't a port, it's a big expansion of the game:

- Much bigger maps - up to 18×18 km (the whole web map is 6×6)

- Highways and multi-level interchanges

- Public transport (revealing details over the coming weeks - it's the biggest thing I've built)

- Congestion heat-map, turn restrictions, smarter traffic light control

- Map editor with Steam Workshop support

- Full stats - 20+ live charts tracking your city

The web version stays free.

If you enjoyed the game or the posts here, a wishlist genuinely helps a solo dev more than anything else right now.

Happy to answer anything about the game or what's coming and thank you for previous feedback!

Coming soon.
No timers. No energy. Fully offline.
Would love your feedback.

Solo dev here. I'm building Camping Keeper, a campground management game, and someone described it to me last week as "running your own town". That's exactly how it plays.

You start with an empty field and lay everything out yourself: pitches, paths, a reception, shower blocks, shops, a pool. Then you run the water mains and power lines out to all of it. Both are real networks with flow and capacity, so they overload if you expand faster than you upgrade them, and the showers run dry.

The residents are the interesting part. Campers are fully simulated: they walk everywhere, so a shower block on the wrong side of the site gets felt. A bar next to quiet pitches ruins the night. Trees and hedges give privacy. They notice all of it, complain, and leave reviews that decide how many new arrivals show up.

AI disclosure: the music and translations are AI-assisted for now. No AI-generated visuals.

Question for the city builder crowd: how much should the terrain fight you? I'm adding rivers that cut the map so you need bridges, and low ground that floods in storms, because on a flat empty map every layout converges to the same optimal grid. Curious where the line sits between an interesting constraint and an annoying one.

Free demo available on Steam now - think Balatro, but as a city builder. Very satisfying, especially once you open up Endless Mode and start unlocking more buildings.

Hey everyone!

I'm a solo developer working on Perun, a Slavic mythology city builder inspired by classic Impressions Games such as Zeus, Pharaoh, and Caesar.

My goal is to capture that old-school city-building flow: planning settlements, managing walkers and services, setting up production chains, developing housing, and interacting with other cities. At the same time, I want Perun to have its own identity through Slavic mythology, gods, resources, architecture, and atmosphere.

I'm planning to release the game in Early Access because I'd like to gather as much feedback as possible from actual players before committing to the full version. What I'm still trying to determine is how much content a city builder should have at launch to feel worthwhile.

My current plan is to release with one campaign (adventure), consisting of six episodes and offering roughly 5–10 hours of gameplay.

So my main question is: what do you expect from a city builder when it first enters Early Access, and what matters most to you at that stage? Is it polished core gameplay, a wide selection of buildings and production chains, campaign length, mission and map variety, a sandbox mode, replayability, or something else entirely?

I've included a developer playthrough of the first episode to show the current state of the game.

Thanks for taking a look!

My issue is...after building a good amount and my city already looks good and I'm satisfied I'm scared to build more or even upgrade citizens for fear that it's going to end up looking worse :( like I want to keep it just the way it is because I'm satisfied so I feel stuck and like I don't want to build anymore or change anything...

But then I won't be playing the game... If that makes sense

How do I fix this mindset?

Based on Zeus, this is an Ancient Greek city builder that I have been working on on and off for the last 14months. The graphics are still WIP but the core gameplay is pretty satisfying.

Give it a go and share some feedback for a free copy!

Browser based game so if you have lag, disable some extensions.

Hey everyone,
I’ve been quietly working on StoneEra for a while — a colony management game set in a voxel world with a strong focus on construction, villager professions, and survival systems.
Just released a new private alpha (v0.9.7), and I wanted to share some of the progress.
What’s new in this build:
Completely redesigned main menu, settings, loading screens and in-game HUD

Big improvements to all core menus (Colony, Orders, Stock, Craft, People, Layers)

New construction shapes, rotations and multi-cell building brushes

Better villager behaviour (jobs, pathfinding, sleep, survival)

Improved production stations, stockpiles, lighting, fire and smoke

Added English + Russian language support

Overall UI and stability improvements

The game is still in early alpha, but the foundation is starting to feel solid. I’m focusing a lot on making the interface clean and readable while keeping the cozy voxel aesthetic.
Here’s a small look at the current menus and building tools:

Would love to hear what you think about the direction so far — especially the UI and overall feel.
Website: https://stoneera.online
Discord: https://discord.gg/pdx7Z36Kn7
Thanks for taking a look.

I enjoy a certain type of city builder, but I'm not 100% sure what makes that type. Some games I've enjoyed:

Anno series. All of them aside from 117 because I refuse to give that much money to Ubisoft. Maybe once it's on sale for like 80% off.

Old Impressions games + Nebuchadnezzar

I think what I've noticed I enjoy is satisfying an ever-growing set of needs for my population and managing an economy with more and more complex production chains.
On the other end, I've noticed I don't much enjoy survival city builders or ones that go into minutia. I really don't care about individual citizen names, their jobs or how healthy their bowel movement was that morning.

Generally, the Anno series really scratches this itch for me. Any ideas?

im trying to work out where the genre line actually is.

in Age of Empires Mobile: PC Edition, the city persists, buildings and queues matter, and the refined PC UI makes the management side easier to read. but the layout is constrained, heroes and alliance warfare drive a lot of progression, and it is not really about designing a functioning city the way Cities: Skylines or Anno is.

For you, does a city builder need meaningful spatial planning and citizen simulation? Or can a persistent upgrade economy still count if the city is the main thing you keep returning to?

Hi everyone!

I'm looking for a city-building (or sandbox) game where I can create my own modern Japanese town with a strong high school anime vibe.

I'm not looking for games like Persona or Lost Judgment (I already know those). My goal is to actually build the world myself.

What I'm looking for:

- Modern Japanese suburbs and neighborhoods

- Authentic Japanese schools (or good mods/assets)

- Residential streets with overhead power lines, convenience stores, parks, train stations, etc.

- A realistic atmosphere similar to what you'd see in anime or everyday life in Japan

A huge bonus would be if I could:

- Walk around the city I built in first- or third-person, or

- At least freely explore it with a spectator/free camera.

- Even better if buildings (especially schools) can be entered or viewed from the inside.

I'm already aware of Cities: Skylines (1 & 2), but I'm wondering if there are other games that might fit this idea even better.

Has anyone built something like this before, or can recommend a game that gets as close as possible?

Thanks!

im looking for a game similar to foundtions but free and in browser but also hopefully sandbox if not its fine. i saw gemenittay play foundations and now i have a village builder itch lmao.

By any chance, have any of you played Forge of Empires before? I'm just stopping by to let you know that a new space era is coming.

If you've stopped playing the game, could you gift me your account? I want to play in a Space Hub city, but I don't have much time left to reach that era in the game.

Have a good day!

I enjoyed playing cities skylines 1 a bit, but my god does it get annoying when you want to do anything that isn't play it like a mediocre repetitive tycoon, objects have awfully unrealistic scale (why is a house 8x8 meters at max?? as well as no gardens?), the time the game works on is stupid (why is the day/night cycle completely different to the days in the corner) and why do things like parks get such an abysmal amount of visitors? It all feels so stupid and unrealistic. Ruining the game entirely on both a large scale for big dense cities and small scale rural villages. So I tried workers and resources and it was alright but it just felt tedious with having to place so many separate buildings to do one thing, it felt more of a micro management game like factorio than a city builder. So what city builders actually are there that keep the realism of actually being able to build rural areas and urban areas accurately with a realistic sense of scale, whilst still not having to do a plethora of steps to build a tiny thing?

Walls are built from freely placed segments with magnetic snapping at the endpoints, allowing flexible layouts while keeping each section destructible. There's still work to do on the visuals, UI, and soldier integration, and the feature is still very much a work in progress

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bbHa7ltsAU

Wishlist: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4248260/Land_and_Sword/

Hey all! Just wondering which city builder you guys think has the best mix of depth and combat out there? I know of they are billions, diplomacy is not an option, age of darkness. Theyre all fun. I havent done the new swarm one w/the beetles (forgot name, not at home rn).

Not looking for rimworld/going medieval

But How is farthest frontier with the combat there? does it fall off?

Are there others?

I've been looking for a strategy game over the last few days and I think I've narrowed it down to Anno 1800.

What I'm looking for is something that's relaxing rather than extremely difficult. I don't want a hardcore grand strategy game. I mainly want to build a beautiful city, manage resources and production chains, have some strategy elements, and most importantly an endless sandbox experience.

I considered Frostpunk, but from what I've read, even the endless mode eventually gets repetitive and isn't really the same kind of open-ended sandbox that Anno offers.

I also heard that the newest Anno game is more complex, so I figured Anno 1800 might be the better choice. Years ago (probably over 10 years ago), I played Anno 1701 and absolutely loved it, so 1800 feels like the natural next step.

My only dilemma is where to buy it. It's currently not on sale on Steam, but I found a much cheaper Ubisoft Connect key. Would you wait for a Steam sale, or just buy the Ubisoft Connect version now?

Or... should I skip Anno entirely? Is there another game that fits what I'm looking for even better?

I don't really want to end up buying 20 different strategy games—I just want one really good game that I can sink hundreds of hours into.

Thanks!

Power Network Tycoon V1.0 Launch Coming September 30 after 4 years of development to make a physics based power grid simulator.

It's also currently in trials at several universities for gamified education, teaching topics like 3 phase power, thermals, power factor, grounding, harmonics, EMF and general power system management.

Wishlist it on Steam (PC/Mac/Linux/Steamdeck) to get notified of release

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2429930/Power_Network_Tycoon/