The best city-building games on PC 2022

El Presidente returns, this time to an archipelago where you can manage/rule over multiple islands simultaneously. This city-building game charges you with building a city from the ground up, all while dealing with the economic demands of the island, the happiness of your citizens, and keeping paradise afloat on corrupt bargains with overseas allies.

Tropico 6 is all about finding balance in a city that can’t satisfy all factions and residents, as challenges arise from crooked government officials that you’ll need to complete in order to work towards your overall goal, which changes with each scenario.

As you’d expect from a dictatorial city builder, Tropico 6 gives you plenty of choice, but you can expect some brutal consequences if you make the wrong call. If a general election looms, you’ll have the choice to bend the figures or remain squeaky clean, but there’s a trade off between losing the election and having to restart the level or angering internal factions.

Tropico 6’s bombastic presentation belies just how much love and care you’ll need to devote to your regime to keep everyone happy, relatively speaking. Thankfully, the island setting makes it easy to keep tabs on your buildings and notifications whether that’s spotting rebels roaming the streets, or a group of shacks that has sprung up as a signal to build more homes for your citizens.

Aven Colony transports the humble city builder to a different planet where you’ll face much more challenging obstacles than deciding where best to build your roads. For starters, you’ll have to factor in the challenges posed by all the terrifying new space biomes and the hostile atmosphere.

Instead of creating a new city to entice residents, your main objective is to rebuild humanity, a lofty goal indeed. In doing so, you’ll need to try to adjust to the atmosphere, battle against constant natural disasters, a lack of oxygen (pretty big deal, this one), and even alien lifeforms like gigantic sandworms.

You’ll start out as a governor and rise through the ranks to establish yourself as president of your colony as the rest of the game follows suit, expanding your toolset and testing your abilities by starting off with small goals like building a water pump and escalating all the way to manning a full-scale Starship Troopers-like army.

Frostpunk is the kind of city builder that will make you question your own morality over and over again. Your job is to survive a premature ice age in a sheltered steampunk-powered city that was left unfinished before the big freeze took hold. As the leader of a group of survivors, your role is to rebuild the city around a giant heater that constantly needs fuel to keep your denizens safe and healthy.

Much like Frostpunk, Surviving Mars blends survival and city building, albeit on the barren red planet rather than a frozen hellscape. You’ll be armed with all the equipment you need to create a functional, happy city for colonists as you explore Mars’ dusty surface, searching for terrain that can be fertilised so you can continue expanding across the planet.

Unfortunately, there’s no scientist Matt Damon on standby to walk you through the whole process. You’ll be your own botanist, scientist, and city planner as you work to keep your flocking colonists fed and happy – but that’s the least of your problems. Surviving Mars is a little tougher to handle, it requires a lot of attention to ensure citizens have access to oxygen and are protected against impending natural disasters like dust storms and cold waves, but Surviving Mars does a great job at keeping you constantly informed of your city’s progress.

Research and exploration plays a huge role in this survival city builder, letting you massively improve the structures and facilities in your colony so that they match the Asimovian fantasy in your head. Plus, with a thriving mod scene there’s no end to the mad sci-fi colonies you can realise.

The SimCity series has been around for a good while now, and you can see how much other city-building games borrowed from – and in the case of Cities: skylines, improved upon – this incredibly popular city building series. SimCity 4 launched in 2003, and although the game doesn’t offer anything especially innovative to the genre, it’s still a satisfying and challenging contender.

Similar to Cities: Skylines, you’ll only really have one goal, creating your dream city. You have different zones of buildings you can lay down in a grid format, but you can also splash the cash to build intricate road systems or more advanced architecture, and even world wonders. You’ll get prompts as you expand your city, notifying you of your citizens needs as you gradually unlock new features and attract more residents. There’s not too much to think about when it comes to SimCity, but sometimes that can be just want you’re looking for in a city-building game.

Simplicity is the key to Cities: Skylines meteoric rise to success. Whether you’re a veteran town planner capable of handling practically any scenario, or a newcomer to the genre, Cities: Skylines is arguably the best city-building game for either party.

Instead of spending aeons scrolling through building types and then carefully rotating and placing them in accessible spots, Cities: Skylines breaks down the bulk of its buildings into categories like residential, commercial, and industrial, letting you rapidly build a skeleton for your city before agonising over the small details. The skill is all in how you balance the many needs of your citizens and each district, making you think more like a mayor.

It’s not that Cities: Skylines is easy, that is far from true, it’s just easy to get your head around, and when things go wrong, which they inevitably will, you won’t feel defeated by the prospect of starting over again. As you’d expect from the studio behind Cities in Motion, Cities: Skylines also features a gloriously deep and complex mix of transit options, which means you get to spend countless hours trying to ensure your denizens are moving around as seamlessly and smoothly as possible.

Anno 1800 returns the city-building series to its historical roots, positioning you as a company leader in the Industrial Revolution, as you trade and grow your empire from a couple of farms and warehouses to a thriving industrial metropolis that’s the envy of the world. Eventually, you can even attract tourists to one of your many museums or zoos as you transition to the modern world, navigating all the logistical and societal issues that come with such seismic change.

Anno 1800 offers many options on how to play across its campaign, multiplayer, and sandbox modes. Much like in the best 4X games, there are a variety of ways to win Anno 1800, ranging from accruing wealth and investors to attracting visitors and securing diplomatic ties. Pitted against other islands, you’ll need to keep a close eye on your rivals and their world decisions, as you figure out through diplomatic failings and trade how they operate and if they can be trusted.

Apart from monitoring your rivals, you’ll need to keep your workers happy, as you expand trade and grow your company town. There’s even a regular newspaper that makes the rounds affecting population happiness, spreading tales across the land of your city’s successes and failures. Details like this help bring the world of the Industrial Revolution to life, and while Anno 1800 definitely glazes over the grim reality of the era, it’s hard not to get drawn in by its picture perfect vistas and charm.