Power Grid

Power Grid is a relaxed tycoon about keeping the lights on. You run the power company of a seeded valley seen from above: seven towns, wooded hills, a river running down from the mountains and a coast along the bottom, with an old gas works and a pass to the neighbouring valley. Demand follows a daily rhythm, a bump at breakfast, a big peak at dinner time and a quiet night, and it grows with the seasons, winter being the hungriest. Drag a cable from a plant to a town and its windows light up. Tap a ridge to put up a wind turbine, a field for a solar farm, a yard for a battery that soaks up the midday surplus for the evening peak.

The weather is seeded, so the same valley and the same choices always give the same day. Turbines spin hard on blustery days and stand still in a calm, solar farms fade under cloud, rain fills the reservoir behind the hydro dam and the tidal barrage turns with the tides. Keep the frequency gauge in the green: if demand outruns you, towns go dark, refunds cost coins and happiness drops, while anything left over is sold to the neighbouring valley. Every number is one tap away, from an income and costs panel for today and yesterday to a 24-hour chart of supply by source and a green score for the clean share.

Every season brings new tools: hydro dams, bigger substations and more build sites in summer, bigger turbines, smart meters that flatten the peak, high-voltage lines and an electric bus depot in autumn, tidal power and geothermal heat in winter. Twenty milestones lead from lighting the first town to a whole winter without a blackout and a day that is one hundred per cent clean. It is a quick brain teaser at 4× speed or a slow one at 1×, with a skip to morning whenever the night drags, and the endless Sandbox opens everything so you can simply relax and build. If the lights ever go out, the neighbour's emergency link keeps them on, and the valley saves itself in your browser.