Gaming @beehaw.org Storksforlegs @beehaw.org 1y ago

Slow Down With These Serene City-Building Games

www.wired.com Slow Down With These Serene City-Building Games

From 'Islanders' to 'Townscaper,' a handful of titles are designed to soothe your frazzled brain with minimalist, puzzle-like calm.

I am looking for more games like this: though this list seems like a good starting point.

Anybody have any recommendations or experiences with city builders (the less-stressful variety, not like Frostpunk or something haha)

Thanks!

41 comments

I have Dorfromantik and play it occasionally. It is very relaxing, which can be nice. And very, very simple. So simple that I sort of hesitate to call it a game. There is some sort of scoring, depending on the mode you play. But I always pretty much ignored the scoring and didn't even want to try to understand how it worked. It is fun just to make your little town, forest, river, train track, etc. So it is more like model railroading to me than a videogame. But highly structured and guided model railroading.
- That's probably the better way to play that game. I kept worrying about placing the tile in the perfect place and took for ever on my turns and got stressed a lot which is probably exactly the opposite of what the devs intended. But idk my brain just sees achievements and takes the challenge and the achievements are tough and stressful challenges
- So simple that I sort of hesitate to call it a game.
  
  I'm guessing you haven't played Townscaper?
  
  Correct
  
  I'm not sure Townscaper can be called a game either, but it certainly is an excellent relaxing and enjoyable way to waste one's time.
- I always play it trying to get max score and it is still very chill
Terra Nil is mentioned in the article but I must give it a recommendation, it’s very chill and restoring a wasteland or ruined city to a thriving ecosystem is a great counterpoint to building a bustling city.
- I've seen a lot of reviews criticize it's length to price ratio. What are your thoughts on that?
  
  I’ve not finished it yet due to limited gaming time but it’s clearly not that long. It feels like it should have some replayability but I don’t think it’s very unreasonably priced. Probably not ideal if you’re looking to squeeze every hour of entertainment out of your dollar though.
  
  I've finished the game and yes, it's price is too steep. I'd buy it half off. There's some sort of replayability but it's small and most might not do it. It's still a fun game and highly recommend, but not for the full price.
  
  On mobile, it's included with Netflix -- I played it at no extra cost
Not like the games in the list, but Foundation Steam Link is one of my favourites and meets your criteria for being a chill one :)
Kingdoms and Castles would fit here. It's been getting slow but steady updates for years.
- Ohhh thank you for this. Mildly reminds me of the Stronghold games which I used to love.
I'd recommend timberborn, but the intense droughts can be pretty stressful if you're not careful. But you can totally turn down the difficulty to make them much less severe
- Nothing like relaxing with my beavers after a stressful day.
- I tried the new update (experimental)... The blood red rivers make it interesting
  
  I'd say tedious, changing flood gate settings every time one appears is too much busy work. I turned them off, much more relaxing
If you’re into retro games, the original Impressions city builders are great. Caesar 3, Pharaoh, Zeus or Emperor are essentially skins of the same game and come highly recommended.
- Have you played any of the modern incarnations of those games perhaps, and if so did you like them? I've been looking at Nebuchadnezzar for a while now but could never pull the trigger, seemed always kinda meh
  
  There’s an open source mod of Caesar 3 called Augustus, adding new features and QOL improvements. I feel equally apprehensive of the remakes, the games have a very specific vibe and I don’t want my fond memories to be tainted hehe.
If you like minimalism Mini-Metro is great

Note: it will be stressfull in the end, still relaxing if you accept that will end after a while.
Just got into Stardeus

RimWorld Factorio Space Engineer space ship sim.
- Serene
  
  Rimworld
  
  Me, over here committing war crimes: Uhhh...
  
  I did just get invaded a little, but otherwise you spend way more time building in Stardeus..
- Say no more.
  
  Btw I recall there were several of these developed at the same time, one by chucklefish (edit: starmancer) I think, did this one “win out”?
  
  I can't say really, but I only just picked it up, and it's a strong recommend from me.
- space engineer
  
  While that game is absolutely capable of being like this, it's also capable of being more like a cutscene from a Bungie Halo game
Islanders is only a few bucks and very serene. You get a random island and a small palette of buildings at a time. The buildings can only go certain places (farm on a plain, quarry near stone, hunting lodge near forest). You get points for putting certain buildings together, or certain ones further apart (mostly in ways that make sense). And that's about it. When you use up the buildings on your palette you get a new set. There's no timer, just try to get points. When you reach the goal you can start over on a new island.

It's very simple. You can't move or demolish buildings, you don't worry about roads or infrastructure of any kind, there's no citizen happiness or disasters or money or anything. Just relax and place little buildings on islands.
"Project Highrise" is another nice calm relaxing game, although in the other dimension to most city builders
Slipways is a great turn-based scifi empire builder that focuses on colonizing planets and building trade routes (titular slipways) between them to synergize. It has chill soundtrack, pretty visuals, and no war to stress about, your only worry is optimizing your empire layout
- Ooh, thats sounds right up my alley. Used to love civilization and stellaris and those types of games, but war was always my least favorite part of the gameplay. It gets in the way of my perfect empire.
- Slipways is pretty awesome. Easy to learn, hard to master.
Wasting away hours with Ostriv. Alpha/ea or not. It's not stressing at all, in default even very slow and can be paused. Goes great with an audio book 👌

Alas activity slowed down a lot recently. Which is not very surprising considering the dev lives in a freakin warzone :-/
There is Godus which I always thought of as a precursor to islanders. It has more elements to interrupt the player but it has the sake overall aesthetic and feel.

Edit:

I played this ages ago and the reviews after some updates are very negative so it sounds like it's no longer the game I played.
This past year I've really enjoyed The Wandering Village and Airborne Kingdom. Both are slower paced with a very unique aesthetic
I've seen Thronefall recently and it looked really cool, but it also apparently has just a few hours of content. You might enjoy it as a chill experience tho

41 comments