If you're a fan of pirate games, you were probably already having a pretty good 2026 with the release of open-world survival crafting game Windrose and Ubisoft's confirmation that Assassin's Creed Black Flag is getting a remake, but I'm afraid I have another game to squeeze into your hourglass. Corsair Cove is a gorgeous and ambitious new pirate-themed city builder from Manor Lords publisher Hooded Horse, and it's coming to Xbox and PC this year.

I've been playing pirate games since the 2004 remake of Sid Meier's Pirates!, but it's been fairly slim pickings in recent years. Now I almost can't keep up. Windrose is a massive commitment and I know I won't want to play anything else when the Black Flag remake comes out, but it's looking like I'll have to find space for Corsair Cove. Being made by the same people behind popular city builder Tropico 6, Limbic Entertainment, Corsair Cove looks like it could be the first management sim to really hold my attention, and that's not only because it's all about building, providing for, and defending a pirate settlement.

For one, Corsair Cove is stunning and a huge step up visually from Tropico 6, with glistening emerald green waters, lush forests, and towering waterfalls. More importantly, I like that it incorporates elements of my favorite pirate games like straight-up naval exploration, expeditions, islands and temples you can pillage for treasure, monsters from folklore like krakens and big ol' whales, and interestingly, turn-based combat. I'll definitely be curious to see how that works when we get more information. For now, we just know "the choice of ship, crew, and captain, combined with your tactical prowess, determines the victor."

Another unique selling point here is the focus on verticality. Hooded Horse calls Corsair Cove "a city builder that challenges you to think tall as you build without constraints on cliff-faces and hilltops and manage complex production chains that span across great lengths and heights." You can see some of those networks of bridges, ziplines, and all sorts of other nautical gadgetry built all over different landscapes alongside your taverns, piers, armaments, living quarters, and defensive infrastructure in the trailer above. It all looks incredibly busy in a way that I suspect will give city builder fans plenty to chew on while still giving pirate sickos their grog.

On that note, the game tasks you with defending the "Golden Age of Piracy" against the onslaught of attacks from the Crown, whose pirate hunters are out trying to ruin everyone's fun. If you want to stand a chance against the Crown's growing army of narcs, you'll have to keep your people happy. "Bread and booze can only sustain a pirate for so long, and the more capable among your crew will demand the finer things in life if you expect them to stick around," warns the game's Steam description.

"What's more, a fully-equipped armada has needs of its own, with more powerful ships requiring more advanced equipment and specialist crew with their own demands. It takes a lot to upset a population of pirates, but if their needs are ignored for too long, they won't hesitate to abandon the cause, and leave you truly stranded."

Similarly, if the games industry wants me to stick around, it'll have to keep a steady flow of pirate games coming my way, even if, for now, my belly's more than full.

Windrose sells 1 million copies in less than a week, and as the open-world pirate game passes 220,000 concurrent Steam players, devs say the support is "absolutely astonishing"

It's not often you spend 30,000 hours playing a single video game, but when that does happen it's usually because you're really, really into it. Not always the case, however, as proven by a fascinating Steam review for Cities: Skylines from a player with nearly 30,000 hours logged.

When I first came across this post on Reddit, I had to check for myself, and sure enough, I was able to track it down and confirm that, at the very least, the reviewer had 29,926.3 hours logged in Cities: Skylines at the time of writing. That doesn't mean the reviewer actually played the game for that long - although it's possible - but that's the amount of time the game client was active. Still, even if half, or even three-quarters of that time, was spent idling, that's still an absolutely absurd amount of playtime for a single-player game.

The Redditor who shared the review did the math, and assuming the 30,000 hours is legit, that would be the equivalent of more than seven hours of playtime, every day, in the 11 years since the game came out. That's a full-time job! Of course, I'm inclined to believe a lot of that time was spent AFK, but no matter how you slice it, that's a lot of Cities: Skylines. According to Steam's data, 68.3 hours were logged in just the last two weeks alone, so it sounds like the player stays pretty consistent.

Anyway, apparently that was enough time for them to decide they don't really like Cities: Skylines. The review, posted April 11, 2026, reads:

"Constant updates break the entire game if it's modded. And it MUST be modded because the vanilla version is so lame it's unbearable. Paradox seems fixated on pastel cartoonish colors and buildings that look ubsurdly rediculous. The constant breaking with updates has made this the BY FAR most frustrating, enraging game of my entire life."

Most hours I've ever seen on a game from r/Steam

Whether or not this person actually sat down and played Cities: Skylines for 30,000 hours, this is a terribly funny review for someone who clearly enjoys the game enough to play it consistently. As a recovering League of Legends player, I completely understand the feeling of playing a game so much that you begin to hate it, but I can't say I can relate to having even a fraction of that amount of playtime in any game I've ever played. I reckon I was pushing 1,000 hours in Diablo 2 and Ultima Online back in the day, but these days I'm lucky if I can last a hundred hours in a game before I get bored.

I think what tickles me about this review, other than the sheer irony, is that Cities: Skyline is a generally very well-received city builder. It's literally number one on our list of the best city building games, and it's without a doubt a better experience than the disastrous sequel that came out in 2023. I'd be inclined to think the above Steam review was written by someone confusing Cities: Skylines 2 for the first game, but with that amount of hours logged, there's no denying they were playing the game they reviewed.

Anyway, here are the best sim games you can play right now.

A city builder is only as good as its ethical shortcomings. Within 30 minutes of watching Peter Molyneux (Populous, Fable, Dungeon Keeper) play his upcoming god game Masters of Albion, the designer has slipped rat meat into a pie, bemoaned housing inspectors, and "kind of" built a sweatshop for his followers. "It's not intrinsically bad to house someone in the same place as they work", he argues. A pause. "It's a little bit bad."

Masters of Albion sees players step into godhood, your cursor replaced by an all-powerful hand that can drag-and-drop worshippers, raise buildings, possess any living thing, and smite ne'er-do-wells. A remarkable amount of systems turn this game's cogs, from market simulation to anything being viable trebuchet ammunition, but with great depth comes greater potential for irresponsible shortcuts. More rat pie, anyone?

Righteous

The hands-off demonstration begins in a small village, its lush greenery in stark contrast to the muted lands beyond its walls. Color is restored by rebuilding beacons; which means relying on mortals – either entrusting them to battle, or possessing them to fight with fairly simplistic third-person combat – to extend your domain. You can possess anything, says Molyneux, from heroes specially fit for fighting to random villagers and even chickens.

In this instance, a hero is chosen to complete the quest objective – reclaiming the abandoned village of Wyrmscar for its mine, which can, in turn, be worked for a stable supply of metals for the blacksmith. Masters of Albion's life sim systems feel interwoven and complementary, creating a satisfying string of problem-solving and resource management that promises to scratch the same itch as contemporary city builders like Manor Lords.

Yet developer 22cans' godly setting lends itself more to direct interactivity. Besides possessing Albion's denizens, your hand can be used to nudge life along. Ivy can be plucked and peeled from Wyrmscar's neglected buildings to make them functional again, while a Lego-style approach to building lets you click cubes together and even change a building's purpose. Molyneux demonstrates by picking up a smelter and combining it with a nearby factory, minimizing the time it takes for workers to usher materials between the two, but you can just as easily build ramshackle houses atop workplaces or fix a ballista to a farmstead. "My tip of the day is: always think about roofs on houses," Molyneux offers sagely, warning that even a god shouldn't underestimate the game's housing inspectors.

Creating a medieval production line is necessary for completing citizens' orders, which in turn progress your tech tree. One townsfolk requests a batch order of food that's ''all meat, no starch", so Molyneux puts the nearest factory to work assembling pies. This, of all places, is where Masters of Albion's minutiae shines: you can pick each ingredient that goes into a meal, physically plonking them into a prototype for the workers to replicate. The trick – for deities of capital, at least – is to make your customers happy without breaking the bank, which Molyneux demonstrates by checking the live prices of his ingredients while slipping chunks of rat between helpings of broth, pie crust, and chicken.

The same logic applies to smithing. You can choose how big or grandiose to make a sword, but larger weapons take longer to make, and Molyneux adds that smaller weapons are better for confined spaces. Being combat-ready is important for more than just staking new lands: while Masters of Albion is a relatively relaxing build-'em-up sim by day, by night, hordes of monsters come to try and tear down what you've built. There's no time limit – you progress to night only when you're ready – which is good, as being overwhelmed spells defeat.

I adore defending in sims, although the fate of my last town in Manor Lords suggests it's not my forte, and Masters of Albion provides plenty to let you really dig into it. You're shown where baddies will attack from, which lets you commit to planning proper defenses rather than relying entirely on reactivity. Heroes can be assigned custom routes to patrol, pricey fortifications like trebuchets and ballista can be used to create chokepoints, and your powers allow for divine intervention. Molyneux sets up all of the above whilst sporadically flinging chain lightning into crowds of zombies, and at one point, crushes a skeleton by dropping a nearby boulder on its head.

My favorite thing in strategy games – be they city builders, god games, or tactical RPGs – is not only being given the tools to thrive, but feeling like there is a greater purpose to utilizing them. The depth of Masters of Albion looks set to scratch that itch magnificently, while its tongue-in-cheek British humor offers enough of a touchstone to usher curious Fable fans into the genre. So, too, does the return of a fundamental question: can players be trusted with power? "I want people to realize as they're playing… 'Oh shit, I am a bit evil! I'm cramming everyone into a skyscraper,'" says Molyneux. "For me, the definition of a God Game is this word: freedom."

Here are the best strategy games we're playing at the moment

Publisher Paradox Interactive has a big – and expensive – celebration in mind for the 11th anniversary of the beloved Cities: Skylines, including a host of DLC coming to both the original city builder and its sequel. This includes the first full expansion pack for the original game in nearly three years, as Paradox continues to weather the fallout from the maligned launch of Cities: Skylines 2.

The new content for the original Cities: Skylines is led by Race Day, an expansion that'll let your city host cycling, motorsports, and foot races. You can either build bespoke race circuits, or designate parts of your city streets as event roads so that they'll shut down to let racers through when the big event gets underway. This expansion launches on March 10, and while there's no official branding, I'm sure it's no coincidence that it comes just a few days after the Formula One season begins this weekend.

Notably, this will be the first full expansion for Cities: Skylines since Hotels & Retreats launched way back in May 2023. That was a few months ahead of the launch of its sequel, but as I wrote about in my Cities: Skylines 2 review, the follow-up landed in such a disastrous technical state that (now-former) developer Colossal Order had little choice but to delay DLC until after the biggest issues were fixed.

Cities: Skylines 2 eventually got one full expansion with Bridges & Ports, which was promised ahead of launch in 2023 but only ended up launching two years later in 2025. Most of the game's DLC has taken the form of community-led content creator packs, which add largely cosmetic new buildings, and expansions to the soundtrack.

The original Cities: Skylines has also been getting new content creator and soundtrack DLC since 2024, when it was becoming clear how much of the community was not ready to move onto the sequel, but there have been no other proper expansions in that time. March 10 will also see the release of Iconic Brutalism, Renewed History, and 8 Gear Radio DLC for CS1, all of which will be available separately or bundled all together with Race Day for $23.99 USD.

Cities: Skylines 2, meanwhile, is just getting those smaller types of DLC, with Office Evolution and City Stations creator packs and Smooth Vibes FM and Skyrail Radio soundtrack expansions. According to a press release, new developer Iceflake Studios will also introduce a free patch which "will bring the Iceflake Arena signature building to the game, and improve toggle zoning, as well as bug fixes and more." All this stuff lands on March 18.

It's not all doom and gloom for Cities: Skylines 2. SteamDB shows that the sequel is actually currently pulling in higher concurrent player counts than its predecessor, though the numbers are close enough that it's easy to see why Paradox might be keen to offer more content to both groups. But I have to wonder how long it'll take before the sequel once again gets full expansion packs of its own.

The original Cities: Skylines still tops our list of the best city-building games you can play today.

Cities: Skylines developer Colossal Order is officially stepping away from its city builder series, with a new studio taking over work on Cities: Skylines 2 alongside existing publisher Paradox Interactive.

Announced in a post shared on the Paradox Forum today, the official Cities: Skylines account states: "After more than a decade of successful collaboration across numerous titles that we're both immensely proud of, Paradox Interactive and Colossal Order have mutually decided to pursue independent paths. The decision was made thoughtfully and in the interest of both teams – ensuring the strongest possible future for the Cities: Skylines franchise."

Under Paradox's leadership, Iceflake Studios will be taking over "all existing and future development for Cities: Skylines 2, including free updates for the current version, continuous work on the Editor and console editions, as well as future expansions and content packs. This means that Cities players will be able to look forward to new updates and content drops for many years."

Iceflake Studios is set to be fully behind the wheel "from the start of 2026," with Colossal Order finishing up work on a "few additional updates" first, including this week's upcoming "Bike Patch" (you'll never guess what that adds).

In a statement, Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen says the devs are "confident that the franchise will continue to thrive under Paradox's leadership," and teases that "we’re excited to channel our experience, creativity, and passion into new projects that align with our long-term vision."

Meanwhile, Iceflake studio manager Lasse Liljedahl is promising big things for Cities: Skylines fans. "We have a decade worth of experience from making city building and management games. We see a strong foundation and so much potential waiting to be unleashed and I can't wait to show you what we have planned for the next chapter of this incredible game."

Cities: Skylines 2 launched back in 2023, but it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing for the city builder. Its launch was overshadowed by technical issues, and the promised console release still hasn't arrived – it's been heavily delayed, and even now there's still no release window for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S users. The team doesn't offer a massive amount of reassurance in a new FAQ post about the dev changeover, either, simply saying that "we are continuing to work on the console version and look forward to sharing updates with the community as soon as we are ready.​"

Cities: Skylines 2 publisher says players "have higher expectations" today and are "less accepting" that games will "fix things over time."

To deliver the platitude "this is a tough time in game development" is to attempt to patch a sinking boat with chewing gum – it's not nearly enough to convey the seriousness of reckless studio closures, layoffs, and widespread cancellations. Then, there are more mundane tortures, too, like getting anyone to care if your game exists in the first place.

This is the kind of tough time in game development Sonderlust studio founder Nels Anderson is currently getting to know, as the developer explains in a series of posts on Bluesky and Reddit. Even after years of what seemed to be hype, his sustainable city-builder Generation Exile failed. Badly.

"I spent 7 years making Generation Exile, a solarpunk city-builder," Anderson announces on Reddit. "Trailers in PC Gaming Show June '24 & '25. Top 70 most played demo during our Next Fest. Did all the things you're supposed to. Launched in Early Access last week with over 35,000 wishlists. So far, we've sold fewer than 300 copies."

Anderson illustrates this fact with a graphic on Bluesky, which suggests Generation Exile converted exactly 0% of its 35,000 wishlists to sales.

"It wasn't fully 0%," Anderson explains, "But it wasn't *not* that."

"To be clear, this was not on purpose and it's not a good thing!" he says. "But the options now are either goofery or my psyche splinters into a thousands pieces and I expire, so…"

A few things went wrong with Generation Exile, which is out now in Early Access. Actually, Early Access might be one of the problems – Anderson says in his post-mortem on Reddit that players might now have "huge skepticism around Early Access, in a way there didn’t used to be."

"Obviously if you're an intensely known quantity (Larian + BG3, Hades II, etc.) or you're making something that's quite recognisable as 'it's {popular thing} but slightly different,' then sure, you'll be fine," says Anderson. "But if that's not where you're starting from, woof."

Though, he admits on Bluesky that Generation Exile – a vibrant turn-based builder set during the edge of societal collapse – might have suffered from poor packaging, particularly, in the form of a confusing game trailer. He promises to make a new one.

"None of this means we were owed anything," Anderson tells Reddit about Generation Exile's once seemingly positive trajectory. "But at least hypothetically, these are the indicators that one is supposed to be monitoring to see if your game is tracking towards something that will connect with folks."

"I genuinely don't think this is a 'well everyone thinks their own baby is cute' situation," he bargains. "I think we can say that at the very least GenExile isn't significantly below average in terms of quality, presentation and depth compared to other Early Access titles we've played, both recently and further in the past."

I don't know, I don't think "quality" is the problem. Truthfully, I've been having the same reaction to all bad video game news recently. It's not as in-depth as Anderson gets, but it feels true to categorize our place in history this way: unlucky.

As Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition crashes and burns on arrival, Bethesda responds to reports of DLC "no longer being recognized as 'owned'" by the RPG's players.

It took me a while to get into Anno 117 as a new Anno player. The first hours were spent in a state of confusion, going bankrupt, and wondering what to do next. Then it clicked – the game's core thesis as a city-builder was one of unrestrained growth. I donned my proto-capitalist top hat and tails (making me an oddity in a world of togas), and got to work. Once I understood that the real key thesis of the game was to just keep expanding, swallowing up more and more of your bucolic surroundings, I got it, I really got it, and I was hooked.

The Anno series has taken us from the Early Modern Era to the future, and back again to the Industrial Revolution – and now, we're heading back to antiquity. Anno 117 takes place during the period known as the Pax Romana, a time of general peace and prosperity in the Roman Empire. It was also a time of long-term imperialism, and guess what you'll be doing in this game? That's right – expanding, baby.

Denarius Populusque Romanus

You start off in traditional Anno fashion: you're on an island with limited resources and need to build a somewhat sustainable, stable economy. Then you will inevitably decide that actually those resources on the other island look pretty peachy, and start a second city over there, and so on. This draws you into conflict with your rivals, other governors who also want to grow their societies, and you can deal with them through either diplomatic or military means.

Militarism has been expanded in Anno 117, as befits a game set in post-Marian reforms Rome. Land combat makes a return to the series, and it's seen a lot of work compared to older games in the series. There's a rock, paper, scissors aspect to warfare that will be familiar to any Total War fans, and it's generally pretty satisfying.

However, the diplomatic route is just as enjoyable, and it's the area where I focused most of my efforts. Why fight when you can trade, after all? Supply-chain management is, as always in the series, what you need to take the most care of, and a strong economy will pretty much always result in a surplus of at least some trade goods, which you can sell off to get even richer. Manage your economy well, trade with everyone that you can, and you will be as rich as Croesus, or perhaps more fittingly for the setting, Crassus.

The UI is somewhat questionable, at least for PC players, and the only part of the game that caused me issues. Each good's supply chain, key information, is hidden in a sub-menu for the population that consumes it. For example, if you're trying to please the Plebians, you'll need to produce bread, because porridge and sardines aren't enough for them (not that I can blame them).

To see the supply chain that you'll need for bread (wheat, flour, charcoal), you need to scroll to the Plebeians on your construction menu, click on the bread good, then finally click on each building type to construct it. It's a drawn-out process that could have been made far simpler – Against the Storm's UI is a good example that they should have followed. It's not game-breaking or too frustrating once you get used to it, but it does seem like an odd choice.

The game also has a habit of not switching to a building's vital sub-modules by default. An example of this came when I was trying to harvest eels to feed my population. I knew the building needed to be placed in marshland, but once placed, it complained it didn't have access to a soggy mire. Quite reasonably, I tried placing it in wetter parts of the marsh, but it was actually requesting that I effectively lay out fields for the eel catchers to work in. The game didn't default to placing them, as it does with fields of grain, so I was extremely confused for a while.

You'd better get used to scrolling through the aforementioned population menus, as the game features a wide array of population types, all of whom have needs that you'll need to meet. Set across two biomes, Latium (Rome's Greatest Hits, Vol. 50), and Albion, or ancient Britain. Whichever setting you're playing in, the game's gorgeous to look at, and the detail in the game's cities makes them feel like living, breathing things.

In Albion, you'll be able to choose whether to hybridize your cultures or go full Celtic. Each offers unique rewards, including different building types, but, more notably for Anno, Gods. Religion has a big part to play in Anno 117, with Belief another resource that you'll need to grow, alongside knowledge and the money in your vaults. You'll pick a god from your pantheon, and your belief will then grant bonuses that increase in power as you grow your cities' belief. Combine this with a pretty sizable tech tree, and there's a ton to do.

Not a campaign worth one of Caesar's diaries

The game is split into a campaign and a sandbox mode. The campaign is entirely perfunctory, with the plot effectively serving as nothing more than an extended tutorial. While it's a shame that it couldn't be more interesting, it's not that much of a problem: the sandbox mode is going to be where most players spend their time, and it's very strong.

Here, the only "story" that you'll encounter to a significant degree is requests from your population. For example, a Libertus may ask you to hunt down some slavers who appear to have enslaved their friend. It's busywork, but it's fine. It's worth mentioning slavery in a little more detail here, as it's largely handwaved away by both the story and the general setting. It's correctly treated as a Very Bad Thing, but don't go into this expecting much political weight.

Despite these problems and a general sense of complexity for complexity's sake (why can't I hit a single button to pause all unproductive buildings, for instance?), I had a good time with Anno. Whether you're looking for a game that can scratch that Caesar/Pharaoh itch by allowing you to create gorgeous cities, or just want to manage huge industrial supply chains, there's a lot to like in Anno 117.

Anno 117: Pax Romana was reviewed on PC, with a code provided by the publisher.

Plan what to play next with our best strategy games list!

After months of silence, we've got a new update on Manor Lords, the hit city builder from Slavic Magic. It brings a new Beta for players to try out, featuring some considerable improvements, as well as an explanation for the lack of communication from the team.

The last we heard from Manor Lords was in July, where we got a development blog on a number of incoming changes and uplifts. Since then, not much has happened, and today's news opens with an apology, citing a misalignment of priorities as the team expanded.

"Sorry for taking so long this time," begins Grzegorz 'Greg' Styczeń, the creator and solo-dev behind the game prior to the studio's growth. "I am rethinking what went wrong to ensure it won’t happen again. I focused on expanding the developer team and tackled way too many issues at once.

"Right now, on the left of my screen in the engine window, is a graveyard full of perks that didn't work out and were all eventually discarded," he continues. "I needed to align visions with the new designers, and the new programmers learning the codebase (that was basically a giant solo dev spaghetti) also led to a bunch of problems."

He mentions the roadmap, as it were, is for smaller, more regular changes, rather than larger rollouts. In meantime, he outlines the current Beta, where you'll find new maps, better AI-controlled players and towns, and a revamped progression system, among other goodies.

The other leaders operated by the AI can't attack you just yet, but the townships they make are now more polished and natural feeling. Progression has become more "thematic," with an indication the choices will be trickier and less cut and dry.

In general, the project has just gotten deeper across the board. There are increased population types, resources are broken down to disparate parts, and there are more tools for tracking your growth. These come on top of a plethora of quality-of-life improvements.

It's an impressive rollout, and the assertion we'll see more in the weeks and months ahead is exciting. Manor Lords continues to be an impressive game that's worth keeping an eye on.

Manor Lords came about partly because of a classic 1994 medieval strategy game and "raising sheep"

Beyond These Stars exists in an interesting new city-builder sub-genre. Over the past couple of years, a suite of games have tasked you not with building your settlement on solid ground, but on partnering up with some local megafauna, constructing your city on their back as they move around their world. Beyond These Stars takes that idea to the final frontier, positioning your civilization on the back of a sentient space whale as it navigates the galaxy.

That whale is Kewa, an entity so enormous that its head is encrusted with ice-covered peaks. That gives you plenty of space to build - from humble beginnings it's not long before you've got a sprawling city that still takes up only a small portion of Kewa's total surface area. But it's also not long until that causes its own problems.

Adrift

Kewa's inhabitants, the Peeps, are seeking to re-occupy the abandoned homes of their distant forebears – a spacefaring civilization that was spread out among the stars.

While Kewa can (slowly) travel those interstellar distances with relative ease, for the Peeps, staying themselves alive on their long journey requires a lot of resources. Many of those can be gathered or synthesized from Kewa themselves, but many others can only be found dotted around the galaxy.

During my hands-off demo, the Peeps were hoping to explore a colder region of space, but nothing they could gather from Kewa gave them the resources to do so. Thankfully, they can travel around individual solar systems relatively quickly, thanks to an interplanetary travel system that forms the core of every new settlement. Over time, the idea is that you'll build up a system of colonies focused around specific resources - in this case a planet capable of sustaining life for a population of sheep-like creatures that could provide wool for warm clothing.

That wool could be ferried back to Kewa, where it could be processed to allow the Peeps to survive in that colder region. But once Kewa moved away from that specific planet, the Peeps would have to return to its interstellar neighborhood before they'd be able to gather its specific resources again. That's easier said than done, as Kewa is fully sentient, and while they're often prepared to be an agreeable host, they're also very much their own creature. That means while you can ask them to work with you, they may not always agree to do so.

If Kewa gets too hungry, they'll fly off to a specific region of space to eat, regardless of whether that's somewhere you want to be or not.

The heavy industry you're likely to need to build on Kewa's back is also quite upsetting to your host, and while Beyond These Stars allows you to use by-product from almost any process in the creation of something new, its environmental message extends to making sure you'll need to clean up after yourself to keep Kewa happy.

Communing with the whale is an entertainingly clunky system, a retro screen displaying a text-based conversation that only progresses slowly, Kewa's vast mind taking its time with each response. It's hard to convey the sentience in what clearly remains a gameplay-driven system, but Beyond These Stars has done a good job of combining conventional city-building mechanics with something far more unknowable and complex.

As this genre continues to evolve and iterate on itself, it's fascinating to see how a whole new entity can make its mark via a game that's as much a galaxy-wide supply chain simulator as it is a traditional city management game. That's the magic of Beyond These Stars: it's all of these things all at once, and the sheer oddity of it all is enough to compel me already

There are so many new games to keep track of, and with this handy list, it's easier than ever.

Manor Lords developer Slavic Magic has released details about an upcoming patch for the early access strategy game, and it's "overhauling a lot of systems at once".

Manor Lords is one of the most exciting early access games going at the moment, and that's reflected in its success, having sold over 2.5 million copies in less than a year. The last major update for the early access game arrived back in January adding new maps and bridge building to the game, but since then it's been silent aside from a blog post to confirm an update is on the way.

Greg Styczeń (aka Slavic Magic) has posted a new blog post explaining why it's been so long since the game had been updated, writing: "I know you've been waiting a long time, and the reason for the delay is pretty simple. We're overhauling a lot of systems at once. It's not just a new feature or two. It's a full rework of how things like buildings, production chains, and environmental interactions function. Because we're working on all these big changes, we haven't been able to put out smaller patches. They would make things messy or break stuff that's still being worked on."

As for the update itself, it's adding a new Affinity system that offers up a more strategic way to lay out your towns. Buildings will now have different environmental types which will work in conjunction with each other, with some giving buffs to other buildings. For example: "Apiaries can increase the existing effect that Pollination Orchards get from Meadows."

However, your actions outside of building will also have an effect on your affinity. "As you chop down forests, your Woodland affinities will start disappearing, so if you value forest-based industries, you may want to take care of your forests more."

Styczeń also confirms that a new map named Divided is on the way, which has two regions divided by a mountain range. As well as see-through fortifications, and reworked building cards, which can be seen on the blog post announcing the changes.

Furthermore, Styczeń adds that "once this update is out, we'll be able to shift to smaller, more frequent updates going forward," meaning there shouldn't be a wait between patches that lasts this long again. "That's the focus, and we’re working hard to make the wait worth it."

These updates could get Manor Lords a higher spot in our list of the best city building games.

What happens after the apocalypse is over? It's a question that many have tried to answer, but one that the team behind one of Steam Next Fest's biggest city-builders are pretty well-placed to answer. From an hour with their latest demo, it seems that life is mostly pretty chill - as long as you're content with some…unconventional cuisine.

After Inc is a mashup between a traditional city-builder and a 4X strategy game, in which your settlement gradually spills out as you look for new resources to take advantage of. From extremely humble beginnings huddled around a fire pit in a bunch of lean-to tents, you can expand through the fog of war, searching for forests to provide building material, or settling grassland to convert to farms.

It's a relatively simple test of ensuring that your demand for resources never outstrips your supply. Water, food, and fuel are all important, but thankfully, it's not too hard to stay ahead of them, as long as you manage your Stamina meter, which affects how quickly you can perform certain actions. Stamina refills over time, and moves faster the higher your population is, giving you an easy resource to sacrifice if you need something else fast - sending someone out scavenging for food might not be as efficient as establishing a farm, but it might just get you through a tricky winter.

Elsewhere, city-builder staples like Morale and Authority help shape your hold over your settlement, as do random events. These can vary between an outbreak of food poisoning that needs curing or a winter storm that threatens to ruin food supplies. There aren't that many of them in the demo, so you're likely to see the same few multiple times - in one run, I lost the chance to discover the concept of pickling food three times, and I threw out a lot of bad supplies in the process.

That's partly because there's usually a pretty obvious best choice. If someone's suffering from food poisoning, it's usually best to spend a little extra water to maintain their health and the town's morale. If there's a chance you get a massive boost to your food production just by throwing out a little extra rotten chow, then it makes sense to take it. And if a pack of wild dogs provides a boost to both morale and your supplies just because you misinterpreted what 'hot dogs' were in the time before the Plague, then is it really wrong to eat them?

Morals aside, that 'best-case' approach tends to keep After Inc pretty relaxed, at least on its normal difficulty. Its largely pastoral, solarpunk aesthetic works nicely on a mobile-first UI that's made the jump to PC very easily, and the endless mode that will be available with the full game seems like a very chill way to keep a post-apocalyptic city running in perpetuity. Even fighting off the zombies that lurk in the fog of war is a pretty stress-free process - if you don't disturb them, they're unlikely to disturb you, and clearing them out of areas you want to expand into is simply a case of sending your fighters off to battle in some distant zone.

After Inc has found its way almost to the very top of Steam Next Fest's city-builder charts, currently sitting in second place behind an extremely pretty voxel-based builder that somehow seems to boast even better vibes than this demo. Much of that probably comes from the Plague Inc affiliation, and the mobile-first control scheme can't hurt either. It's likely far from the most complex strategy game you'll find in this latest round of demos, but it's a relaxing, tabletop-style approach to the post-apocalypse that I certainly enjoyed.

Elsewhere in Next Fest, you can play the RPG that inspired Undertale, featuring the work of Toby Fox.

Few games have taught me to prepare myself for imminent disaster better than Rimworld. It's a raw, unforgiving base-builder that requires no small amount of cunning to anticipate the dangers that lurk at the edge of the map. And it can be tiresome, rebuilding time and time again having been hit with yet another base-desolating rabid squirrel attack. So I went in search of a slightly more forgiving management game, one that might give some respite from a hectic life in the Rim.

In discovering Ratopia, a downright adorable rat-themed city builder, I put my rodent avoiding days behind me. With its fairytale assets and nomenclature it promised a gentle foray into the life of a benevolent rat queen and her god-fearing subjects. I imagined long days brimming with rodentesque revelry and midsommar nights of placid quietude, walking the halls of my ornate mousehole. What I found instead was a rat-infested carnival of pestilence and despair.

Best laid plans

As base builder fans often discover, there's an order to things. You start building with the more common resources dotted about the map, and as you tackle the research tree you'll delve deeper in order to gain rarer resources for more complex production lines. It's the basic survival game stepladder.

In starting a new game of Ratopia, you first need to build a City Gate to let in migrants. Then you go about meeting their ever more elaborate needs as they become less and less comfortable with the initial asceticism of a frontier lifestyle. Your Ratizens quickly grow tired of snoozing on the cold ground with zero entertainment so you have to scramble early, earning enough research points to work your way through several research trees in quick succession.

While the research pipeline is relatively freeform, in that you're encouraged to specialize depending on which resource you have greater access to, there's a core hierarchy of needs that have to be met early. Deviate from that and you'll have a hard time clawing back a single mistake, as I soon found out.

The rat race

For my third playthrough in two days – I restart city builders a lot – I decided to go without the tutorial. I didn't see the need to go through it all again. I had the general gist. At least, I thought I did.

I spent a lot of this playthrough exploring, which brings in a steady flow of research points each time you return with a new resource. I then built myself a Laboratory to churn out and stack up even more research points before things got too heated. I thought I'd gamed it. I had a steady flow of research points, I'd locked in an easy food source. I'd even quelled their cries for a circus and went about my day. Little did I know the wave that was about to break over my humble hamlet.

After a few days of careful consideration, working out each aspect of my base in great detail – from the efficiency of its layout, to the color of the wall hangings – it suddenly hit me. In the corner I spotted one of the many notifications I'd been ignoring for the past few hours of slogging away at my settlement, which noted that one of my Ratizens was sick. It was all downhill from there.

Like the Plague

Having been so enthralled with micromanaging my little rat village to within an inch of its life, I'd forgotten one simple necessity: toilets. Apparently the abundance of open pools dotted around wasn't enough for my bougie rodents – I suppose along with gaining sentience they'd relinquished their will to wash.

Despite a steady flow of research points, I wasn't pumping out nearly enough to see me through the process of rectifying a disease-ridden dominion. In order to heal my Ratizens I would need to build a toilet to head the plague off at the source. Easy enough. But to actually treat the Ratizens I'd need a hospital, which needed fabric and stone blocks – two things I had been willfully neglecting – as well as a pharmacy to make the medicine, and a kiln to fire the charcoal for it. In other words, a full-blown pharmaceutical production line. Not to mention the sheer rat power needed to get all this off the ground in time to save my people.

No. I was beaten. And in my attempts to emerge from the plague infested hellscape I had created, I thought fondly of the Rim and of squirrel invasions. As unforgiving as the Rimworld's storytellers can be, I found myself wishing for my happy place. Because in this delicate dance of survival, beady eyes begged at me for a cure I could not deliver. And in my hubris, I watched my rat empire fall.

Looking for recommendations to add to your wishlist? See what's on the horizon in our roundup of upcoming indie games.

Manor Lords has already been out for an entire year, and its lead developer Grzegorz "Greg" Styczeń shares his plans for the city-builder's future in a new Steam blog post.

"Honestly, it doesn't feel that long ago," Styczeń starts. "I remember uploading the build, crossing my fingers that things wouldn't immediately fall apart – and here we are several patches and plenty of additions later."

As of December last year, Manor Lords has sold over 2.5 million copies, which is seriously impressive for an early access city-builder made mostly by just one dev. Styczeń says the team is now up to nine devs, plus QA help from QLOC. More work is being done with the game's AI, 2D and 3D art, maps, and more.

The game's AI opponent can now properly build a small village, and the dev team is changing pathfinding to help soldiers get in and out of castles properly.

Styczeń wants to keep the scale of everything period-accurate rather than using a common game design trick of making paths and doors wider. "It's like the medieval constructors wanted to purposefully make it harder for large groups of soldiers to navigate around the castle. Curious."

There are also changes coming to how you run your settlements, as "many buildings will now require upkeep." Blacksmiths will need 12 tools per year, and deep mines will need planks.

A quarry for mining an endless amount of stones on rich deposits is also coming along with a lime kiln, as lime will be needed for "advanced stone construction."

Finally, new art for a lot of the UI keeps with the medieval aesthetic Manor Lords has. I think it looks delightful. Instead of a hovering icon on the map, you'll now see what looks like a more painted depiction of resources. These changes are also coming to the build menu.

There's a lot to digest, so check out the full post yourself, right here.

In the meantime, check out all the upcoming indie games for 2025 and beyond.

When the world seems to be crumbling around you, sometimes you need to feel in control. Playing city builders is how I stave off the worry, in any case. And what better way to extend that feeling of fixing the world, than by getting your pals involved in some cozy city building board game shenanigans? Two birds with one stone, I suppose (disclaimer: you may need several stones to build a city).

I consider these to be some of the best board games around, thanks to their creative freedom, heartwarming aesthetics and story, and of course their clever strategic mechanics. Don't worry if you're not big on strategy games though, many of these are super easy to pick up and play. In each one, you'll get to create your ideal civilization from the comfort of your own home, and with friends… because collective escapism is a valid strategy for dealing with the horrors of reality.

In any case, I've rounded up some of the sweetest, coziest city building board games I could find to rid you of the bad feels, in case the world has been getting you down lately. Below you'll find everything from cooperative city building board games, to adorable hex-based competitive numbers like the well-loved Dorfromantik – now just $35.99 at Miniature Market.

For more why not check out our list of the best classic board games, or some more board game deals while you're in the mood to purchase some.

As updates continue rolling out for Frostpunk 2, developer 11 Bit Studios reveals that work is now underway on a remake of the city builder banger that started it all in 2018.

The studio unveils Frostpunk 1886, an Unreal Engine "reimagining" of the original Frostpunk gem, in a new teaser trailer on YouTube. According to a recent press release accompanying the announcement, Frostpunk 1886 is "no mere visual overhaul" but rather an entirely fresh experience that stands on its own, building and expanding upon the foundation set by 11 Bit Studios' first city-building survival game seven years ago.

Frostpunk 1886 features content, laws, mechanics, and a Purpose path that are all new to the remake, making it perfect for both veteran fans of the original and those who have not yet played through Frostpunk before.

As 11 Bit Studios is using Unreal Engine this time rather than its own Liquid Engine like it did before, the upcoming city builder will be expandable for years to come by fans as it's set to boast mod support.

Fans of Frostpunk have long awaited official mod support, an inclusion that was "previously impossible to realize due to technical limitations of the original engine." This also opens up the possibility of future DLC and expansions from 11 Bit Studios, much like Frostpunk 2 is receiving – but there's no telling what direction Frostpunk 1886 will truly take just yet until it launches sometime in 2027.

The exciting remake can already be wishlisted on Steam, so if you're a fan of the original and its sequel, be sure to add it to yours to keep up to date with any news from 11 Bit Studios.

It's only been in production since "early 2025," but Frostpunk 1886 "marks the start of a new era" for the dev – one with a heavy focus "on delivering in-house projects more frequently than ever before" – so it's certainly one to keep an eye on.

Looking for more? Here are some of the best city-building games to play while you wait.

In case you didn't catch the announcement in the storm of Baldur's Gate 3 talk across the web, I thought I would bring to your attention something wonderful: an upcoming D&D city builder board game, in which players design and recreate the city of Baldur's Gate. As a fan of BG3, D&D, and city builders, that already sounds like one of the best board games to me.

Dungeons & Dragons: Builders of Baldur's Gate is set for a June 2025 release, but you can preorder it now at Miniature Market for $55.99. That's already $9 cheaper than the $64.99 MSRP. And honestly, it's a darn sight cheaper than a lot of WizKids games of the same ilk.

Recently demoed at GAMA Expo 2025 at the WizKids booth, Dungeons & Dragons: Builders of Baldur's Gate pits 2-5 players against one another in a city building twist on one of the best tabletop RPGs around, D&D. In it, you'll play as the head of a powerful family trying to grow in notoriety and push your own agendas while building up Baldur's Gate however you see fit. You'll spend (around 90 minutes) play time building up new businesses within the nine districts of the iconic city of Baldur's Gate, and creating temporary allegiances as you defend your home from incoming monsters.

Extending your hand across the three major factions of the city – the Council of Four, the Flaming Fist, and the Thieves' Guild – you'll slot your influence cubes into miniatures representing gates, keeps, watchtowers and the like to exhibit your realm of influence.

The game comes from the mind of Matthew Dunstan who, alongside Brett J. Gilbert, co-designed Elysium. Similar in its deep sense of political intrigue, Elysium is a well-regarded strategy board game of Ancient Greek heroes, demigods and legends.

For more discounts, be sure to check out our D&D gift guide.

Developer Tomas Sala has called on Valve to improve Steam's social functionality so indie devs can maintain an audience in between games rather than restarting from scratch on social media. He calls it the "one solution for indie sustainability I have."

Tomas Sala is known as the mostly-solo developer behind throwback flight combat sim The Falconeer and its city-building spin-off Bulwark, and he's now "lobbying and begging" Valve "to bring some social and follower improvements to Steam, so we can create loyalty in the place we create revenue" in a recent social media post.

Following developers or studios on Steam right now means you'll simply get an email notification (that you can opt out of) every time they release a game, meaning players won't be getting regular updates from their favorite devs' new projects. Steam's follower system doesn't function anything like a traditional social media platform at the moment, but Sala thinks maybe it should.

Sala notes that "indies f***ing rock at" promoting themselves on social media, "but we need to tie this to the games we sell" as all of that networking is in vain because "the moment I make a new game it's gone." It would also function as a "path away from toxicity rather than towards it" since some social media sites are now notoriously overrun with (and sometimes run by) lots of bad apples.

"To get Valve to let indies maintain a fanbase across/over/in between games," he continues. "The follower functionality is now useless, but letting us create long lasting communities players on Steam is the one solution for indie sustainability I have. I do this for survival, I spam relentlessly on this. You wont find a more dedicated Steam dev. Updates personal support. Night and day! But it's mostly in vain, the moment I make a new game its gone. I am terrified of the future marketplace for games!"

For now, keep an eye on the upcoming indie games of 2025 and beyond.

There's loads of exciting stuff on the way to medieval strategy city builder Manor Lords, as developer Greg Styczeń (AKA Slavic Magic) confirms that "castles and sieges are now in the works," along with another new map, a progression overhaul, and more.

Styczeń shared a preview of Manor Lords' next patch on Steam over the weekend, which includes everything from "fortified strongholds with modular upgrades to the introduction of Devil's Hill – a prime battleground and castle site." Devil's Hill is the name of the new map, which features a huge hill surrounded by other regions. "I'm considering a game mode that places very valuable resources on that hill to have the Lords fight over it," Styczeń adds.

The city builder's existing castle planner (used to enhance your town and Manor House) has also "had a ton of work done to it," now boasting the option to upgrade modules and wall pieces individually, as well as "selectively add platforms with battlements to the walls." However, the real star of the show here is the addition of stone castles, which look fantastic, and it's been revealed that going forward, the "size of the castle plan will be limited by the lord's rank."

As for the progression system rework, the sort-of-solo dev hasn't given any exact details beyond the general aim to "balance historicity and gameplay," noting that both creative and immersion-focused ideas have been pushed back for being either "too fantasy" or "too gamey," respectively. "I'm losing count but I think we're on our fourth design document... But things are slowly moving forward," the developer adds, noting that he hopes to share more "in the next update, together with exciting news on the AI-controlled towns."

Right now, it's not clear when this new patch will be released, so we'll just have to watch this space. Clearly, even though it's still in early access, Styczeń's game is threatening to eat up even more of our free time very soon.

You can find even more great things to play in our list of the best city building games.

This Steam Next Fest has yielded a bumper crop of kingdom-style city builders. The King is Watching caught my eye initially, and now 9 Kings has emerged as the top-ranking city builder of the event. The thing is, 9 Kings is as much a roguelike deckbuilder as it is a kingdom builder, as developer Sad Socket explains.

The demo for 9 Kings has seemingly been around for a bit, but the updated one is featured in Next Fest and most of its "very positive" reviews were posted recently. The game is billed as a mix of grid-based building where you turn "your city into the most powerful of all kingdoms," and card-based strategy where you craft a deck of perks, actions, units, items, and upgrades. It's all rendered in lovely pixel art and seems like the kind of hard-to-put-down snack game that could quietly devour an evening.

The grid is deceptively small: just 9 tiles to begin with, but with room to expand. Aggressive cards might destroy a plot of land to buff the adjacent ones, or cause a soldier defending your kingdom to explode on death and damage would-be invaders. Your deck reflects your chosen king, which are almost like classes, and difficulty settings spice things up further. Other cards may replenish a platoon, unlock a new unit like a sniper, or deploy defensive buildings. It feels like a mix of politics, infrastructure, and war – anything goes as you compete with other kings.

Some seriously weird stuff starts to happen when you get into royal decrees, which seem to add passive bonuses or instantly dish out gifts like extra gold. You can summon defeated enemies to your army, reduce the cost of certain cards, or embrace the cultist life. Hey, sometimes it takes extreme measures to fight inflation.

"Find ways to break the game and become overpowered," the devs advise. "Grow your kingdom in strategic ways, prepare for dozens of unique events, and show the world your kingdom can last longer than any other."

9 Kings is scheduled to launch in April.

Someone combined Diablo and League of Legends for a roguelike co-op MOBA with Risk of Rain energy, and it deserves the hype it's getting in Steam Next Fest.

A new Manor Lords update is here, and as well as adding two new maps, it's full of bug fixes, quality-of-life changes, and balance tweaks, not to mention a crucial change to make sure that "taverns realize ale isn't magic – it's just ale."

As outlined in the patch notes for version 0.8.024, this update combines the work of the last two beta patches. Major changes include a rework to the cliff system – notably, it should now be more obvious where you can build and traverse, and pathfinding errors around them should no longer be a problem. 

But what about the "magic" ale? It's a bit of a mystery what this line at the top of the patch notes refers to, but it seems it could relate to some changes made to water and ale distribution, which now see the two distributed "in a similar way as marketplace items." Sort-of-solo dev Greg Styczeń has two reasons for this – as well as the fact that he simply "wanted to add Well and Tavern upgrades," he adds: "It's no longer enough to just have one Ale sitting in the tavern to upgrade the whole town." Tavern supply is one of the key requirements you need to fulfill to upgrade your burgage plots to level three, which – over time – is required to upgrade your settlement level. Based on these patch notes, it sounds like perhaps this lone magic ale might have been able to tick off this tavern supply requirement all by itself, but Styczeń hasn't elaborated. 

There's also a handful of new features to get stuck into. Beyond the new Winding River and High Peaks maps, a bridge-building system is now available, at long last adding a city builder staple to the hit indie. Additionally, distributing buildings like the marketplace and tavern now have an 'Overstock' option, which lets you pick a limit on how many extra goods are placed in them beyond what they actually require. 

The full list of bug fixes and additions is absolutely enormous – if you want to see everything version 0.8.024 has to offer, be sure to check out the patch notes. Styczeń has also issued a couple of warnings to players to take note of before diving in – "it's recommended that you back up your saved files before switching to a beta version," and you should probably remove any mods: "They will most likely crash the game."

After 2.5 million sales, Manor Lords publisher says it "would almost be arrogant" to not be surprised by the city builder's success - but "you cannot count on it to repeat."

I love a good twist on Tetris. There's Tetris with sand. Tetris with hot wax. Tetris but it's an interactive documentary spanning the game's 40-year-history. And now, I was delighted to find out about a game that's essentially 'Tetris but city-building.'

River Towns is the name of the game where you jump between levels to "place differently shaped buildings and make them fit into a limited area." Those buildings are basically shaped like Tetris blocks, so slotting them into just the right places is where all the fun's at. 

"As the town grows, more townspeople move in and bring life back into this old and broken world," the game's Steam blurb explains. "Throughout the game you encounter other objectives, such as gold to collect, trees to regrow and old monuments to rebuild. This turns the difficulty and possibility of collecting points completely upside down."

For such a creative idea, developer Frogsong Studios had a tough time getting to this point in development. On Kickstarter, studio co-founder and lead artist Anders Thelin explains that the studio had to lay off pretty much the entire team because, well, 2024 was a particularly brutal time for developers just trying to stay employed. That's when Frogsong's founders met indie publisher Stray Fawn, and decided to pursue crowdfunding to help the game cross the finish line.

Thankfully, River Towns has already reached its $10,300 funding goal and raised nearly $13,000. That means backers have reached a new stretch goal, and Frogsong will add "new challenge maps on a regular basis with unique mechanics." And more importantly, you know, the game can actually be funded and come out. 

River Towns is aiming to release sometime in 2025, but for now, you can check out its free demo on Steam.

For more, check out the other upcoming indie games of 2025 and beyond. 

Discussions about Game Pass typically revolve around the big titles like Black Ops 6, Starfield and more, but one solo dev has detailed why the service is such a good thing for indie games like theirs. 

During a recent Reddit AMA, Thomas Sala, the solo developer behind indie gems The Falconeer and Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles, was asked to give his opinion on Xbox's Game Pass model. The Falconeer, Sala's first title, made its way onto Game Pass around a year after its initial release, and thanks to the attention it garnered there, he would love to be featured on the service again. 

"I'd be on Game Pass the moment they could fit me in, no questions asked," Sala begins. "Falconeer did about a million installs on Game Pass." He goes on to explain that, for him, making games is not about the money, and Game Pass was a great way for him to reach a new audience. "I'm a dev, I fucking want players, [I] don't care about the money, let folks play!"

Unfortunately, as Sala notes, getting your game onto Game Pass is not in the hands of developers or publishers, explaining that "Microsoft carefully curates Game Pass with a regular release cadence. If your game fits the schedule and meets expectations and you have signalled you're open to making a deal, Microsoft might offer you a slot."

That being said, Sala is still positive about the service and believes that for developers lucky enough to be given a slot, it can be hugely beneficial. "These things are up to the gods in Redmond and if you get in it's generally a very positive thing for a dev, especially in indie. They are more than fair in compensation and you get a huge audience."

If you're a subscriber, be sure to check out the best games on Game Pass right now.

If you're a fan of Manor Lords and its gridless, freeform city building, you should check out Foundation, a game which is coming out of early access and getting its full 1.0 launch January 31, 2025.

I played a lot of Manor Lords when it first came out, but as an early access indie game being worked on mainly by one person, updates aren't very frequent. That's fine. The game sold well, continues to do well, and the developer seems happy to spend time working on a new map and features. However, as much as I love Manor Lords, I am looking for my next city building fix, and I think Foundation is it.

It's also a medieval city building that lets you construct without the guardrails of a grid system, but unlike Manor Lords the art style isn't as realistic and there seems to be more of a focus on building up intricate castles and structures rather than just roads and gardens.

Foundation has been in early access for over five years now, and its fans seem very happy it's finally getting a full release. "I haven't thought of this game in a while! The last time I played it (Steam says 2022) it still needed quite a bit of work. I'll have to check this out and reinstall on release, I remember it being a pretty chill experience and enjoyed it quite a bit as a game to play with few expectations on my part," writes a player on Reddit.

"I'm a big city builder player and really loved playing Foundation. Its free gridless building was a lot of fun and allowed you to be really creative. It's not a super challenging game but still gives you things to work towards. I felt the biggest hindrances were the upgrade system and trading, it looks like they've updated the upgrade system into a tech tree which is great. Keen to get back into it," writes another.

The most glowing comment is: "I absolutely love the gridless way to build and it has kind of ruined other builders for me where you have to place roads."

I'll have to give it a go on January 31 while I wait for the next big Manor Lords update. If you want to give it a try yourself, there's a free Steam demo you can play.

While you're here, check out some of the other upcoming indie games that you'll be able to get your hands on in 2025.

With a whopping 2.5 million sales under its belt, Manor Lords is undeniably a smash-hit city builder - but publisher Hooded Horse doesn't want to get unrealistic with its expectations of any future releases because of the one indie gem's success.

In a recent interview with the BBC, Hooded Horse co-founder Snow Rui explains that the company was surprised by Manor Lords' reception despite the pre-release interest marketing and trailers generated. "It would almost be arrogant not to be taken aback by how successful it turned out to be," says Rui. However, she also states the importance of not getting ahead of oneself when dealing with success.

The publishing lead shares one of the best pieces of advice she's received: Do not "roll too fast" upon finding favorable results. To Rui and to Hooded Horse as a company, it's more important to focus on being sustainable in the long run rather than to hang on to one big bang of a success story. "A breakout hit like this," describes the head, "you cannot count on it to repeat itself year after year."

Rui continues: "There will be people pushing you to have a different expectation or treating the next year as a failure if the breakout hit doesn't repeat itself but that's simply not the case. So that's a matter of setting your expectations and centering who you are" - and while another Manor Lords would be nice, the publisher doesn't always need AAA-level sales for an indie game to be considered successful.

Here are some of the other best early access games you can play right now.

After proving itself as one of our favorite Steam Next Fest games earlier this fall, Overthrown is finally available to play in full - and according to developer Brimstone, it's a worthy title to pick up for any fans of the sandbox genre looking for something a little bit different.

Overthrown is anything but "normal" - it's a city-builder sandbox hybrid in which you can lift and chuck pretty much anything you want, from boulders to buildings. Brimstone doesn't shy away from the unconventional either, opting to axe expected mechanics such as fall damage because it's "annoying" and setting Overthrown apart from genre giants like Minecraft with a unique twist on procedurally generated worlds.

In an interview with GamesRadar+, the developers delve into what makes their new game a one-of-a-kind experience amid other sandbox gems like Mojang's own. "While we're fans of the sandbox genre in general," writes Brimstone, "there are certain elements we find to be a bit tedious such as inventory management and the general grind necessary to progress and establish a settlement."

The devs say they hoped to avoid this grind: "What we wanted to do differently was to be able to automate away the repetitiveness with NPC citizens handling that and letting the player focus on exploration and combat instead, able to help out with resource gathering to speed things up, but still free to do something else instead." Their goal with Overthrown is simple - freedom and fun without stress.

"Our goal with Overthrown is to have a sandbox game that the player can just jump in and play by themselves or with friends, without feeling like they have to follow guides," as the studio puts it, "or min/max things to have fun." Whether a player is looking for a more relaxed experience or some action-packed combat, they can find it - and also seamlessly swap between both styles of play as they please.

"Sometimes when I play I might spend a whole season just expanding and gathering nearby resources," explains a dev, "and at other times I'm hunting (i.e. toying with) outlaws for a few days. It feels really flexible moving between the two." Brimstone is doing its best to ensure that Overthrown never feels empty, too - a problem that all too many sandbox titles arguably seem to fall victim to.

"The wilderness is something that we don't want to feel empty," describes the studio, "and that's why we have several updates planned that will increase the variety of the world with new creatures, plants, and encampments." There's already plenty to liven up the world as the game sits in early access, however, and Brimstone says it's part of what makes Overthrown so different from other games with sandbox-aligned play.

"Something that's unique in the game relative to most of the genre is that instead of having a procedural world that stays the same once generated (barring player input), in Overthrown new plants sprout and grow between seasons, and creature nests and outlaw camps appear in the wilderness," write the devs. These enemies can then actually fight each other "even if the player isn't there to observe it."

This means that everything essentially keeps ticking just like it does in the real world, and players can interfere if they choose to. For instance, one could raid outlaws' bases before they've had the chance to recruit new members. If they don't, the outlaws could grow in size and become strong enough to attack. To add to this realism, Brimstone also has some changes up its sleeve relevant to the environment in Overthrown.

"In future updates, we're adding pollution that turns zones barren if excessive," reveal the devs, "and the tree density in an area will determine if a region counts as forest or grassland, meaning that excessive logging will make medicinal herbs and mushrooms stop spawning." It's a layer of realism I wouldn't have expected from the game that allows us to chuck entire factories with ease, but I'm so here for it.

If Overthrown sounds like it's up your alley as well, whether it be for its chaotic physics or for its city-builder mechanics and real-world flair, you can snag it now while it's in early access on Steam. The game will also launch on the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 in the future, so if you're on console you don't have to worry about missing out - I know I certainly wouldn't want to.

Looking for more of this year's bangers to play? Here are the best games of 2024 to check out.

Manor Lords wasn't the only popular civilization builder that publisher Hooded Horse released in 2024. Along with the medieval-era game that took the sim community by storm, Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic also made a big splash with its focus on building a socialist utopia from the ground up — and now developer 3Division has a new DLC set for December 13.

Just announced, Workers & Resources' next DLC, World Maps, will add eight new settings inspired by European countries, the British Isles, North Korea, and the East Coast of the United States. The game's concept focuses on players building up a Soviet Republic based on the principles of socialist societies, potentially expanding the nation of a workers first society across the rest of the world.

In a press release, the developers stated that "every map will differ in terms of overall size and the challenges the local topography brings," which will pair with the game's focus on managing infrastructure and life within the procedurally generated locales.

While it was in early access for several years, Workers & Resources made its debut in June, and it earned considerable buzz from the sim community. Set in an alternate history during the Warsaw Pact of the 1950s, the game lets players expand the influence of the Soviet Union throughout Europe. As your nation grows, you'll see it prosper or crumble throughout different decades from the 1960s to the '90s.

On the surface, Workers & Resources seems like a tycoon game that tries to parody the Soviet Union and communism as an ideology. Still, as it turns out, the game is a fairly faithful look at what it takes to run a society and infrastructure of a civilization based on the principles of a workers-first nation. This plays out by making decisions that will cater to workers' needs, which means hiring specialists in key areas to handle certain goods and ensuring the population has access to proper healthcare, transportation, and education at all times during your expansion. Of course, with conflicts in and outside of your republics, inevitable decisions have to be made that could bend your principles.

It's a compelling take on a civilization game and one that's incredibly timely now in the current and tumultuous state of the counter-economic/social system capitalism is now. That's why many of these civ games are engrossing - players get to decide how civilizations can grow and evolve with different ideologies and try to make the right choices along the way. And hopefully, things will work out well enough to prosper, that is, if other nations don't meddle too much in your affairs.

If you're in the mood for more games like this, check out our round-up of the 15 best city-builder games you can play right now.

Following criticism of his city builder's updates, the mastermind "solo" developer behind Manor Lords reveals that fans' requests for content changes and patches are evolving - and it's filled him with hope for the future.

Speaking in an online post, the dev describes a recent shift in feedback from players and says it serves as a good sign for what's to come. "It makes me happy," writes Slavic Magic, "to see players openly requesting AI cities now instead of more economy refactors or simple industry types." He calls it a "sign things are moving forward I hope," and concludes by stating that he's personally "looking forward to it."

In a previous thread, the dev faced criticism regarding Manor Lords' updates and their content as a fan stated that Slavic Magic focuses "too much" on issues that "are not important or necessary" rather than things like "AI" or "other new stuff." Other players have since chimed in, similarly asking for AI cities and "new features/content" for the city builder - requests that seem to have now caught the creator's eye.

There's no telling what Slavic Magic has in store for fans, but it sounds like he's more than aware of what the community wants and is ready to kick it all into gear. It's nothing new for the dev, either, as he always seems happy to take feedback to heart - after all, he frequently releases patches addressing players' requests like the recent one bringing changes to ale and water distribution following commentary from fans.

Love Manor Lords? Here are some of the best city-building games to check out next.

The mastermind "solo" developer behind Manor Lords says his updates are largely based on what players request of him, and while the patches may not always be "impressive to show off," they're still "honest work."

Speaking in a recent thread, the dev first addresses a Facebook post in which a fan questions why he's "challenged" every time he wins, under which one commenter states "It's a bug." Slavic Magic says that no, it's not a bug, but asks the community "If the player wins the game but wants to continue regardless, should AI, diplomacy, etc. become disabled?" The top response under the dev's query doesn't answer it but rather criticizes Manor Lords' past updates.

"Feels like that the main topics fall back," reads the fan's reply, "and you focus on too much content/issues which are not important or necessary." The dev has since also left a response himself,  addressing the topic of how he prioritizes the medieval city builder's updates and why patches contain what they do, whether it seems "important" enough or not. "I always focus on issues that people comment on/DM the most."

Slavic Magic continues: "'We want fishing' I add fishing, 'We want butchers' I add butchers. Pigs. Trade overview. Stuff like balance or systems refactoring usually it's not super cool to rework or impressive to show off… but it's honest work." He's got a point - he frequently releases patches addressing players' requests, with a recent one bringing changes to ale and water distribution following feedback from fans.

Manor Lords is getting new maps "soon," but the city builder's dev is clear that only "future expansions" could venture outside the base game's existing European theme

Being a game developer is hard, and being an indie one is even harder. The solo developer of city builder Bulwark Evolution: Falconeer Chronicles, Tomas Sala has some advice for how to make games these days.

Speaking on the Thomas Brush podcast, Sala says "You need to check if your game is going to be successful. If it's not happening, you need to make another game or reassess what you're doing." His advice is harsh, but it comes from experience.

"The golden goose is not making the game, but figuring out if the game is going to make money," he says. "If the game's not going to make money you shouldn't work on it. That's a brutal reality. I think mobile game developers have more or less learned that lesson. This is the jungle we're in now."

Obviously, Sala's advice is only for people who want to make games as a business. You could make a game in your spare time that's just for you, or your friends, or just because you want to put some art into the world. But if you want to get into the business of making games, his points are useful.

He also says, "I do my games in two years, that's my goal. Less than two years to make big, visually stunning games. Not six or seven years, 'cause that's just dumb." If you're trying to fund yourself or employees, it'll be hard to sustain a business for years with no income from sold games.

He explains he makes something quickly and then analyzes what works and what doesn't rather than trying to make something unique every few months and then going back to the drawing board. In this way you don't abandon what you've learned and can build on your successes and mistakes.

A final piece of wisdom from Sala is about being realistic. "Validate early," he says, referring to setting a goal like achieving a certain number of wishlists or trailer views towards the beginning of a project. "Creators, we'll keep pulling that dead horse because we put all our love and energy into it, but for the money? You can't turn a turd into a hit. You can't polish up that turd, you need to let go and move on. You learn and you keep at it."

There's a reason creatives are told to kill their darlings. It's hard to admit something you love may not work commercially, but that doesn't mean it was a waste of time. You take the lessons you learned and apply them to something new.

If you want to support more of the talented devs in the industry, you should check out our list of upcoming indie games.

The solo developer of city-builder Bulwark Evolution: Falconeer Chronicles, Tomas Sala, has been speaking out about the current state of the games industry, arguing that indie devs like him are "earning half of what we were earning four years ago" in the current climate.

Speaking on the Full Time Game Dev Podcast with fellow indie dev Thomas Brush, Sala digs into the amount of money players have at their disposal to spend on games, noting that "we've given up half the industry to games as a service like Fortnite." He continues: "They're taking half the money, together with old games, so publishers with back catalogs will also survive."

But what about new games? Sala says "the market will just be smaller" – it'll "keep growing," and still "be healthy," but ultimately it isn't "as big as it has been because you're competing with all these things. If you're young and playing games, yeah, you're spending more money on Battlefield and Fortnite, and what's left, you'll try an indie game once in a while. But you can only spend that money once."

Ultimately, that brings him to the point that "we're all earning half of what we were earning four years ago" – a point that Brush agrees is "true," too. "It's literally half," he reiterates. Sala says this half is what "we were sharing with the publishers," which can lead to studios more seriously weighing up the decision to self-publish since they don't want their earnings further divided. 

Instead of finding a publisher, devs can "cut that out and make your own game," which Sala describes as an "interesting proposition" since they can then make the decision to simply "release on Steam and play the Steam system, and if it's a hit, then I'll find a publisher to do all these other things." 

Porting to console, translating a game to more languages, or making deals with companies like Microsoft via services like Game Pass can come later in the process, if at all, he reasons, and this lightens the load on indies up front. Doing all of this stuff at once to ship simultaneously is "gone for me," Brush adds. "I don't do that anymore." 

Sala is a vocal supporter of indie dev efforts, and previously told us that he thinks they should be given more room for failure since "your first game always fails," but your "10th game might be the next AAA studio."

Early access "comes at great risk," Sala said: "There are expectations, and you better deliver on the expectations."

Viral indie city builder Manor Lords is getting an update that changes the way water and ale are distributed amongst your citizens, as well as a fresh map to play on.

Sort-of-solo developer Greg Styczeń shared some photos on Twitter of the new features coming to Manor Lords. When I played it at launch, I remember popping a well down and then forgetting about water for the rest of my playthrough – I never ran into any shortages. That's about to change, as wellheads will soon display the supply and demand of water in a given town, so you'd better keep an eye on it and build more if you don't want your subjects getting dehydrated.

Back in ye olden days, people often drank ale or mead instead of water because the fresh stuff could be unsafe for consumption. A bit of alcohol can help to kill bacteria and keep people healthy. So, it makes sense that the way ale is handed out in Manor Lords is also changing. One of the pictures shared by Styczeń shows a tavern with an entertainment supply and demand value. It's unclear at the moment if this is how many houses the tavern's radius covers, how much ale there is compared to how much people want, a combination of both, or lumped in with a broader entertainment need.

The developer notes that "some of you have requested" these features and they are currently in closed testing. So, we don't know when we'll be seeing these added to the game, but hopefully it won't be too long a wait – my people are thirsty.

We also got a sneak peak at the new map being added to the game. Currently, there is only one available, but the resources get randomly generated for each campaign, helping to keep things fresh. While the original is a slightly hilly, forested landscape, this new one looks far more mountainous. This could help tremendously with the game's difficult real-time strategy combat component. I tend to play on the peaceful modes, or at least turn off unprovoked AI aggression because I find it too difficult to properly defend an entirely exposed town, so starting a city in a more defensible region with a mountain on one or more sides would be amazing.

There are more maps in the works, but Styczeń hasn't revealed anything about them yet. What we do know is they'll stick to the medieval European theme unless a "future expansion" comes out. Other than that, the developer is doing "nothing 'cool' sadly, it's hard work that's needed," so we can expect more improvements to Manor Lords to keep trickling in.

If you're thinking about diving in for the first time, we've got some Manor Lords beginner tips that will help you survive the harsh winters and deadly raider attacks.

Manor Lords is set to get some fresh maps "soon," the city builder's sort-of-solo-dev Greg Styczeń has confirmed, and the mountainous one we've been shown in a new screenshot looks gorgeous. However, he's also clarified that fans shouldn't expect any of the base game's maps to venture outside of the existing European theme.

The screenshot that's been revealed shows an alpine-themed location with a huge mountain towering above a village, which is covered in snow and surrounded by frosty-looking trees. Styczeń reveals that it's "inspired by Lauterbrunnen," a real-life location in Switzerland, which explains why it looks so scenic. 

Of course, it's worth noting that Styczeń mentioned "maps," plural, but has only teased one here. He's not given any indication as to how many are in the works, when they'll be released, or what the others will look like. However, responding to one player asking if there could be any Manor Lords maps that aren't based on "German-speaking areas of Central Europe," the developer is clear that that won't be happening "in the base game, sorry." He adds that there'd be "no problem" doing so in "future expansions" later down the line, though.

This upcoming content update is exciting for multiple reasons – not only does the map Styczeń has revealed look (literally) very cool but it's also been a while since he's said much about his city builder at all. Just last week, he reassured fans that he's still working on it despite his quietness, noting that he was "reworking the marketplace/supply and demand system to be less frustrating and also so that taverns and wells can also work with it." Meanwhile, he added: "The others are working on UI QoL and consoles, optimization and crash fixes. Nothing 'cool' sadly but still it's hard work that's needed."

For more games like Manor Lords, be sure to check out our picks for the best city-building games.

As Paradox Interactive reels from the troublesome launch of Cities: Skylines 2, the company is returning to the first game in the series, which it had apparently moved on from more than a year ago, with paid DLC.

Last May, 18 months ago for those counting, Paradox Interactive seemed to have closed the door on Cities: Skylines' long roadmap with what was supposed to have been the city builder's very last major update and mini-expansion. At the time, the company said it was shifting its focus to Cities: Skylines 2, but that plan hasn't gone so smoothly. 

The much-hyped sequel launched with technical woes so glaring that they overshadowed basically everything else in the simulation. Months of patches and fixes haven't completely cured all of Cities: Skylines 2's ailments, though, as its first DLC was also struck with similar problems and was eventually made free due to fan backlash. More recently, developer Colossal Order delayed all of the sequel's planned DLC - some packs were pushed more than a year passed their original release windows - to work on the game's more pressing issues first.

On the heels of all that drama, Paradox Interactive is now going back to its most sure fire hit. Cities: Skylines (The First) just received three new paid DLC packs themed around the great outdoors. The Mountain Village Pack and Map Pack 3 both focus on "mountain peaks and alpine terrain," while Radio Station Alpine Tunes brings new songs into the fold.

"We also want to reassure those of you that play Cities: Skylines 2, that the development of this new content for Cities: Skylines is an entirely separate effort," the publisher explained in its announcement blog. "The content you’ll find in this release for Cities: Skylines has been implemented by Tantalus, the studio who managed the console ports for Cities: Skylines. No resources were diverted from Cities: Skylines 2 for this - our friends at Colossal Order remain fully focused on developing and improving Cities: Skylines 2. This approach allows us to release some updates without compromising on either game."

Cities: Skylines 2 publisher says gamers are “less accepting” that games will “fix things over time” nowadays. 

If you've been wondering why Manor Lords developer Greg Styczeń hasn't said much about the hit city builder lately, well, you aren't the only one. However, Styczeń has now provided an update on the game and confirmed things are still happening in the background despite his recent silence.

In a tweet, Styczeń addresses sparse communication on Manor Lords' development, assuring fans that he's still working on the game, but not on anything particularly interesting. 

"I'm reworking the marketplace / supply and demand system to be less frustrating and also so that taverns and wells can also work with it," he said. "The others are working on UI QoL and consoles, optimization and crashfixes. Nothing 'cool' sadly but still it's hard work that's needed."

Manor Lords may well be the most talked-about city-builder of the year, wracking up an astonishing three million Steam Wishlists before launching in Steam Early Access in April to rave reviews and selling a million copies in a day. It's been very regularly updated in the months since with quality of life updates, balance tweaks, bug fixes, content additions, and just last month, a rollover to Unreal Engine 5.

Things have indeed quieted down somewhat since that update, although the game continues to be a sales behemoth. In response to a player who had thought the market rework was complete, Styczeń clarified, "I thought so too but players were still messaging me that it's bad and needs more work so this is what I had to do." 

While we wait for Manor Lords' next update and eventual 1.0 launch, here are the best city building games to play right now.

Indie developer Crazy Goat Games' Worshippers of Cthulhu is currently the top Steam Next Fest demo in its genre, as well as the top city-builder demo on Steam overall. Based on the game's description, I can see why. The possessed colony sim might be the spookiest in existence. 

It appears to follow the blackened footsteps of — if you'll excuse me — cult-classic horror games like Cult of the Lamb and Cultist Simulator in imagining fringe religious activity as a source of mouthwatering power. Though Worshippers of Cthulhu looks like an unconventional city builder in how willing it is to be at once bleak and celestial, its premise melds well with standard city builder goals, like acquiring land and authority.

And so, when boiled down, Worshippers of Cthulhu could be more of a fascinating colony sim rather than horror game; in a greenish world borne from H. P. Lovecraft's cosmic octopus Cthulhu, you'll need to manage your eager followers and build them new cities while crushing or converting your opposition. 

That said, Worshippers of Cthulhu also has an irresistible supernatural aspect. While engaging in more mundane city management like supervising production chains, you'll perform rituals to seek blessings from the Great Ones, says the game's Steam description. The more they favor you, the more your dark empire will prevail.

"Our existence is a fleeting whisper in the cosmic winds," the description continues, "and only by awakening Cthulhu can we transcend our feeble existence."

"Anno but with rituals and cultists," said one pleased Steam reviewer. "Nice." 

You can test the boundaries of your beliefs with Worshippers of Cthulhu's Next Fest demo, which is available to download for free at the moment, or purchase the game in its new Early Access period. Crazy Goat Games anticipate Worshippers of Cthulhu will remain in Early Access for approximately a year, though the full game does not yet have a release date.

Doom Eternal and Vampire Survivors collide in this Steam Next Fest FPS roguelike that had me playing "one more game" all night.

Bulwark Evolution: Falconeer Chronicles creator Tomas Sala has responded to former Sony lead Shawn Layden's assertion that there's a "collapse of creativity" in the industry, pointing to a lack of support given to independent developers.

As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, Layden stated that there's a "collapse of creativity in games today [with] studio consolidation and the high cost of production" during a Gamescom Asia panel. Sala caught wind of a post highlighting the ex-PlayStation head's assertion, and has now left a response sharing his own thoughts on the matter: "I mean how often have we indie devs asked, nay begged, for more support."

The solo dev's reply continues: "How often have we shouted that one needs to water the garden, not just harvest the fruit." Sala doesn't see a "collapse in creativity" - in fact, he states that creativity is "in abundance," but that's not always enough. It "needs to be cherished and grown," and the industry needs to start placing "experimentation and art over profit." In a comment, Sala even calls this "one of the best times for games."

He writes: "The diversity and quality is breathtaking. But [to be honest] this is mostly also because we come from a time of money, but we are now in a time of tightening belts." Sala concludes that "we will see if the big parties can internalize in the lessons to keep innovating and stimulating small and midsize creativity" - and as a consumer whose Steam library is almost entirely made up of indie titles, I certainly hope his message reaches others myself.

Check out some of these upcoming indie games for titles to keep on your radar.

Manor Lords recently celebrated hitting 2.5 million sales with an update and a hefty discount, but it's not the only strategy gem from publisher Hooded Horse that's dominating the charts.

Heading Hooded Horse's sales for the year right behind Manor Lords with 1.2 copies sold is Against the Storm, another successful city builder with a stellar rating of "Overwhelmingly Positive" on Steam. Together, the two games could make up almost all of the publisher's 4.5 million sales over the last 12 months - but they're not the only smash-hit strategy titles from Hooded Horse proving to be successful this year.

Empires of the Undergrowth, a personal favorite of mine in which you lead ant colonies, has sold almost half a million copies with over 450,000 sales to date. Norland, another medieval strategy game with more sex, drama, and Game of Thrones-style backstabbing, has managed to sell more than 300,000 copies since its early access debut this summer. It's mind-boggling numbers all around, and it's not all Hooded Horse has to celebrate.

The publisher is also seeing some massive wishlist numbers - a whopping 9.5 million over this past year, to be precise. Falling Frontier, an upcoming real-time strategy sci-fi title that's honestly giving off some Warhammer 40,000 vibes, hit over 600,000 wishlists. Nova Roma, a vibrant city-building game set in ancient Rome, has earned more than 350,000 since being unveiled last year - and it's one that I genuinely can't wait to play.

Quite a few stunning city builders and strategy games make up Hooded Horse's portfolio, and the next couple of years will likely prove even bigger for the publisher. Any players with a love for either genre should have a quick browse through the entirety of the Hooded Horse collection on Steam for titles to potentially wishlist. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a list of games to browse and an empty wishlist to fill myself.

Manor Lords publisher says game devs and big corpos don't get on because making games is "fundamentally unpredictable"

Cities: Skylines 2's publisher thinks that players have developed "higher expectations" of games and are also "less accepting" that they'll be fixed over time. 

That's according to Paradox Interactive deputy chief executive officer Mattias Lilja, who spoke to Rock Paper Shotgun about the delay of Prison Architect 2, as well as the cancellation of Life By You, and reception of Cities: Skylines 2. Talking about the former, Lilja says there were "quality issues" – notably "not the same kind of bucket of challenges that we had with Life By You" – which ultimately led to it being pushed back "to give the players the game they deserve" when it launches.

It's more than that, though, as Lilja continues: "It's also based on the fact that we, in all transparency, see that fans right now, with a squeezed budget for games, have higher expectations, and are less accepting that you will fix things over time. That's our take. The gaming space has always been the winner-takes-all type of environment. A few games bring in most of the players, and most games are dropped quite quickly, and this is even more pronounced now, [during] maybe the last two years."

Lilja goes on to say that when it came to Cities: Skylines 2 – which launched last year to major performance issues, and thanks to multiple delays still hasn't released on consoles – Paradox "knew we would have some issues, like in every release." He later admits that some of those things were "issues that we had not really understood fully, and that's totally on us." When it comes to the city-builder's performance, Paradox chief creative officer Henrik Fåhraeus says in a separate conversation that "we underestimated how it will be perceived by players."

Slightly more optimistically, Fåhraeus says Paradox learned from Cities: Skylines 2 that "if we could have brought players in to try it on a larger scale, that would have helped," and that going forward, the publisher wants to have a "larger degree" of openness with players, "and quite early if possible." With that in mind, hopefully the publisher might be able to avoid the same pitfalls in the future. 

A year later, barely any of Cities: Skylines 2's first-year DLC has actually launched and now it's all been delayed again.

Since its release late last month, cozy city builder Tiny Glade has captured over 500,000 fans' hearts - but even with its ever-growing popularity, developer Pounce Light has no roadmap in mind for the game.

In a new announcement on Steam, the studio celebrates the full version of its game reaching over 500,000 players. "I believe the technical term for that is bonkers," jokes the dev, stating that the success means there's more in store for Tiny Glade. "I was quite worried and stressed just before the release, since we already knew that we wanted to continue making Tiny Glade - we just didn't know whether it'd be viable. Well, now we certainly can, and we will!"

While there is indeed more in store, however, there's no strict "roadmap" yet - or maybe ever. The devs are nonetheless taking suggestions seriously. "I'm happy to report that our inboxes, forums, pneumatic tube mail, and homing pigeons are absolutely overflowing with feature requests and ideas," the post continues. "There's a ton of stuff y'all would like us to add, and we certainly see patterns. There's a lot of stuff that vibes with us too."

So, "where's the roadmap?" According to Pounce Light, there is "a list of features that we'd love to see in Tiny Glade, but that list is not a roadmap, and we don't really want to have a roadmap." The reason is simple enough - "the only approach that works" isn't a roadmap, but rather "evolving and adapting the design as needed, driven by our own intuition as well as your feedback." The devs "intend to continue doing just that."

Pounce Light will "keep tinkering," but it's "still a tiny team, and it is still a tiny game." For now, though, the devs are taking a little break "to breathe, pet grass, hang out with friends and family, and finish that nth Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough." New features will come afterward when there's "time to design, develop, and test." Fans should keep their eyes peeled for more - and check the indie dev duo's full post for further details on coming changes.

Steam's chillest new city-builder pushed to its limits with 30-hour recreation of Lord of the Rings' Rivendell

The solo indie developer behind city builder Bulwark Evolution: Falconeer Chronicles has been discussing the pros and cons of releasing a game in early access, and he believes it "comes at great risk," especially for smaller developers.

Last month, Tomas Sala released an update for his city builder that was so big, he changed the game's name, despite it being just six months from its initial, full launch. At the time, he said in a statement that "it'd be a disaster" for him to run an early access campaign, which I was curious to ask him about in a recent interview.

Sala explains that going into early access means you're facing "as rigid a development as you [can] get." He says: "You know, you made some promises, and then you have to deliver on those exact promises. If you don't, people feel let down because they already paid money."

Continuing, Sala notes that "if you do [early access], it's fantastic" since it comes with advantages like "great feedback," but ultimately, it's still risky. "If you're really small and you're not, you know, thriving on your community in a proper sense, then it becomes a stranglehold." He points to indies that have been criticized for "not being able to deliver on the hype, or taking too long" as examples of this. "When you sign up for a format, there are expectations, and you better deliver on the expectations," he adds.

Sala tells GamesRadar+ he thinks game development works better for him without the structure that'd be enforced by early access. As it stands, he feels freer to release new updates, and take "a month of just fucking around" to "make this cool thing," and his community is supportive of that. That "authentic relationship" with the community is important, Sala says – so much so that he thinks it's "the one thing indies have that giant corporations can't deliver."

Sala reckons devs should have more room for failure because "your first game always fails" and "their 10th game might be the next AAA studio."

After overhauling his unique city-building game into Bulwark Evolution: Falconeer Chronicles to tremendous acclaim from players, solo developer Tomas Sala says indie developers have a key advantage over AAA studios because they can build a direct relationship with fans online.

Sala tells GamesRadar+ that when he interacts with players online, "I get this comment, 'Oh, the developer is responding, oh my God!' The next day, there's a patch in the beta branch. 'Oh, go to the beta branch, try out this fix I made for you.' And they're amazed. I think that's actually a pathway for survival - all the struggles and all the turmoil the industry's in - to have an authentic relationship."

The current landscape is tough for indie developers - during our interview, Sala noted that "your first game always fails" - but that relationship with fans can be a lifeline. "It's the same way where you see these developers who are also content creators, like Pirate Software, so they have a relationship with their audience," Sala says, referencing the indie studio founded by Jason Thor Hall, who has built quite a following on Twitch separate from his game development. "They're not just coming for the game, they're coming for you."

This is one of indie development's "non-reproducible benefits," Sala argues. "The new reality of this industry is gonna make that much more common, and it's actually the one thing indies have that giant corporations can't deliver. You can't put every Star Wars Outlaws developer on Discord and have them talk about it. You can do that once a week - you get the lead guy coming in, or the lead woman, but that's heavily managed by PR. But if you're an indie you get to go 'It's just me!'"

Sala admits that community management is "a skill you've got to learn. I've gotten frustrated and upset. I'm better at it now. You get a thick skin, and then you learn how to do it, and how to take everything as a suggestion and as a compliment. Even if someone is angry, they're frustrated with the game because they wanted it to be better. So in a sense that's a solvable situation."

One look at the Steam page for Bulwark Evolution will tell you that Sala's trying to build that relationship with prospective players early, as you'll almost immediately see a trailer where Sala himself runs down what to expect from the game. The top user review might just prove the point, too: "Amazing developer = Awesome game."

Check out all the best city-building games. 

Dotage (stylized dotAGE), one of the biggest surprise indie hits of last year, is coming to Nintendo Switch on October 24. After nine years in development, it released last October on PC to unanimous praise.

Watching Dotage exceed the expectations of Italy-based developer Michele Pirovano has been a real joy. We chatted with the indie dev back in December, and he told us he expected Dotage to "maybe sell some 100 copies", and with 20,000 copies sold at the time (obviously much more today), Pirovano was elated. 

"It was my dream – actually, not even my dream, because I'm quite a risk-averse guy and I have my feet on the ground," he said of the game's runaway launch. "So I was not thinking it would be good. So when it did that, it was very, very exhilarating. It was perfect for me – for a week. And then I realized how much work keeping up with so many players would be."

Dotage's upcoming Switch launch is yet another important marker of the game's surprise success, as well as a certain boon for overall sales. It's billed as a "merciless survival roguelite turn-based city builder," and that's pretty dang accurate by all accounts.

You play as a bearded village elder who leads his fellow villagers in the charge to survive the apocalypse, which belies the vibrant color palette and adorable pixel character models. Taking up that daunting task means you'll need to manage your community, assign workers to various tasks, and expand your village.  "Grow crops, herd animals, bury corpses, forge tools, upgrade buildings, train professionals, and produce dozens of resources," reads the Steam description.

As for the roguelite element, that comes in every time your village inevitably goes under and your Elder remembers lost memories, thereby bringing "new ailments, the mysterious VIPS, new Elders," and more into the mix. Then there are "forces that govern your world," including disease, earthquakes, and, thank goodness, non-violent invaders like kittens, presumably just to keep the hope alive.

Here are all of the upcoming indie games to keep on your radar.

Tomas Sala, the solo developer behind hit city builder Bulwark Evolution: Falconeer Chronicles, wants indie devs to have a little more room for failure.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Sala was asked to comment on the difficulty indie developers face building financially viable games and studios, specifically with regards to Steam's infamous 30% tax it charges developers, which Sala previously decried as a "relic" that "needs to go down". 

This time around, Sala spoke more broadly about how the video game industry can support indie developers, saying "it's a given" that their first games fail commercially.

"We should add more pathways to make people learn where they can have a failure, because the developer that's failed at one game will make the second game [that's] better, and the third way will be even better, and their 10th game might be the next AAA studio."

Sala also made the case that major platforms "like Valve or Xbox" should invest more in indie developers because they won't have to rely as much on existing IP to drive business and so "there's something new in 20 years. If people like me die out, and it's all Fortnite for now, for 20 years, at some point, that's going to impact the big guys as well, because there's no cheap talent anymore, there's not people coming in because they're not learning the trade, they're not learning how to tell stories."

Taking place in the same universe as Sala's previous release, 2020's The Falconeer, but switching genres from aerial combat game to city builder, Bulwark Evolution: Falconeer Chronicles launched back in March and currently has more than 700 Steam reviews, 81% of which are positive.

Here are all of the upcoming indie games you should have on your radar.

Manor Lords is the biggest city-builder of the year, and with its latest patch, sales milestone, and discount, it's better and cheaper than ever.

In a press release, Manor Lords publisher Hooded Horse confirms that the game had passed 2.5 million sales - not bad when its solo dev's girlfriend said it would be lucky to get 7,000 wishlists. Clearly, that's cause for celebration, so the next big Manor Lords patch is leaving beta and heading to the main game.

Patch 0.8.004's headline change is the rollover to Unreal Engine 5, which should help deal with several bugs and crashes. However, there's plenty more directly relevant to players in here. Right up there is the introduction of fishing, which comes with associated ponds, jobs, buildings, and, of course, food. 

Speaking of food, there's a new Butcher artisan conversion, finally allowing you to use excess sheep meat and create sausages. Thankfully, there are also new food spoilage rules, so if you end up with too much food, it shouldn't necessarily bite you too hard. Finally, a new weapon type - crossbows - allows you to train and hire crossbowmen for your army.

The full patch notes go into a lot more detail about all of those changes, but they also contain even more good news - publisher Hooded Horse is running a publisher sale on Steam, which means that Manor Lords is currently available for a 30% discount. That's the city-builder's biggest price drop so far, so if you're not one of those 2.5 million players yet, this could be your chance to get on board. 

Check out our list of the best city-building games. 

Though it has only just released, players have already taken to Tiny Glade's chill and cozy settlement-building mechanics to create fantastic recreations of all sorts of things. Like, for example, iconic fantasy cities such as Lord of the Rings' Rivendell in what must have truly been a tremendous undertaking. 

As shared by the official Tiny Glade developer's Twitter account, this loving recreation of Rivendell is a sight to behold. The entire build took about 20 to 30 hours over the course of two weeks, but luckily you can watch a timelapse of the process below in just over six minutes. While Tiny Glade only launched on September 23, a few folks like the creator of this Rivendell, Alan Ward, were given keys ahead of time to help playtest before launch. Building the city of elves from Lord of the Rings is certainly one way to playtest a game.

The timelapse shows how large the suite of tools are for your own creations. From creating giant towers to cozy huts, it's no surprise that Tiny Glade had one million wishlists on Steam. Maybe we will even see someone attempt to take on the rolling hills of The Shire or the hardened walls of Gondor next.

Now that Tiny Glade is officially out, we can only imagine the fun places that will be recreated, alongside all of the new and inventive things players will think of. In fact, in the previous Steam Next Fest demo players were already manipulating the toolset so much the developers added new features to accommodate for half-timber-style buildings. 

If you're looking for more games like Tiny Glade, check out our list of best city builders you can play today.  

Just three days after launch, city-builder sequel Frostpunk 2 has already recouped its development and marketing costs.

In a tweet earlier today, developer 11-bit Studios said it was "super happy to announce that we've already exceeded 350,000 copies of Frostpunk 2 sold." The tweet came early this morning, so that marks more than 100,000 copies per day since Frontpunk 2 launched on September 20.

That's an impressive figure for any indie, let alone a sequel in what remains a relatively niche genre, but more important than that specific sales figure is what 11-bit says next. Namely, that "the total estimated sales revenue has already covered the costs we spent on producing and marketing the game."

That's huge news, meaning that from here out, Frostpunk 2 is in pure profit territory. Obviously, that's not how these things work out in reality, and while the studio has broken even, it still has to fund whatever comes next. Nevertheless, this does still count as a substantial hurdle, which it's good to see Frostpunk 2 overcome. 

As for what comes next, 11-bit has another game due to release this year - cloning-themed sci-fi survival game The Alters - but the studio isn't done with Frostpunk yet. In that tweet, it also confirms that "the work doesn't stop here, we are continuously working on improving your experience with hotfixes and patches, and your feedback here is invaluable." It'll be interesting to see whether the team sticks with Frostpunk now, however - it's clearly a recipe for success, but it's also been the brunt of the studio's output, development-wise, for the last decade, whereas The Alters could spell the start of a whole new era.

Check out our Frostpunk 2 review - or another of the best city-building games.

We're closing in on the one-year anniversary of the launch of Cities: Skylines 2, and developer Colossal Order is still working on addressing some fundamental issues with the city-building game. Now, all of the game's remaining first-year DLC has been delayed once again.

The Modern Architecture and Urban Promenades Creator Packs have been completed by their creators, but the devs say that the Asset Editor is taking priority as "one of the most crucial remaining features in fulfilling our promise to make mods fully available in-game," according to a Steam post.

"To ensure we don’t split our focus, we’ve made the decision to push the release of the Creator Packs to Q4. This will also affect the upcoming release of Bridges & Ports Expansion that will instead come in Q2 2025. We will continue dedicating our efforts to the base game before shifting focus to paid content. Our goal is to ensure the community is satisfied with the state of the game, and once we’ve achieved that, we’ll be excited to release these amazing packs to you!"

That now means that the Bridges & Ports expansion - the game's first major piece of DLC - has been delayed for a full year past its original intended release window of Q2 2024. For those of you keeping track at home, here's how the game's first-year DLC roadmap has worked out so far.

• Beach Properties - originally intended to release Q4 2023, released March 25, 2024, immediately removed from sale and added to the base game after negative response
• Deluxe Relax radio station - originally intended to release Q4 2023, released March 25, 2024
• Urban Promenades and Modern Architecture Creator Packs - originally intended to release Q1 2024, now set to launch Q4 2024
• Soft Rock and Cold Wave radio stations - originally intended to release Q1 and Q2 2024, now set to launch Q4 2024
• Bridges & Ports expansion - originally intended to release Q2 2024, now set to launch Q2 2025

All these DLC delays aren't necessarily bad things, since it means the developers are focused on more fundamental upgrades to the base game. But the fact that Colossal Order is still working on getting Cities: Skylines 2 up to snuff some 11 months later is a pretty devastating comment on the state the game launched in.

Cities: Skylines 2's console ports have been delayed indefinitely due to missed "stability and performance targets."

Just in time for the seasons to change and the weather to remain alarmingly warm, the follow-up to 2018's remarkable sci-fi parable about the absolute worst case climate change scenario arrives to spread some existential dread. Frostpunk 2 is a near-perfect example of how to do a sequel that both captures the original's idea saliently, but borrows some more macro-level concepts from other big empire building games to create a new, challenging, and rewarding experience. 

Frostpunk 2 takes place decades after your Captain in the original game gathers survivors to build the first settlement of the arctic wasteland capable of surviving civilization-ending mega-blizzards. Years of relative peace - or the closest thing that is possible in a world frozen with no thaw in sight - have allowed populations to grow and a society capable of other things outside of basic survival to sprout. Mechanically, this means Frostpunk 2 makes the jump from smaller-scale real-time tactics to nearly full-blown 4x proportions, trading individual building placement, day/night cycles, and small maps with different kinds of zoning, and months moving by in minutes. An expansive overworld begs players to plant their flag in other territories, potentially operating more than one settlement at once.

Instead of stumbling on a lone generator out in the tundra, Frostpunk 2's story mode asked me to pick up the pieces of a crumbling New London as the super settlement from the previous game was rapidly falling into disrepair after the loss of its old Captain. At its most elemental, it requires the same diligent resource collecting and production management while also keeping my people warm, fed, and healthy. Where the original game focused on sending a handful of people out into head-high snow drifts to find scraps, Frostpunk 2 lays down more organized industrial operations from the start.

Cold comfort

Icons on the map identify regions that hold fuel to dig up, wood to chop, or plant-worthy soil to work, and painting over them with the proper type of district builds the appropriate set of buildings to get the stuff into your storage, their workforce needs regularly measured in the hundreds instead of the tens. These districts can be expanded over time, and become home to the sorts of specialty buildings that spiced up the first, like the Research Institutes and Hospitals. The scale up does make keeping track of these production centers easier.

Even though time moved faster, these points had way more total yield and tooltips that kept me aware of when they are drying up well before they do. It can be tricky to get the hang of all of the district buildings and when it's better to expand versus building out a whole new zone. The latter is something I picked up over time, but a dozen hours into my New London revival concert, I still hadn't fully wrapped my head around the information overload of all the potential risks and benefits of these new locations.

Not every new addition to the basic setup feels impactful. A new secondary resource, goods, is supposed to be a representation that society is far enough away from extinction that they can start enjoying tchotchkes again, but I only ever had enough of these to meet demand for one five-minute stretch over the many hours it took me to beat the story, and I never felt a consequence for it or a pressure to create the extra district necessary to make more. 

People get more of a focus this time around. Workforce requirements for any project is usually significant, so keeping people healthy is of extra emphasis. In the tragic event that you are not able to meet their vital needs, Frostpunk 2 seems more forgiving about when they start to pay the price and how expensive it is. But since people are the rarest resource here, any loss of them hits hard. Outside of their gameplay role, they are presented with far more individuality and reverence than they were in the past. Every so often when a problem or concern arises, it's usually a large, well-rendered, solemn face with pain in their eyes asking me to fix it. The dark social commentary doesn't really hit as hard this time around, but that might be more because our real world feels a little darker than it did six years ago, and not due to some significant change in 11 bit's style of storytelling. The grim retro-futuristic Victorian buildings and characters still present a wholly unique steampunk-adjacent aesthetic, properly capturing a world that got frozen in time in the last century, as well as the many little innovations humanity made since then. It's just hard to wax too poetically about its brutality when there seems to be so much of our own to consider.

Chilly relationship

The balance of making sure all of my bases were covered was still tenuous, but far more manageable out of the gate thanks to Frostpunk 2's excellent story mode. Its objectives do did double duty: provided a puzzle of city management that grew in difficulty over its five chapters, and were clear and clever ways to introduce all the assorted mechanics and troubles I would face if I left the campaign and attempted to grow a city from scratch in  the free play mode, nudging me towards valuable evergreen strategies on the way). Frostpunk 2 is not always clear on how to do some specifics – the tutorial tooltips have some blindspots on how to find specific actions buried deep in menus or explaining why a production would suddenly stop midway – but it's great at making sure I wasn't idling too much by always presenting some next big challenge to conquer.

Governing people in the original Frostpunk took my moral compass for a spin, but Frostpunk 2 does everything it possibly can to break it altogether. In the prior game, every decision felt like it came with pros and cons that hit most of the population with the same weight, ultimately making the whole experience a matter of choosing the pros that overall have more impact than the cons. But the 30 years between the brink of eradication and the fictional now has given the citizenry time to imagine what the future of civilization could look like, and they've divided themselves into factions based on those beliefs. Almost everything I did had some sort of consequence on one or more of these factions, usually with at least one liking it and one hating it. The efficiencies of fracking oil out of the frozen soil might please the technocratic Stalwarts but it's dangerous and the traditionalist Pilgrims will disapprove. Anger a faction enough and they will start to cause unrest in the settlement, potentially trying to actively sabotage your future projects or overthrow you completely.

The temperaments of each faction significantly impacted my ability to pass new laws in the settlement, too. No longer could I just do so with impunity like the original game. These factions combine to create a parliament that must vote on every proposal with the likelihood of my proposal passing determined by how many of these councilmen believed in my leadership and how many could be swayed to vote in my interests for favors in return. Every vote, even the ones that seemed to go reasonably my way, felt tense. It made trying to get things done a real struggle, but I really came to appreciate just how much trouble they can cause. Around the midway point and beyond in the campaign, I spent a lot of time granting favors and donating resources to individual factions in order to keep them compliant, years of barking back and forth between them all whittling down their tolerance for one another and their faith in me. Many of the choices you make are reversible or fixable in some fashion if you have the will, and a select few are not, and I think often about how things could have been had I made different choices or favored different factions.

Exploring outside the confines of my main settlement is a much larger endeavor in Frostpunk 2. Scouts still adventure out into the tundra to find resources and survivors, but they search by regions instead of individual points. Once scouts make it to the region, they report back a set of points of interest that could reveal stockpiles, people, or outpost opportunities that create semi-permanent access to a particular resource. This time around, I also got opportunities to create secondary settlements like an oil field that I used to drill and ship the fuel back to my main city. These locations had their own populations, workforces, and resource needs separate from my other settlements, so if they couldn't gather or create all of the things they needed, my other settlements had to come together to fill the gaps.

This is really the only time Frostpunk 2's expanded scope felt consistently unwieldy. Bouncing back and forth between settlements to move resources around just so that they could survive another few months was tedious. It felt like I was mostly just treading water and not actually progressing, which was frustrating and not in the ultimately fun and thought-provoking way that the rest of the game can be frustrating. I'm sure that this is something that takes practice to master, but at around a dozen hours in, imagining how much time I'd need to spend to "get good" at settlements puts my brain in a deep freeze.

Frostpunk 2 is the most engrossing city builder I've played since the first. Though its moral quandaries don't pull at the heartstrings as hard as it did back in "simpler" times, it challenges the mind just as sternly thanks to the expanded management systems and scope, the need to manage factions and politics on top of individual needs, and a great story mode that taught it all to me. Even if some systems get a little obtuse, or if expanding the balancing act to multiple settlements became a progress-trapping burden, rescuing humanity through urban planning and political gamesmanship has never been this enriching. I'd normally not recommend sprinting towards the opportunity to run a potentially fascistic post-apocalypse nation that might require you to mandate children leave school and become woodworkers, but let Frostpunk 2 be the exception.

Frostpunk 2 was reviewed on PC, with a code provided by the publisher.

I recently had the opportunity to preview My Time at Evershine, the hotly anticipated sequel to My Time at Sandrock and My Time at Portia - and boy, does it look massive. I went into this preview expecting a vibrant follow-up to the sim series' first two games, one with all of the cozy Stardew Valley-esque features found in both Portia and Sandrock. I was surprised, however, to learn that a few big changes set Evershine apart.

My Time at Evershine doesn't see you take a rundown farm or workshop over like the other two entries did. This time around, you actually play as the governor of a brand-new settlement on the fringes of the Free Cities. This means that you're in charge of pretty much everything, from recruiting all kinds of folks to your up-and-coming town to taking care of its infrastructure from the ground up.

A whole new world

When I ask the developers about this integration of city-builder mechanics, vice president Aaron Deng assures me that the "core game loop" fans know and love is still there - it just comes with a twist, an added layer of depth. In Deng's own words, "The whole town is your workshop" this time around. I also made sure to enquire about customization and what this means for those of us who love decorating things from the top down.

Much to my delight, the entire settlement in Evershine is completely customizable to suit your tastes. The layout, exteriors, interiors, and even its inhabitants are determined by you, but that doesn't mean that you'll have to do all of the dirty work yourself. Running a town is no easy feat, but you can thankfully employ residents to help with constructing new projects.

They'll help you do everything from building homes to defending your settlement against enemies, although you'll have to ensure that they're comfortable enough to be efficient at their work. Its city-builder vibes partly remind me of Manor Lords - with a far cozier setting and more RPG sim-adjacent features, of course.

Never a dull moment

You can also expand your settlement by "taming" bordering territories for resources. This will unlock new resources and NPCs - and if you're worried that the sheer size will leave your town feeling dead, fret not. While My Time at Portia and My Time at Sandrock can feel a bit lonely at times, devs are working hard to ensure that Evershine doesn't. According to Pathea, there are 8-10 romanceable characters and 20-30 "unique" characters outside of these "core" NPCs.

There are also "randomized" NPCs to "make up the rest" - something that I'm admittedly a bit concerned about. It's not that I don't want my game to feel more alive, but more so that I don't think that having randomized NPCs is the way to go about it. I'm content with the number of unique characters, though, and am hopeful the randomized ones don't take away from any immersion with their… randomness.

While I'm not thrilled to have these strangers in my town, I'm excited to bond with the new romanceable characters that Evershine has to offer. As revealed by Pathea, romance comes earlier than it did in Portia and Sandrock, featuring a bit more depth as well to allow for "meaningful relationships." Above anything else, however, I'm most looking forward to the follower system. That's right - full-blown, JRPG-style followers.

The developer explains that players will be able to form a party with up to three other characters. You can choose who to bring along, meaning you can have a full party made up of a healer-type member, a more tanky adventurer, or someone who specializes in dealing damage. Or, if you'd prefer, you can party up with three friends instead.

Invite a friend or two or three

Multiplayer in Evershine is a huge step up from Sandrock's online co-op, and I already feel confident that Pathea will deliver this time around. It's no secret that My Time at Sandrock didn't follow through with the devs' promise of multiplayer, or at least not in the fleshed-out way that fans were expecting it to. In Evershine, players can actually experience the entirety of the main game's story together from start to finish.

While only the host player can progress through all of the main quests, everyone takes part in completing objectives, and money is shared Stardew Valley-style. It sounds like it's the sort of multiplayer experience I expect out of both sim games and RPGs - the kind that I wanted out of Sandrock but didn't quite get. As the devs shared with me, even Evershine's map was designed to properly support multiplayer.

Pathea also put a lot of thought into mod support this time around, in both single-player and multiplayer modes. I've not dabbled in modding with the devs' previous two titles myself, but I'd love to see what more creative fans come up with come Evershine's release. This rings especially true for me with multiplayer - yes, I'm that one annoying friend in Baldur's Gate 3 with a hundred mods you need to match.

All in all, I'm thoroughly impressed with My Time at Evershine so far. My only concern is that with its addition of city-builder mechanics and the more "realistic" approach to visuals I was shown, Evershine will lose some of the My Time series' identity. With its integration of long-requested features, though, it's safe to say that the third game will stand apart from its predecessors in a positive way as well and hopefully set a solid foundation for Pathea's future titles.

Need even more to look forward to? Here are new games coming this year and beyond.

It turns out spite is an excellent motivator, especially if you're making a video game. The developer of chaotic city-builder Overthrown removed one pesky mechanic specifically to go against the grain of the cautionary words of their mother.

Removing fall damage from Overthrown was a decision made by the game's creator because it's "annoying" but more importantly because their mother used to tell them "you can't just do whatever you want", according to a post on Twitter. As it turns out, when you're an adult you can totally just do whatever you want, at least within the technical confines of the game you're making.

This means you can leap off any cliff or fall from any height without needing to deal with the consequences that would plague you in other video games whose developers aren't trying to spite their mothers. 

Game balance be damned, as removing fall damage will seemingly make things more chaotic by allowing you to surprise attack enemies from high vantage points or even just a tall tree that would probably break your leg if you fell from it. 

Overthrown also features other abilities like becoming a giant magnet to attract nearby items, but it has not been stated if that was added to spite a different family member. As you develop your city using this new urban planning method, you'll grow gardens, defeat bandits, and even build homes for your citizens in up to six player co-op.

Overthrown is set to release in early access on Steam in 2024. 

There are plenty of great indie games released everyday. Here are our upcoming indie games for 2024 and beyond.