Which city-builder is actually going to turn out good? If you want to support the channel, buy games using this *GOG* referral link: af.gog.com/?as=1715648857 They have lots of sales... Thanks!
I had been waiting for this video for some time. Personally, Kingdoms Reborn looks very interesting, being the first game of it's kind with multiplayer (that I know of), but old civilizations have something special. Maybe the eyecandy, history or whatever, makes me want to play them more. Probably builders of Egipt. There's also the original games that look interesting: SummitKingdom. Anyway. Wonder which games will actually come out in the end
Manor Lords would definitely be my most anticipated up and coming city builder. Workers and Resources is the one in development that I enjoy the most, while I also love Ostriv.
I think the best one is Cities: Skylines. You can really see how the developers love their game themselves. There's so much heart in it. And it keeps on constantly developing.
Thank you very much for including my game, Alien Horizon, in this list. I hope you're going to check it out for yourself someday :) I'd just like to point out that it's unlikely to be released this or the next year - 2024 is a much more realistic estimate.
Thanks for making these great lists and thanks for the shout-out to my weird game Kainga! It really is an honor to see my game among such great titles. The genre has been expanding in new and interesting was these last few years!
Cities Skylines and Sim City 4 were two of my favorites... Skylines is a bit complex and they could do with a bit more upward development. Love to see your "extremely detailed and non-biased POV" on city builders. Had to sub!
You left the best till the last. I resisted investing in Frostpunk for a long time. Just could not see what the fuss was with such limited space/scope as a city builder. But the experience of playing it was second to none. Heck I wanna play it again right now. So looking forward to Frosypunk 2. Never heard there was such a thing till now.
Amazing production quality and narration. Well done. Too bad most of the games are by minor studios which will eventually suffer from development fatigue and release their game in a sad state in an attempt to raise some cash. My favorite city builder series is probably Tropico with the 4th one as the best.
I hate Tropico 5 and 6. I am not even able to set the exact rent of a house/apartment or the exact salary for people. Tropico 1-3 were great, but Tropico 4 the best.
Not everything on this list hit, but I'm definitely excited for some of them like Farthest Frontier, Sphere Flying Cities, and Cybertown. I like a good city builder so will keep those in mind.
you really are doing the most comprehensive roundups of this kind of stuff. sorting through the early access haystack would be a lot harder without this kind of video & you're always even-handed/honest about your opinions, as well as calm and not too shouty - A+ tbh
So much of these are still based on the same concept and gameplay as SImcity, a game that has been out more than 30 years ago. However, it is great to see more of these games coming out, instead of another mindless FPS. Great list !
Zakh strikes again with another fantastic list. I just hope one day my dream city builder is on one of these lists. A city builder where you start post-apocalyptic and end up with a futuristic city.
Same! I wish to solve problems like economy challenge, difficulty environmental, lack of primary ressources, disasters etc, that would shape a true city like Tropico 3&4 and Anno series. Hope, Frostpunk 2 would be much better, the first part was great.
@@hamyncheese probably...not...its more about devs having no creativity and simply copying what other succesful games do. Almost every one of these games in this vid are a carbon copy of something else with the only thing differentiating it from the original idea being the graphic style and a mechanic here or nowhere.
@@AdamNisenziSpisak How is that any different from what I said? "developing systems and mechanics that are both interesting and challenging for the player is difficult." So, instead of doing the difficult thing they do the low quality "easy" thing.
@@hamyncheese Something being challenging means the task is difficult, devs being not creative and only doing what everyone else does is very different.
I can't believe I found a channel that deals with construction, administration and strategy games. Talking about the news without forgetting the classics of our generation. Keep up the wonderful work. Greetings from Brazil.
Thanks for the video! Very interesting. You know what bugs me the most? Is how rectangular all these builders are. It's more or less all grid and squares or rectangles, with the exception of a fantasy-builder, which then doesn't appeal to me. I would love an organic city builder that allows you to really follow the terrain.
You finnaly did it! The list what we need. But i feel, i must leave here a little more info. First - timberborn. I play it a lot from the first demo. And i watch for tb discord. All i can say - most replayeble and most ingeneer-style game from all another project. It's like city-building minecraft. Sometimes i see screens in discord, and can't belieeve they did something so genios. And about farthest frontier. I'm one of alpha version testers. I can't give a lot of information, 'cause of NDA, but... If anno, banished and old-ctyle siera city-builders has a child - it's FF. Really deep and realistic game mechanics. I believe in 2022:3
I was feeling really burnt out through December, so I was struggling to make the list. Decided to just ignore it until I actually felt drawn to make it so I would actually make it properly and keep it high quality. That's great to hear about farthest frontier, I'm hoping it's really good because the screens look amazing.
Thanks for the great video! I actually missed this kind of list videos on your channel. Glad they're back in full strength! My vote for best city-building series goes to SimCity, I must have spent 1000+ hours on this series ever since SimCity 2000, and it continued to blow my mind away with each new sequel.
SimCity?? Really?? Most people I speak to almost universally hate SimCity - they say it's buggy as all shit! And that City Skylines beats it 1000 times over...
@@fransmith3255 Yes really, because it predates Cities Skylines by 20 years! The original SimCity 2000 was released in 1993 while Cities Skylines was released in 2015. Cities Skylines basically copies the same mechanics but is more modern. I was happy it was released because we all needed a "remastered" SimCity, and City Skylines delivered on its promise. But I spent 15 years playing the SimCity series and for that it has a special place in my heart, right next to the Impressions city builders of the time (Caesar and Pharaoh).
@@GFXOnline1 Yes, I do realise that. I played the very first version of it, and the second reiteration on a 386. Loved them. But few people would compare them to today's games. The final reiteration is basically what I was talking about. I never played it, but that was because the general consensus was that it was an utter buggy piece of crap, and the franchise failed because of that. Few people bothered.
@@fransmith3255 I respect your opinion, maybe we just had different experiences. My experience with SimCity has been a very positive one, including the last iteration (barring the server problems after launch). SimCity 4 suffered from rare random CTDs but that didn't bother me so much. I'm evaluating the game based on mechanics and game design and the Maxis SimCity games were phenomenal imo and they were the inspiration for Cities Skylines, so my vote goes to them :)
@@GFXOnline1 Hehe, likewise. :-) The first iterations of SimCity were awesome, ahead of their time, like a lot of EAs games were back then. That's how EA got so big - they used to make really great games. Hell, I used to surf bulletin boards in the late 80s, Wolfenstein (and there was actually one before Wolfenstien that went wild on bulletin boards - forget what it was called), Kings Quest, Larry the Loungeroom Lizard in the early 90s, all pre-internet, way back when windows was a laughable ridiculously slow piece of rubbish that no-one thought would ever see the light of day. I have to say, I rather dislike EA as a company now - I find a lot more innovation in Indie games on steam than with EA, so I'm always looking for stuff that is new and innovative. That's why I look at videos like this one - looking for any gems I might have missed. :-)) Happy gaming! :-))
Now I'm telling this for the record. This channel has been selling me games for years. Even though I'm subscribed to the categories in Steam, many of these games wouldn't catch my attention. But after GamerZakh's videos I just go find them by their names and I'm buying them without reading the description. Show this comment to the city builders developers next time.
I have always liked the Anno series but i do understand it is far from perfect. Also the 1800 has become IMHO a very costly game due to all the paid DLC with very little content and very high prices.
The main DLCs provide good content and interesting new mechanics. The cosmetic ones can get costly but they also give quite a few options for the price. You can always wait for sales and get a few DLCs on the cheap. It is still cheaper than Paradox games which rely heavily on the DLC model.
Not to sound weird, hopefully you take it as a compliment. You don't have a radiio voice, but you do have a voice that seems tailor made for these types of videos - it fits perfectly. It's kind, calm, pleasant, clear.
Amazing production quality and narration. Well done. Too bad most of the games are by minor studios which will eventually suffer from development fatigue and release their game in a sad state in an attempt to raise some cash. My favorite city builder series is probably Tropico with the 4th one as the best.
Impression Games are still the best city-building games of all time. Skylines, while much more complex in some aspects, still pales in comparison regarding fun an reliable mechanics. I really wish some developers go back and continue the formidable Impression Games series.
Appreciate the list! I haven’t been able to pay as much attention to games this year, but it’s nice to see a few titles I recognize from watching various RU-vidrs play them.
Good list, nice work! The more complexity in game mechanics and simulations, the more issues with balancing and bugs. Many of the games have mediocre graphics. Wonder how many ends up as cash grabs or overestimated. For me games based on the past is boring, but most of those based in a future or other worlds have quality challenges.
The general rule is 90% of games turn out bad or just mediocre, but it's impossible to guess which ones. I've tried every year and I'm always wrong haha. There's always a surprise success and surprise failure.
With the cancellation of Aztec Empire I am gonna keep a close eye on Dinopeople cause it's giving me similar vibes. Speaking of Impressions like games I am very excited about the v1.3 release of Nebuchadnezzar. It'll add Gods, Festivals, Event manager, lots of QoL changes and best of all, colorable plazas! I do like my paved streets in these games :D
Thanks for the video. I don't know if I'm wrong, but this time seems very promesing.. A lot of city building games with diferent proposal, mix genres, diferent art styles... thats great! Never heard of some of them, like Roman Triumph... Slavic folklore is booming... pehaps because of "The Witcher" game/netflix series sucess? Will be looking for Kapital, Frostpunk2, Industries of titan... Still, I would love a Majesty 3!! Great video, as always! Thanks again, zakh!
An impressive list as usual :D Loads of games I didn't know about. There is also city of atlantis and city of robots but I'm guessing you already know about those two and didn't list them because their release date is set as TBA ? Though I think they're both scheduled for 2022, even if at least in early access? There's also builders of Greece, no release date either. Fragile existence is set for 2022 and looks to be a city builder but from the tags, it looks like it's riding a couple different waves like strategy, base building, management, simulation, space sim... That's confusing to say the least ! Maybe a bit like Kainga? Hope to see you do a couple play testing on some of those !
Another great list of games :) I can personally recommend Settlement survival and Flotsam as these are great games which I played :) I thought that settlement survival is a full game but nope it is not even though there is so much of it already :D i did not finish everything from the research so far and then they dropped a huge update recently with more stuff :D I am like calm down I need to finish my first save file first :D
while I love city building games as much as the next guy, I still think that there are not worthy interplanetary games. Only because the planets you colonize, are way to small, and I feel like planets are just island on the sea. Anno 2205 was a nice try, but still feel "small" BTW, great video. thanks a lot and keep up the good work
If EA released a cleaned up "HD Edition" version of SC4 with 64 bit multi-core optimizations, support for Vulkan/DX12, and provided a documented modding API to make things like NAM easier, I would be happy. Obviously that's not going to happen, but I want to dream. None of the games shown here come close to matching the beauty and charm of SimCity 4. I'm not convinced that individual agent simulation is what will make city builders of the future as good as SC4 was, as it seems to be moving in the wrong direction. I want grandeur, not accuracy. What is the point of having a million independent agents you can click on and follow around if you only ever click on a few here and there? Look at what Maxis was able to accomplish with single core Pentiums with less than a gig of RAM. They used all sorts of tricks to make it look like there were thousands of people living their lives, but it was mostly clever programming and graphics illusions, and it made for a "bigger" and broader game. I have yet to see a city builder that makes interesting use of smart citizen agents. If they don't do anything interesting or have meaningful emergent behaviour, then there's no point of doing it in my opinion. They should be aiming for Dwarf Fortress levels of agent interactions, not The Sims. SC4's art style and feel has still never been matched, let alone beat. The crisp trimetric buildings were meant to be seen from above, never at street level. The artists of those assets didn't have to think about how buildings would look from the street level or from any oblique angle, only 4 different rotations. Any artist will tell you that limitations are what make for great art, not the infinite possibilities of a blank Blender canvas. The buildings that are in these games don't look good at any zoom level or angle, and that sucks. The first game, Highrise City makes all of the same mistakes Cities Skylines made, only worse. If I can't zoom out and admire my city, then what's the point? It looks truly awful. No one is learning from and stealing ideas from SimCity, it seems. The dumb misaligned lot squares with huge gaps are not one of C:S's good ideas, and I can't understand why the developer took that idea. Almost every big city in the real world has streets aligned on a grid, so SC4 shines beautifully there, and it works fine in Skylines too. The problem with curved or angled roads isn't solved at all with the awful mini-square system. Real lots shapes and the buildings that sit on them conform to the space available. Think Flat Iron building, right? The smaller games with more focused themes (like Banished) have their place, and are clearly easier to pull off for indie studios since the scope is more limited. Farthest Frontier feels like a worthy successor to Banished. Industries of Titan looks good for what it is. Of course neither of those are trying to be generic city builders. Settlement Survival offers almost nothing on top of Banished for no apparent reason, and looks worse. Urbek won't be as good as Pharaoh. Sweet Transit might look fancier, but OpenTTD is more interesting. I'm not holding my breath for a true SC4 successor unless Maxis gets back into the game (and the soulless suits at EA keep their hands off).
About the comments about big cities are build on grids: you might enjoy exploring European Cities. We have curved streets and strange angles almost everywhere. Strange shapes between buildings get used as green spaces a lot, as many cities have to keep a certain amount of greenery (not just parks, but forests, fields, green spaces on roads,...) by law. It might not look as efficient as many north American cities, but our cities have their charm, too.
@@christinaVennegerts Of course, and I’d love to visit Europe. It would be great to be able to replicate all sorts of cities in a satisfying way, not just Manhattan or Barcelona. That’s the main area where SimCity 4 falls short. Despite the fact that curved and off grid roads can be placed in contemporary city builders, they also fall far short of achieving something believable for a number of reasons, but I believe primarily because lots are still assumed to be rectangular and don’t fill the available space. SimCity 4 had an excellent procedural content generation trick that added a ton of variety to rows of similar houses. Different fences, sheds, pools, garden beds, trees, shrubs, and other decorations are randomly placed into the yards surrounding the main structure. This works particularly well when the primary structure is smaller than the available zone tile. I think a similar “yard clutter” idea could work extremely well for odd shaped lots. I think with enough polish it would produce really satisfying results if you were able to fill gaps between roads with plazas and parks that fit their surroundings, not the other way around. Townscaper does something similar to this extremely well.
Excellent work, as always! You are my prime source of interesting city-buildier titles! Yet, I can't shake out my mind that the building models of Roman Triumph are taken straight out the Imperium Civitas series. But you might prove me wrong...
I want a city builder where construction actually means something. Plopping a building into existence just irks me and takes me out of the game. It's just something I have had to just ignore over the decades. But its something that hugely impacts a city through its entire existence, and is usually absent from city builder games. Things like multi-billion dollar stadiums that take years to build fall out of the sky fully formed and functioning in an instant.
Dude. You put a lot of effort into your videos and kudos for that. That's an impressive list, and some good recommendations. But watching the video with headphones drove me insane because there was some weird sound compression going on, with some strange stereo effects. It was really distracting. Sorry, I don't want to diminish what you are doing, you make great content but something is off with the sound of this video, especially on headphones. Maybe RU-vid did some weird stuff to it.
@@GamerZakh It's on your voice (very slight crackling, compression and stereo artifacts), and very prominently on the sound effect while the Title of the game is flown into the frame. The music in the background seems to be fine, it sounds like there is something off with the levels and the signals went into clipping.
@@mrbend I can't seem to hear it on my laptop speakers, earbuds, or my bluetooth speaker. Maybe there's something with my mastering and your particular hardware. May I ask what your headphones are? Or if you can hear it on any of your other audio devices?
@@GamerZakh I am using a GoXLR Mini, checked with my Teufel Aureol Headphones and Arctis headset attached to the Line out of the GoXLR. Also tried different videos and Spotify, which all were fine. Thanks for looking into it though :) Also tried the Arctis output directly, with the same result. It's really weird.
regarding soviet republic, the roadmap listed says that the out of early access will be at december 2022. i believe this will be the case since the development schedule because i have been following the game and it has been very consistent so far
I still love Cities Skylines and I think "Infraspace" looks like a Cities Skylines, but in a space style city building game... I'm still waiting "Builders Of Egypt" to be release, but still they are going to release Prologue 2... I hate prologues... I want completed full game...maybe "Roman Triumph" could be great...I don't understand that why there are still too much "Banished" imitation games that are gonnna be released?.. isn't enough to see so much similar games to eachother?
My boy Banished no game can compare with the UI, I'm still looking for that banished 2.0, tried Patron clunky AF, settlement survival played a bit but still wanna go to banished.
Soviet Republic is the best city building game in years, it is still on early acess but it already looks like a complete game. I definitely recommend it a lot!
Thank you for your content man. I'm really into P2E Metaverse building game right now. I thought you have this upcoming game on your list Fake Town. For sure, you will discover this one soon.
Love these vids, GamerZakh! Funny how I see bits of my old favourites: Banished, Immortal Cities: Children Of The Nile, Emperor: Rise Of The Middle Kingdom in everything. Maybe a bit of Caesar 4, Black & White 2, Cities - Skylines, Sid Meyer's Railroads too. Or maybe it's all just "convergent development". I am really interested what they'll do with Frostpunk 2. I kinda feel a slight change in genre might come there. Also, Summit Kingdom was interesting but didn't see different buildings in different parts of the mountain. Maybe it will be just different production times and quantities.
Thanks! Yeah I think a lot of these devs are fans of those old games. I know Laysara devs straight up said they're Zeus inspired, the rest probably have old favourites too.
For a lot of indiegames, I think the reason is very simple. It starts with "I love game X", then continues with either "But noone has made a new one in ages", or "But I wish it had feature Y" / "I wish it was set in setting Z" and ends with "So I will have to make a game like this myself". And you start working on it. Wanting to make your own version of something you really like is not uncommon. And for a lot of small (solo to 2-3 people) teams, most games don't start off with the goal of making a product to sell (so there is no reason to worry about it being similar to something else or not being big enough / pretty enough). They are just making something for fun. Look at Hero's Hour. Someone wanted to make their own version of the old Heroes of Might n Magic games. They were just making something for fun, and when it started to become an actual game, they put it on Itch io because why not. Then some RU-vidrs found it, and now it has blown up in popularity and got a publisher and a proper Steam release coming this Spring. All because someone wanted to spend some of their free time making their own version of a game they loved.
best series of city builders ? i'd go for the anno series. because i actually like ressource management, so a game like sim city where there is no actual ressources just feel wrong to me. the ones that i'm *interested* in : sweet transit : seems like a nice mix between the anno series and factorio Lakeside : watched your video on it, seems really nice but i have low expectations on the actual replayability. probably cheap anyway. Summit kindom : a really unusual pitch, but the concept is interesting, and you have a clear goal. Industries of titan : tried a demo, it is interesting and has some good humor infused into many parts of the game, just waiting for the full release Frost punk 2 : i still have some scenarios to beat in frost punk 1, but yeah, sure. the bad apples : Timberborn : i was really hyped for it, it's really interesting, but it fell really short. there is some BAD design decisions in this game. Cybertown : some AAA action trailer for a city builder ? i'll say it : this game seems full of shit.
Anno is a solid one. It's had ups and downs but with 1404 and 1800 it's a lot of people's favourite. Thanks for sharing your opinions on the games too! It's sometimes hard to get a personal consensus on things if it's just Steam reviews or something.
Another great list! Man, I have been waiting for The Wandering Village for forever. Really like the concept of that one. Also, I can't remember if you showcased this on another city-builder list, but you should take a look at Ixion! It's a sci-fi city-builder on a space habitat and it looks pretty cool. Says a 2022 release date, but we all know that's probably not going to be the case. Anyway, great work, Zakh! Always love seeing your lists!
I'm waiting for something like Cities Skylines. Just to be optimised and have more build ingame options, so I do not need to use zillion mods and assets to play the game.
Even though i'm delighted to see so many new games of my favourite genre, it makes me sorta sad that they all start to look the same. I hope they'll really have something unique and innovative. And that they actually finish them... a lot of these games remain in development for several years.
It is always disappointing when games get cancelled or turn out bad, I do think we need the quantity to get the good ones though. In times when game genres have very few releases we almost never get a good one.
@@GamerZakh That's actually an interesting though. Having a larger amount of dirt means higher probability that we'll find gems in it. Thank you for this point of view.
