Agent KaryoNine-year-old colony building MMO SEED deploys a new cinematic trailer featuring Bjork as pre-release continues
cm0002[Cities Skylines 2] January 2026 | Mods of the Month
[Cities: Skylines II] Hotfix: v1.5.5f1 Reverts visual changes from previous patch - no impact on modding expected
Orbiteers, a colourful, minimalist strategy game where you can build space space station colonies across the solar system, released on Steam (demo available)
Territory: Farming and Warfare, a pixelart medieval city-builder with micro elements (room design, defence/combat) where you can scale to thousands of citizens, released on Steam
[Cities Skylines 2, Dev Diary] First IceFlake Dev Diary: City Corner #1 - Upcoming Visual Updates
ISOCITY — Metropolis Builder
ISOCITY — Metropolis Builder - Sopuli
> Open-source isometric simulation games built with Next.js, TypeScript, and HTML5 Canvas. (plays in your web browser!) IsoCity - city builder with trains, planes, cars, and pedestrians IsoCoaster - Build theme parks with roller coasters, rides, and guests https://github.com/amilich/isometric-city [https://github.com/amilich/isometric-city]
schnurritoWhy medieval city-builder video games are historically inaccurate - Leiden Medievalists Blog
liaWant to develop a city builder game?
Here's some things I'd do if I had time for a project, and why I'd do them:
Avoid agent-based approaches to similate every citizen. It does sound cool and exciting, but vastly complicates your ability to balance many aspects of your game such as traffic or the economy since you need to tune those indirectly through individual agent decisionmaking. It threatens your game's performance and makes it difficult to realistically scale a large city. It's also the model for the biggest city builders in recent history; the alternative market (crowd-based simulation; compare SimCity 4) isn't served right now, which is a huge opportunity! Abstraction is your friend nowadays.
A unique setting or aesthetic goes a long way to set your game apart from others. Avoid generic medieval and modern-day North American settings. Examples for games benefitting from unique settings are Tlatoani, Tropico, Workers & Resources, . It's safe to say none of them would have had the success they did with a less unique setting.
Take advantage of the current trend of young people getting really into anti-car dependency, "urbanism" and sustainable city planning. Disregard the US-American SimCity gameplay model of roadside buildings and RCI zoning, and instead design your game with pedestrianised areas, walking, public transit and bicycles in mind from the ground up. Perhaps even rethink other aspects of your gameplay through that lens: traffic management doesn't have to be your game's main challenge. It might be balancing density against living conditions, or corporate demands against public demand.
Avoid secondary mechanics and genre-twist gimmicks. A unique city builder by itself is complex enough to develop and design, and there's no guarantee that your target audience wants to, say, furnish individual building interiors in a city builder.
Know your two target audiences: those looking for a beautiful dollhouse decoration experience, and those looking for a deep city design and management simulation (traffic/economy/layout). The former market seems quite saturated right now with tons of "cosy diorama"-style games and traditional AA city-builders; the latter niche isn't saturated at all.
Know who your target audience isn't. The city builder genre overlaps a lot with the factory logistics management genre, but trying to serve both audiences will disappoint all players. Why would someone interested in the city-building portion not simply play Cities: Skylines over your game, or Factorio or Railgrade for a good logistics factory manager? Workers & Resources is the only example of a successful city builder with factory-like elements, but the niche is insanely small and complex to develop for.
#gamedev #games #gaming #cityBuilders #SimCity #CitiesSkylines #urbanism
dantenew blog post: a few thoughts on jurassic world evolution 3
https://blog.dante.cool/a-few-thoughts-on-jurassic-world-evolution-3/
let's talk about the latest jurassic IP park builder game. it's pretty good! i have played way too much of it lately
