Pixel City

Pixel City is a tiny city builder in chunky pixel art, seen from above with a slight lift so every house, block of flats and water tower stands up off the grid. You paint tiles from a palette: roads, houses, flats, shops, parks, schools, power plants, water towers, farms, harbour piers and town squares. Drag the road tool to lay a whole street in one stroke, then fill in the lots around it. Press Run and the city comes alive tick by tick: tiny cars drive the streets, smoke curls from the power plant, and at night the windows and street lamps switch on.

Underneath the pixels is a proper little simulation. Homes need a road, and power from a plant that the road reaches. They fill up when a shop and a school are within walking distance, grow from small to large once they have water and a park or square nearby, and lose heart if a power plant goes up next door. Shops need customers, a town of more than a hundred people needs farms or fishing piers, and happy residents and busy shops bring in the coins.

Forty brain-teasing challenges on hand-built maps, with rivers, coastlines, hills and lakes, ask you to reach a population, happiness or coin target with a budget and a tile limit before the clock runs out. Each one has three stars: one for the goal, one for spending less and one for keeping everyone happy. Back rewinds a run in an instant and undo remembers fifty steps. Or relax in Free build on a big map with free coins, a day and night switch, a Photo button and room for twenty saved cities in your browser.