Harbor Tycoon

Harbor Tycoon is a relaxed real-time port builder seen from just above the water. You get a stretch of coast — a sunny cove, a cold fjord or a delta full of shallow channels — and nine things to put on it. Docks berth the ships. Cranes swing over the side and empty them. Warehouses hold what you land, markets sell it on, shops and a ferry pier take money off the day trippers, breakwaters take the swell and a lighthouse brings in more traffic than any of them. Everything is one tile, placed with a click or a tap, and the little port grows out along the shore in whatever shape the coastline allows.

A day is twenty seconds and the clock never stops unless you stop it. Ships find their own way in through the deep water, moor alongside, and unload crate by crate while carts trundle up to the sheds and your markets sell whatever is worth the most today. Every sale nudges that price down and it drifts back up while you look elsewhere, so it pays to spread the load. Four seasons turn on a loop and each one wants something different: timber in spring, fish in summer, spice in autumn, gadgets when it gets cold. Land a hold of the right cargo in the right week and it is worth half again as much.

The sea does not leave you alone. Storms roll in every week or two, rain across the bay, and anything sitting in open water takes a beating unless a breakwater is standing between it and the swell — damage costs money to put right, so the cheap rocks you laid in week one earn their keep. A rival port undercuts your prices for a few days at a time, and the bigger and prettier your own front is, the less it stings. Each coast has seven goals, from your first dock to earning several hundred coins in a single day, and the sandbox has none at all: big water, deep pockets, and no one keeping score. It saves itself to your browser and runs on a mouse, a keyboard or two fingers.