$17.99Cliff Empire Cities on the last cliffs
Earth is under 300 metres of radioactive fog, and humanity's last footholds are three artificial cliffs. Build futuristic cities on their narrow tops, trade between them, survive a hostile climate, and work your way up to an orbital station. A calm but demanding city builder where every metre of space counts.
Is Cliff Empire worth it?
Cliff Empire is worth it if…
- you like city builders where tight space, not money, is the real constraint
- you enjoy running several economies at once and trading between your own cities
- you want a builder that is calm in pace but genuinely difficult to master
- you don't mind demolishing half a city and starting a district over
- you like post-apocalyptic settings played clean and quiet rather than grim and loud
Screenshots
Cities on the edge of a dead world
After the nuclear war, life on the surface became impossible. A 300 metre thick radioactive fog covers the Earth, and the only habitable ground is a set of artificial cliffs built by scientists who saw it coming. On those narrow plateaus you found small futuristic cities: power first, then food, water and everything a population needs to stay alive.
Space is the enemy. Each level is randomly generated, so every run hands you a different set of cliffs to work with.
Three cities, three economies
Each level has you build three small cities, and each one runs its own independent economy. You cannot simply funnel resources where they are needed: cities trade with each other, and with the orbital station, across 15 different goods. Balancing three ledgers at once, and deciding which cliff specialises in what, turns a city builder into a juggling act.
It sounds stressful, and it can be, but the pace stays unhurried. Place buildings, watch your numbers, adjust. When a disaster eats into your food supply, you can buy your way out instead of watching everything collapse. The pressure is real, but it rarely shouts at you.
Room to grow, then room to grow again
For city builder fans, the hook here is the layout puzzle. The building space on top of a cliff is tight, so you plan, replan and demolish as your cities develop. Over 120 structures and 48 university research projects keep opening new options, and progress nudges you to rebuild parts of a city without tearing the whole thing down.
The map itself changes the usual habits: buildings that would sprawl across flat ground here stack along cliff walls to save the precious plateau. Reaching a new stage of progression feels earned, and the game rewards starting over with a different plan when a layout stops working.
Keeping a fragile colony alive
This is survival at city scale. Your population needs power, food, water and goods, and the world pushes back: a dynamic climate brings droughts, storms and blizzards that test whether your economy can take a hit. Invaders show up too, and tower defense becomes part of keeping what you built.
People arrive from the orbital station, which means your growth has real limits to manage. Push through the quests and the late game opens a much larger location beyond the cliffs, with the station itself becoming part of your empire rather than just a lifeline.
What should you know before starting?
Can you play it solo?
Yes, it is a singleplayer game through and through. There is a sandbox mode if you want to build without the quest line, and the main progression runs through 15 quests that gradually unlock new areas, buildings and eventually the orbital station. Nobody else is needed to make any of it work.
Is it hard?
Yes, and honestly so. You can paint yourself into a corner, especially if your starting cliffs lack the resources you later need, and a restart is a normal part of the game rather than a failure state. It is demanding, but it is not out to cheat you: learn the systems, plan ahead, and a city that once felt unwinnable starts to run itself.
How long does a playthrough take?
Plan on a long one. Building a fully developed city takes in the region of 25 to 40 hours, and the late game adds a large location beyond the cliffs on top of that. Progression moves at its own pace even on the highest speed setting, so this suits patient players more than anyone looking for an evening-sized city builder.
