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The 20 best building games on PCFortify your game library
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Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Frontier / Paradox Interactive / Gamera Games
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Frontier / Paradox Interactive / Gamera Games
From our first years we know what it means to build. As babies we’re given clacky wooden blocks and colourful Duplo bricks. We are architects long before we are capable eaters of raw carrot. If you’re anything like the staff of RPS, you’ve not outgrown the habit of child-like town planning. Yes, building games often take a managerial approach (at least many on this list do), but a sense of play is always present. It’s there when you draw out a road inCities Skylines, just to watch it populate with toy-like traffic. When you brick up another hole in your mightyStrongholdto fend off enemy swordsmen. When you painstakingly dig a trench for water to flow inTimberborn, just like you did all those years ago on the beach, in an effort to stop the tide washing away your sandcastles. You’ll find all these games and more on our list. So here you go: the best building games on PC.
There were some rules to follow. Games had to have some kind of “eye in the sky” camera view, we decided. That meansMinecraft,Space Engineersand the like don’t qualify. Maybe that’ll change in future updates. But for now, we’re taking a godlike viewpoint as the primo perspective for constructing. RTS games with an emphasis on waging war also see less attention (but some do still appear). We’ve also broken the list down into a few sub-categories. “Building” is quite a broad theme, after all. So our list of the 20 best building games on PC is split into four sections, each covering one angle of this big, messy genre.
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Best city building games
Games about building cities, where you’re working on too grand a scale to care about the individual lives of your ant-like citizens.
Cities: Skylines
Image credit:Paradox Interactive
What else should I be playing:The obvious answer is the SimCity series, of whichSimCity 4is the best, but there’s a crop of interesting newer contenders too - Theotown is a decent title that’s also on mobile, and my personal pick isNewCity, which is a bit old-school and rough around the edges, but has a really impressive sense of scale.
The challenger that became the champion of “realistic” city builders, Paradox’s Cities: Skylines grew up in the genre shadow ofSimCity, and ended up eclipsing it almost entirely. Skylines nailed so many of the issues crucial to simulating the construction of modern cities, with its suite of road placement and traffic mechanics being something of a masterpiece, and solid systems for zoning, public transport, and all those other things that sound dull on paper but become day-eatingly engrossing once you’ve gotten stuck in.
C:S is as versatile as they come, with virtually any city design being possible with a bit of thought. If there’s a price to pay for this, it’s that it’s very sandboxy to play, without many definite objectives in sight. But if that’s an issue for you, or if you find you’ve reached your appetite for the possibilities of the base game, there’s such a vast catalogue of official DLC and community-built mods, that you’re never going to run out of new ways to build.
Frostpunk
What else should I be playing:There’s really nothing much like Frostpunk for its combination of city builder satisfaction, beauty, and narrative weight, but in terms of the actual feel of play, there’s a suite of smaller-scale, apocalyptic build ‘em ups that are worth a punt. Both Buoyancy andFlotsamare early access games with a very Kevin-Costner’s-Waterworld theme, whileCliff Empiresees you building cities across pillars rising from nuclear fog, andSurviving The Aftermathis essentially a townbuilder with big Fallout vibes.
Frostpunkis a gorgeous punch to the gut. You’re in a steampunkish, Victorian setting that’s so well-realised that it avoids the usual cogs-and-twee-banter cringiness of the subgenre, and you’re in big trouble. The world is getting colder and colder at aterrifyingrate, and somehow you’ve got to build a city that can survive it, using whatever manpower you can scrounge from the devastation around you. The sense of dread and desperation is relentless, but that makes the moments of progress and achievement all the sweeter.
Timberborn
What else should I be playing:Terra Nil is another town builder with a theme of sustainability.
Beavers have replaced humanity and, let’s be honest, it is for the best. One of the glories ofTimberbornis that you can build your settlement up, rather than just out. Stacking timber blocks on top of one another to create bridges and pathways for your wee mammal mates to saunter across on their way to the nearest tree farm. And farm trees you shall, for the beavers will chow down on lumber at their characteristically alarming rate. It’s necessary though, as seasonal changes bring a drought that will dry up the waterways and leave your earth parched.
The trick here is that the neo-beavers of earth’s green future do not simply stop at building stuff. They will alter the landscape in other ways, like using explosives to dig out new channels in the earth, directing the flow of water wherever they dam well please (little beaver joke for you there). And since its release in 2021, the game has alos added thechallenge of dealing with toxic water. Don’t worry, you’ll find a way to deal with it. “Timberborn, you see, is not just about surviving the drought,” said Sinin one article. “It’s about how the drought teaches you what you’re capable of if you learn how to look at what’s around you.”
Anno 1800
What else should I be playing:There’s six other installments in Ubisoft’s Anno series, covering eight centuries from 1404 to 2205, and although there are some misses among the hits, they all have their merits. Alternatively, if it’s the island-hopping construction theme that appeals to you and you don’t mind a tonal shift, tryTropico 6, or the ever-so-relaxingIslanders.
Anno 1800sees you building cities across multiple islands in - surprise! - the year 1800. The actual city building is solid but not revolutionary, but what makes it special is the fascinating set of mechanics involved in managing settlements at different levels of development across multiple landmasses. And then the real fun starts, as theNew Worldopens up, allowing you to spread onto a whole new map with its own resources and rules.
It’s a game that gives you a lot of plates to spin: as well as your multiple settlements, you’ll have trade routes to manage, choose-you-own-adventure style quest minigames to play, and even limited RTS naval combat to conduct against AI adversaries and pirates. But once you’ve got the hang of the pacing, this simply means you’ll rarely have a dull moment, or find yourself stuck for something to do while waiting for resources to accrue. It’s delightful to look at to boot, with lush beaches strewn everywhere, and cities that are actually worth zooming in to view up close.
Surviving Mars
What else should I be playing:The nearest experience to Surviving Mars is probably Offworld Trading Company, further down this list.
It’s the sense of constant, infinitesimal progress that I love. Changing the entire surface of a planet is an eye-wateringly huge job, and so you have to start it when your settlement is tiny and new. At that point, before you’ve got the wherewithal for massive planetary engineering, it feels like pissing in the wind - but it adds up over time. When you look up from the water management crisis you’ve been trying to fix for half an hour and seeactual greenon the landscape, it’s magic, and it captures the slow-burn joy of maintaining a garden in the most unexpected way.
Best base building games
Games about building up and fortifying a base in the face of things that want to wreck it.
Factorio
Image credit:Wube Software
What else should I be playing:Factorio inspired a whole slew of automation-themed builders, but the two most worth a shout areSatisfactory, if you fancy doing your factory things in first person, andFactory Townif you’d prefer to do them in a jollier, 3D world.
And somehow, through the sheer brilliance of its design, Factorio makes this infinitely less daunting than it should be. The game coaxes you towards this feat of engineering through thousands of tiny increments; minorEurekaethat stack up until you look back at what you’ve done in all its immensity, and feel like a genius. Be warned, though: it is engrossing. RPS bossman Graham, in fact, sees Factorio as less of a game and more of a curse: a dark bit of magic that makes time vanish without the player ever being aware it has passed. Let the machine suck you in.
They Are Billions
What else should I be playing:TAB is a Tower Defence game at heart, and the world of Tower Defence games is vast and full of mobile game bollocks. Mind you, there are some treats out there - consider theCreeper Worldseries, or if you want some unashamedly basic fun, ye olde (original)Plants Vs Zombies.
Much like Frostpunk,They Are Billionsis a bleak game about fending off overwhelming adversity with Victorian ingenuity, only here the Steampunk is a bit hammier, and instead of the cold, there are a huge, huge, huge number of zombies. They might notactuallybe billions, but when they rush your base they seem more like a liquid than a mass of individual attackers, so gregarious are they. And of course, the game is largely about building the walls, turrets and soldiers that will stop them from adding your citizens to their big, hungry party.
But it’s not just tower defence; you also have to build the economy that will supply the material for your fortifications, house the workers to make it function, and keep them alive and well. What results is a fascinating double-layered game, where you end up playing a robust little city builder, at the same time as you’re conducting a titanic, permanent last stand at the outer wall. Two great tastes that go well together, in my opinion.
Dyson Sphere Program
What else should I be playing:Satisfactory scratches a similar itch, but is played entirely in first-person perspective.
What’s cooler than global logistics chains? Multiglobal logistics chains, that’s what.Dyson Sphere Programis most easily summarised as “Factorio on multiple spherical planets”. It’s a horrendously large-scale factory building game with Icarus-sized ambitions. You literally want to harvest the sun.
Other games, given this brief, might try to simplify things. Not so, Dy-Sphere-Pro. Here, even the solar system you jet within (as a little mechsuit dude) is fully simulated with working orbits. Some planets are tidally locked to the sun, making half of their surface prime real estate for uninterrupted solar panels. Others are big and roomy, giving your factories more space to set up huge chains of production lines. And all this is before you take into account the travel times between each planet, and how those travel times can stretch and contract according to the seasonal whims of gravity. Complexity matters in a game like this, which made it both exciting and terrifying when developers Youthcatadded a computer-controlled enemy to the game, requiring a whole other layer of combat-focused production. Please, Dyson Sphere Program. Stop. I’m begging you. Stop.
Thronefall
Image credit:GrizzlyGames
What else should I be playing:Islanders is another minimalist builder from the same creator.
What if you didn’t need to decidewhereto build things? But onlywhatto build. That sounds daft, right? Wrong. In minimalist tower defence gameThronefall, half of the decisions are made for you, and yet the challenge remains. As a tiny king on horseback, you waddle around each level using a limited stash of gold coins to build archery towers, barracks, mines, windmills, houses, and more. The catch being that you don’t get to plop down your buildings in any old place. They simply appear in a ghostly form, prompting you with a simple decision: spend cash, or move on.
The limitation is part of the appeal, as it boils down the defendy genre to its economic essence. Every night you defend your forts, and every morning you hoover up gold from mines and taxed citizens, waddling around like Don Quixote on a quest to decide which wall is most important. The incoming waves are clearly signposted making it something of a pre-ordained puzzle, but one with martial leeway, since you can still rally troops to certain spots, and your king will do some brawling himself. If you’re looking for total creative freedom, it’s maybe not the right pick. But as a focused palette cleanse between other building games, it may be just the ticket.
Stronghold HD
What else should I be playing:Stronghold’s particular brand of castle obsession only really exists in the rest of the Stronghold series, where Crusader is probably the best of the bunch so far, but Warlords is out in September 2020, at which point all bets are off.
There are plenty of scenarios included, as well as a multiplayer mode, but the true pleasure ofStrongholdis its meaty campaign, which pits you against a number of varied challenges - some buildy, some defendy, and some attacky - with the eventual aim of defeating your nemesis, Wolf Off Of Gladiators. At its best, it’s Helm’s Deep with stiffly-animated knights instead of orcs, and there’s a lot of fun to be had in working out where to put your curtain walls, siege weapons, and nightmarish fire traps.
Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition
What else should I be playing:AoE2’s successors, Age of Empires III and Age of Mythology, are both well-above-average RTS efforts, and if you’re after a strange blend of AoE2 and the Civ series, you need to check out Rise of Nations. And if you want to get extremely silly, there’s always Red Alert 2.
Quite simply, a cracking strategy game: superbly balanced, perfectly paced, and offering just the right mix of economic and military play. It had a superb scenario editor built-in, a great soundtrack, and a colourful medieval aesthetic that aged at least as well as Starcraft’s space one. Definitive Edition, however, is more than justAge Of Empires 2’s glammed-up zombie. It’s a giant sexy Frankenstein, with various separate expansions and a whole castle full of brand new content sewn onto the body of the original game.
And yes, I know I said this list wouldn’t have many pure RTS games on it. But I love AoE2 so much I had to make an exception. And there’s definitely more building involved here than in your average RTS, with placement of castles, walls, towers and production buildings forming a major part of any game. Even if building skills alone won’t get you far in AoE2’s miraculously revived multiplayer scene, the satisfaction of neatly walling off your settlement and fending off an enemy rush will never get old.
Best tycoon games
Games about building the physical premises of a business, with the aim of making lots of filthy, nasty money.
Planet Zoo
What else should I be playing:While the Zoo Tycoon series would be a clear branching off point, I should point out that none of its entries are as good asPlanet Zoo. If you want to try a different sort of beast husbandry experience, I strongly recommend aquatic management simMegaquarium. And if you want something a little less spectacular than PZ, but with dinosaurs to make up for it, fellow Frontier titleJurassic World Evolutionis a banger, as is the much gentler, more lo-fiParkasaurus.
Planet Zoo features possibly the most beautifully simulated wildlife in the history of games, and considered as a management sim alone, it’s a respectable 7.5/10. But where it really shines, and the reason it’s on this list, is its phenomenal construction system. Borrowed from Planet Coaster (also on this list), and with a few tweaks and improvements, Planet Zoo’s building tools are unmatched.
When I played the gamefor review, I spent hours upon hours just building landscapes with the map modification tools, before even thinking about animals or tickets. And when I did get round to building facilities for brute-housing, I was delighted to find a huge library of individual components and construction pieces, which could be positioned in any orientation I wanted, and connected any way I pleased. If you can think of an aesthetic, Planet Zoo lets you go through with it, from dingy lion holes built in caves inside an Immortan-Joe-style mesa, to charming, grass-bordered walkways spiralling above a Roman-themed palace for Tortoises. It’s remarkable.
Offworld Trading Company
There are dozens of excellent, puzzly scenarios to take on, but the multiplayer mode is where it excels. Without a single laser being fired, it manages to offer some of the most hectically competitive action in the whole strategy genre, and has the feel of a fighting game generated entirely from the gestalt wank fantasies of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Planet Coaster
Image credit:Frontier Developments
What else should I be playing:As with Planet Zoo and Zoo Tycoon,Rollercoaster Tycoonis the series Frontier clearly had in their sights when they made Planet Coaster, and I would say the latest Rolly T is still worth a shout.
Planet Coasteris not, thankfully, about cornering the market for circular discs on which to rest drinks. It’s a game about building a theme park, and approaches the brief as emphatically as Planet Zoo approaches its own. What’s great about it, too, is that once you’ve built your rollercoasters, you can ride ‘em. There’s a Ghostbusters DLC too, with Dan Aykroyd in it! And actual, real ghosts. It’s bizarre, but great.
Prison Architect
What else should I be playing:If you like the visual feel ofPrison Architect, Rimworld (see elsewhere on this list) is your best bet. If you want a jaunty simulation of running a serious institution, without the uncomfortable subject matter,Two Point Hospitalis remarkably silly.
I’ve got to say, upfront, that I’m a bit conflicted on Prison Architect. Even though the game is well aware of the grim territory it exists in, and has some well-thought-out satire to it, I’m just not sure that itispossible, at this point in time, to make an intermittently goofy, fun game about the prison-industrial complex without a hefty slice of yikes.
But, objectively speaking, Prison Architect is a really fun game. Rightly or wrongly, a prison is a brilliant setting in which to deploy the mechanics of a building game, as walls and towers must be built, cell blocks must be adapted to the needs of their inmates, and schedules must be managed to lessen the odds of canteen shiv wars. Prisons can be tiny hypermax facilities incarcerating a handful of Banes, or sprawling, relatively lax facilities aimed ostensibly at rehabilitation. Plus there’s a mode where you can play as a random prisoner and try to escape from your own, or others’, creations. But yeah, prisons. Not a laugh.
Best colony sim games
Games about building smaller settlements, with a big focus on the lives of their weird, needy residents.
Dwarf Fortress
What else should I be playing:Many have tried, but there is nothing like Dwarf Fortress.
Dwarf Fortressis my favourite game of all time. And it’s one of the best building games there is, even though its entirely laid out in faux-ascii, as letters and punctuation marks on a black background. Hell, it’s not even meant to be a building game - it’sreallya fantasy world simulator, designed for creating mind-blowing emergent narratives from the modelled interactions of uncountable numbers of dwarves, elves, humans and god-knows-how-many varieties of animal person. It just so happens to have set the gold standard for colony sims as a bloody side effect of that, such is the power of developer Tarn Adams’ mind.
Dwarf Fortress has also beenremade for Steam, with much prettier visuals, mouse support, and all sorts of things that make it more accessible to newcomers. If you’re still afraid to take the plunge, why not read throughThe Basement Of Curiosity, and see what this once-in-a-lifetime game is capable of.
RimWorld
What else should I be playing:There’s a whole wave of space-based colony sims drifting into early access at present, and my picks of the bunch would probably beSpace Haven,Starmancer, and the upcomingOstranauts.
Another feather in RimWorld’s cap is its Royalty expansion, which has added even more toys to play with, including deranged aristocrats, psychic powers, and self-assembling, hostile mechanoid hives. The game always had a strange, lovely atmosphere halfway between Dune and a space western, and with the lore and colour introduced in Royalty, its science fiction stories are just that bit more juicy.
Manor Lords
Image credit:Hooded Horse
What else should I be playing:Norland for a more cartoony and catastrophic medieval shenanigans.
Oxygen Not Included
What else should I be playing:It’s a very different game, but Factorio is probably the best jumping-off point on the list, since it too is about building a giant, self-sustaining machine.
Oxygen Not Includedmay look cute, with Klei Entertainment’s unmistakable art style bleeding over fromDon’t Starve. But don’t be fooled. This side-on colony simulator, about trying to carve out a toehold for a bunch of hapless astronauts (‘dupes’) trapped in the centre of a giant asteroid, is a cruel, cruel game. It’s absolutely packed with ruthlessly simulated environmental factors, from gas flows to temperature modelling, and while they’re not necessarily “realistic”, they are at least internally consistent, forming their own, mean, shadow version of the laws of physics.
The clue to how ONI plays is in its name. Keeping your dupes alive will mean finding sources of oxygen for them to breath, let alone feeding them, stopping them freezing or roasting, and finding places to store their piss. Long-term sustainability is all about making constant nudges to systems veering slowly away from temporary equilibrium, and there’s a stressfully brilliant “hole in my bucket” feel to it, where solving any major catastrophe will involve solving several seemingly unconnected problems first, with each fix seeding a future catastrophe of its own. Relaxing stuff.
Banished
What else should I be playing:OstrivandFoundationare two good quality early-access-ers with their own takes on medieval townsmanship, and if you want to make a peasant’s paradise with absolutely no stress involved, for a change, you should certainly check outSUPER BUILD, which very much does what it says on the tin, or the artier, even more relaxingTownscaper.
Banishedlooks a bit like it might be a game in the vein of the old Settlers franchise: rustic, mellow, and pleasantly ant-farmy. It’s not. Banished is the ghost at the LARP feast, reminding us all why living in the middle ages was almost universally horrendous, rather than a bucolic lark in furs and chainmail. Building your settlement here is less about an inevitable upward trajectory into cityhood, and more about clinging on for survival’s sake.
It’s not mosntrously hard, once you get the hang of it. But it’s not forgiving while you’re in the process of learning, and there’s something refreshingly different about having every single soul in your village starve to death in spring because you beefed it during last year’s apple harvest. And hey, that sudden “oh, they’re dead” feeling has a great upside - because when you do manage not to cock up, and you see your village actually hobbling along in relative comfort, you feel like a benevolent and capable god.
