Free city building games

What makes a good city building game

A city building game hands you an empty piece of ground and asks you to turn it into a place that works. You decide where the roads go, which building sits next to which, and how food, power or goods get from where they are made to where they are needed. Nothing is decided in a single move. A good layout pays off slowly, and a bad one shows up as a shortage, a queue or a blinking alarm light.

The six city building games on Kiloo come from the strategy and building categories. Most run in real time, with a day and night or seasons that move the prices. One is played a season at a time with undo, and one lets you paint a whole town and press Run to see what happens. Every one has goals to work towards, and most add a sandbox, free build or endless mode for when you simply want to build.

City building games to start with

Tiny Kingdom is the gentlest start. Lay cobbled roads out from the keep, put farms by the water and cut timber at the forest edge, keep the villagers fed and cheerful and hold off bandit raids with walls, watchtowers and militia. Twelve milestones take you from ten villagers to a castle raised through three stages. Pixel City is just as friendly: paint roads, homes, shops, parks and schools onto a pixel grid, press Run and watch the town fill up, grow taller and light up at night. It has forty challenges with three stars each, and Free build on a big map with a Photo button.

If you like running a business, Harbor Tycoon starts with a plank dock and a little coaster with a hold full of fish. Add cranes, sheds and a market, land and sell fish, timber, spice and gadgets, and keep an eye on the seasons, the storms and a rival port that undercuts you. Steam Rails is about moving things rather than housing people: drag track over the hills, bridge the river, bore a tunnel through the ridge, then put stations by the colliery and the works and give each engine its round of stops. Use the signals and passing loops, because two trains that meet on one track derail.

For a slower game, Island Council gives you a few actions each season and one petition from the council with two answers, and the island lives with whichever you pick. Colony Moon asks the most of you. Every module on the crater grid must be joined by a tube before power, oxygen, water and food can reach it, and a four-minute day and night means batteries and a full tank decide whether the base lasts until dawn.

Building with a mouse, keys or a touch screen

On a computer every game here works the same way at heart: click a building, module or tool, then click the ground to place it. Roads, track and tubes are dragged. You drag with the road tool in Tiny Kingdom, drag track in Steam Rails and drag from one module to another to run a tube in Colony Moon. In most of them the arrow keys pan the map, + and − zoom and the number keys pick tools. Island Council ends the season with Enter, and both it and Pixel City undo with Z.

On a phone or tablet you tap a building and then tap the ground, pan with a finger or two and pinch to zoom. P pauses in every game, which helps when you want to plan a big change while a real-time town keeps ticking. Join things up before you add more: in Tiny Kingdom a road keeps every building working at full rate.

Frequently asked questions