Top rated retro city builders

Old-school grids, temples and traffic jams tie these top rated retro city builder games together, and you shape each neighborhood around daily needs. In Caesar™ 3 you supply Roman homes while appeasing temples and imperial demands, in Zeus + Poseidon you tend Greek ports where myths interrupt trade and worship, and in SimCity™ 4 Deluxe Edition you connect neighboring towns into one region with shared roads and budgets.

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1. Factorio

   

   Factorio starts with you chopping trees and mining ore by hand, and ends with solar fields, oil refineries, trains and robots running a factory the size of a city. For city builder fans, the appeal is the layout puzzle: belts, power and production lines that keep growing until the whole map hums.

   97%97% of 197,445 Steam reviews are positive20.2KPlayers online now: 20,230$35

2. Stronghold Crusader HD (2012)

   

   A castle sim where the town exists to feed the war. You raise walls in the desert, chain farms to bakeries to troops, then point catapults at someone else's walls. Four Crusades campaigns and over 100 skirmishes give city builder fans plenty of building with a sharp, combative edge.

   97%97% of 17,651 Steam reviews are positive833Players online now: 833$9.99

3. Town to City

   

   Build a 19th-century Mediterranean town and grow it into a prosperous city, with no grid forcing your hand. Place houses, shops, parks and winding streets where they look right, keep workers, artisans and the bourgeoisie happy, and expand into farming and tourism across multiple towns.

   97%97% of 6,375 Steam reviews are positive198Players online now: 198$29.99

4. Age of Empires II (Retired)

   

   This retired HD re-imagining of Age of Empires II gives city builder fans a medieval base to raise through the ages: gather resources, raise buildings, and grow one of 18 civilizations before sending it to war. It is old, sturdy, and still satisfying to build up from a few villagers to a walled power.

   95%95% of 84,969 Steam reviews are positive3.3KPlayers online now: 3,316$19.99

5. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition

   

   A real-time strategy classic rebuilt in 4K with remastered music, where you raise a medieval town from a few villagers into a walled base, gather food, wood and stone, and lead one of dozens of civilizations through 229 campaign missions, co-op, or online play.

   94%94% of 160,462 Steam reviews are positive22.1KPlayers online now: 22,142

6. Stronghold HD (2012)

   

   Build a medieval castle from muddy ground up, keep its people fed and taxed just enough to stay, then ring it with walls, towers and traps. Stronghold HD mixes town management with siege warfare, so city builder fans get the ledgers and the battlements in one package.

   95%95% of 8,707 Steam reviews are positive163Players online now: 163$5.99

7. Car Park Capital

   

   Hired by Big Auto, you turn quiet towns into seas of paid parking. Buy land, flatten homes, stack garages into the sky, then sell residents the cars to fill them. A colorful retro management sim with a shameless satirical streak.

   97%97% of 1,751 Steam reviews are positive97Players online now: 97$16.99

8. Dwarf Fortress

   

   Build a fortress inside a generated mountain and try to keep your dwarves alive through hunger, dragons and madness. You dig rooms, farm, brew beer, craft goods and raise taverns and temples, while a whole simulated world keeps moving around you. Losing is part of it, and the stories are worth it.

   94%94% of 29,446 Steam reviews are positive702Players online now: 702$23.99

9. Cattails: Wildwood Story

   

   Become a cat and lead your colony into the Wildwood. You pick the settlement site, grow a thriving town to recruit new cats, send squads to claim territory, and research perks for your residents, all between hunts, herb gardens, and mines.

   97%97% of 1,505 Steam reviews are positive80Players online now: 80$19.99

10. A World of Keflings

    

    Keflings may be small, but their kingdom-building adventures are gigantic! Build a world with your friends in A World of Keflings! Harvest resources, construct robots, befriend a dragon, and help a creepy witch get even creepier in this update of the classic 2010 city-building adventure.

    99%99% of 524 Steam reviews are positive9Players online now: 9$9.59

11. Combolands: Roguelike Citybuilder

    

    Combolands is a tiny roguelike citybuilder played in 30-minute runs. You grow a hamlet on a procedural island into a thriving city, placing buildings to stack synergies and trigger cascading combos. With 7 guilds to mix two at a time, 120+ buildings and 100+ heirlooms, it is made for city builder fans who like breaking a build and watching the numbers climb.

    96%96% of 1,983 Steam reviews are positive413Players online now: 413$9.99

12. Zeus + Poseidon

    

    Zeus + Poseidon pairs two classic city builders in one package: ancient Greece and Atlantis. You raise city-states from empty shoreline plots, with housing, trade, taxes, gods, heroes and monsters all tangled together. It stays engaging without turning punishing, which makes it easy to return to for one more district, one more sanctuary, one more episode.

    96%96% of 1,936 Steam reviews are positive124Players online now: 124$9.99

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