Havendock Build a floating town on the sea

You wash up on a small platform in the middle of the sea with nothing but your own two hands. The current brings wood, leaves and the occasional supply crate, so the first hours are simple: fish what floats by, purify water, build your first facilities. Then survivors start drifting in on rafts, and the little dock becomes a settlement with farms, houses and workshops laid out however you like. Nobody rushes you. You arrange the town at your own pace, and the ocean keeps drifting past your front door.

Every new survivor who arrives needs food, water and a place to sleep, but they also become hands. You assign tasks and set priorities, and your settlers haul resources, run production and keep the town going. Teach them well and they take over the chores you like least, which frees you up for the fun part: building more. More settlers means more mouths, so the game becomes a gentle balancing act between feeding everyone and putting them to work. When a job finally runs itself without you, that is the quiet satisfaction the whole game is built around.

If you like colony sims but flinch at losing a settler to a raid or a bad winter, this is the gentler take. There are no attacks to fend off and no punishing failure states: the challenge is keeping everyone fed, watered and happy as the population grows, not keeping them alive through disaster. Each settler has needs to meet and work to do, and the stories come from your own decisions, like what happens when the town grows faster than the farms. It is a colony sim about building something up, not watching it fall apart.

The whole game is built to be unwound with. The art is cute and cartoonish, the colors are bright and cheerful, and the music stays calm while you tinker. You make your own character, plant a farm, cook meals, raise animals that wander around being adorable (some even pitch in with the work), and chat with the odd talking penguin that drifts through. Nothing is timed and nothing bites. It is the kind of game where an evening passes quickly and you end it with a tidy little town and no stress to show for it.

As a city builder, Havendock gives you an unusual canvas: the sea. You lay out a floating settlement plank by plank, decide where the farms, workshops and homes go, and keep the whole supply chain running as more settlers arrive. Then the map opens up in a direction most city builders never offer: straight down. Once you can build on the seabed, your town grows in three dimensions, with underwater construction, ore and oil to find below the surface, and even an underwater farm if you feel ambitious. Waterfront property takes on a whole new meaning.

Farming starts as a matter of survival: catch fish, grow crops, cook meals so nobody goes hungry. As your settlement grows, so does the operation. You build proper farms, raise and feed animals, and turn raw ingredients into cooked food that keeps your settlers happy and healthy. Some of your animal friends help make the settlement run more efficiently, which is a nicer arrangement than most workplaces offer. The rhythm is the calm kind: plant, tend, harvest, cook, and watch the little town you feed thrive.

The tech tree runs from humble to absurd. You start with basic devices like a water distiller and a coffee maker, then push past common sense entirely: robots that automate your work, power plants, a submarine, and eventually a rocket. Along the way you build boats to reach the islands on the horizon and dive beneath the waves for ores and oil. Every chore you dislike has some machine waiting to take it over, so progress keeps feeling lighter, not heavier. The settlement you lead is supposed to end up high-tech, and it shows.