What Are The Best City Building Games?

Building a city takes time, patience, and lots of not quite getting that road straight, dangit.

There are quite a few new releases coming out in 2019, along with some twists on the genre.

Here’s a list of the best city-builders of this year so you don’t have to waste time on all the others.

10. Frostpunk

Frostpunk gameplay

After the world has ended, the brave few struggle to survive. This city building survival game takes place far in the future, when the world is covered in ice. Build your city as you watch out for your heat levels and explore the surroundings searching for other survivors to join your struggle.

Keep your faction in charge by making brutal decisions to control your people

Your city needs heat and the fuel to go with it

9. Anno 1800

Anno 1800 gameplay

The 1800s was a time of revolution, war, and technology. Build your city in these turbulent times, host the World’s Fair and take charge of an empire. From the company to bring the other outstanding Anno medieval city builder games, they’ve brought you into a new era, one of trains, blimps, and rifles.

Build your imperial capital through trade on land and by sea

Your might depends on your industry: build factories, trains and transit networks to keep it up

8. Tropico 6

Tropico 6 gameplay

El Presidente is back! Return as your favorite crazy dictator and balance the might of the cartels and the interests of big countries as you manage this banana republic. Order hits, arrest provocateurs, run casinos, and do your best to not get overthrown by a coup and be yet another failed state.

Build famous monuments in this latest edition of Tropico

Expand your city through the jungle and mountains of tropical islands

7. Industries of Titan

Industries of Titan gameplay

Forget your dainty green paradise, Industries of Titan is all about the raw power of a factory future. This one’s a PKD dystopian mining future. Set on the planet-sized moon Titan, build your massive industrial empire while struggling for power against the other great Houses, facing off with them both economically and in combat.

Arm your battleships and take down any enemy invaders

City life goes on with the glamor and the glitz of the future

6. Colony Survival

Colony Survival gameplay

In this voxel RTS, make your fantasy kingdom during the day and defend from block-shaped zombies at night! You’ll have to build up your farms and supply chains to keep your archers and soldiers at the ready. The zombies are hungry for your brains -- or plastic bits inside those plastic looking heads...

Have your angular farmers collect their crops all day

So that you’re ready for your troops to defend against the zombies at night

5. Judgment: ApocalypseJudgment: Apocalypse gameplay

After Armageddon, the world is left to the demons and the few folks that managed to survive. Gather your demon hunters at the ready, build your village, and go out and seek new survivors. Be prepared to slaughter hellspawn along the way in this latest survival simulator.

Build your fortress and get ready for the demon slaughter

Build different work desks and tools to unlock new abilities and technologies

4. Prison Architect

Prison Architect gameplay

Build your prison from the ground up. Install toilets, TVs, and lights and see if managing a prison is as easy as you imagine. Keep your inmates from rioting and shivving each other, while making sure you have enough money to continue your operations. Take on a new dimension and play as a prisoner trying to escape from someone else’s supermax.

Keep your inmates calm with TVs, weights, and toilets

Fail to maintain control and watch a bloody riot break out

3. Cities: Skylines

Cities: Skylines gameplay

Maintaining the crown as one of the best modern-era city building games on the market, Cities: Skylines keeps packing surprises. Since they started, they’ve added trams, weather events, blimps, and lately, the ability to design your own industries, complete with supply chains. With millions of mods and user designs, you can build a city in nearly any style.

Make a suburban dreamland in the forested hills

Or if you prefer, a dense, high rise-filled downtown

2. They Are Billions

They Are Billions gameplay

Another post-apocalyptic simulation game, build your big gates to let your colonists in. Build up the city and watch it flourish, but make sure you’ve got a big beautiful wall to keep those infected people out! Your colonists will have to hunt and gather for food and resources in this steampunk inspired world. Each infected is built with their own AI, and up to 20,000 can horde across the map, and are hiding around every corner.

Train soldiers to protect your colonists from the plague ridden Infected

Organize your colonists in this steampunk-inspired, post-apocalyptic world

1. Banished  

Banished gameplay

Survive as long as you can, banished into the wilderness. The first real medieval city-building survival game, it remains a perennial favorite to come back to as you struggle to build your farms just to watch your farmers die. It’s not a matter of if your village perishes, it’s a matter of when. There are hundreds of mods on Steam to render your village much more medieval, in different climates, and even to help you survive a bit longer.

Start from humble beginnings, just a few houses and some cows

Stock up your resources to make buildings and grow your population

You may also be interested in:

• Top 10 Games Like Banished 
• Top 10 Ultimate Best City Building Games 
• 30 Best City-Building Games for PC