The strength of a city builder sim is that it allows the player to realise their own personal design and give life to their own ideas of how the perfect city would be. There is no doubt that there is something magic and compelling about building your own city, which is why the genre has just gone from strength to strength.

Far from being a dated format of game, fans of the genre now have a wide variety of games that vary in style and graphical fidelity. A lot of these games are even playable on mobile devices, as the style of play makes it suitable for that medium.

So, grab your drawing board and your planning permissions as we measure up some of the grandest offerings in the city building genre. These are our 8 best city building games.

The Criteria that Defines a classic City Builder game:

• Is the building fun and satisfying?
• Are there any interesting obstacles to success?
• Is there satisfying progression?
• Are developed cities beautiful to behold?

Banished is a great way to kick back and relax after a hard day. In Banished, you manage a growing town in the wilderness, and growing too fast can mean blood on your hands. In a lot of ways, Banished is simple in that the premise is straightforward: don’t let your people die and your society fail.

Banished, Image Source: Shining Rock Software

To this end, you must temper your population boom, establish a good economy early on and stockpile enough that you can make it through the winter.

The early game issue that most will encounter is not accounting for how useful and hungry children are, but when you have this under control, watching your rustic community grow is satisfying. Why not chill and watch your people fish, cut wood and go to the tavern?

Part of the game’s charm lies in the aesthetic of the world and the way the vision of your community is entirely left up to you. There are no external conflicts beyond the elements, and this allows you to be surprisingly free in how you build up your town and this will ultimately give you satisfaction watching your townspeople go about their business.

A classic city builder but with a cool sci-fi edge, Aven Colony takes the city building genre to space and explores some new mechanics and ideas not shared by its brethren. As you develop Aven Prime, you will learn to juggle energy crisis, resource shortages and alien incursions.

Aven Colony, Image Source: Mothership Entertainment

One of the main draws of Aven Colony is the aesthetics, as the wacky alien fauna and landscapes make a stark change from the more grounded entries on the list.

Instead of builders with hammers, you can expect drones to undertake your construction. Before long, you will need to build defence turrets and structures to blast strange floating aliens out of the sky.

Aside from these unique aspects, Aven Colony does the basics of city building well. The build controls and placement is straight forward and solid. The resource management and upgrades work as you would expect, although it doesn’t do much differently and could be criticised for not innovating as much as other entries on this list.

It’s a Dragon! Vikings! Cute Minecraft-like graphics! Yes, it’s the classic Kingdoms and Castles that brings a fun and quirky Medieval world into the city-building genre. Kingdoms and Castles gives a lot of customization options to the player. Among other things, you can generate your landscape and tinker your controls to govern how often your lands will be ravaged by enemy forces and dragons.

Kingdoms and Castles, Image Source: Lion Shield

Watching your cute little blocky townsfolk go to work is a joy to behold, as are the building controls and placement constraints. Yet many of the problems and actions you take are generally quite reactive, instead of predicative, and the difficulty will often lie in if you have the resources available to build the structure that solves the problem.

Unlike many City Builders, Kingdoms and Castles has a pretty cool RTS system, in regard to its combat. Instead of attacks being automatically repelled (or not) by automated defence systems, you take direct control of your armies and direct them to deal with the threats. On hard mode, the Dragon’s and Vikings will hammer you repeatedly, but combating them in real time is one of the many joys of the games.

Anno 2205, Image SOurce: Ubisoft Blue Byte

Whilst not without flaws, there is something special and unique about Anno 2205 that makes it worth going back to, time and time again. The game is set between Earth and Moon, where you can establish several “corporate” bases in order to trade between them, and ultimately, turn a profit.

One of the unique features that the game offers is that of “multi-sessions”; this is a system whereby you can establish many different “colonies” that represent different sessions.

As you enter a “session” and build up a new base, you can trade resources from that base to your other ‘sessions’. For example, on Earth, you will get to a stage where you need to trade for materials that can only be found on the moon and vice versa.

The variation in location goes a long way to keep the experience fresh. The stunning bleak landscapes of the moon contrast beautifully with the lush environments of Earth. With that said, beyond the multi-sessions, the game lacks some of the complexity of the other entries on the list.