Ant Farms: Three of the Quirkiest City-Builders Around

I remember when I first played SimCity. Will Wright’s masterwork was a breath of fresh air – a playable simulation of real-world urban planning, a topic that sounded like a terrible idea for a game on paper but was incredibly compelling in reality.

Like Civilization and other 4X games, SimCity and its descendants weave an intricate web of addictive decisions that keep you playing late into the night. There’s always one more tweak to make to your city’s layout – one more minor optimization or a fresh disaster to deal with.

In the years since SimCity’s launch in 1989, the city-builder genre has thrived. City-builders have never had the flashy, edgy excitement of first-person shooters or the passionate hardcore fanbase of blockbuster RPGs and open-world games, but making a great city-builder has a recipe for at least modest success for decades.

Maxis, of course, doubled down on SimCity’s success, with several direct follow-ups and the even more successful Sims spin-off franchise. But plenty of other developers have created amazing games in the space.

Modern takes on city-builders are plentiful and varied. Series like Tropico and Cities: Skylines became successful franchises of their own. Games like Frostpunk and Timberborn transplant the concept to fantastic settings. And indie titles like Banished and Manor Lords show that, even without the resources of a big studio, city-builders can be runaway hits.

And floating around the edges of the city-builder genre are simulation games like Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld, which trade some of SimCity’s macro-view of urban planning for down-in-the-weeds citizen’s-eye complex, detail-oriented perspectives. 

It’s that branch of the city-builder tree which has always been most exciting for me. And certainly, folks could argue that the games I mention below aren’t “city-builders” in the traditional sense. 

However, I prefer to use the broadest possible definitions of game genres. Every good game is a unique experience, and these three games scratch the same “ant farm” itch that the original, much simpler SimCity did back in 1989.

Songs of Syx

A game built primarily by a one-person indie studio, Songs of Syx has been in development since 2015 and in early access on Steam for the last four years. It’s an ambitious feast of intricate systems set in a unique fantasy world, with a side dish of military conquest reminiscent of what the recent hit indie game Manor Lords attempts.

Songs of Syx’s eight distinct species, though analogous to traditional tropes like orcs and dwarves, have unique twists, lore, skills, and goals. Some like round houses; others squared-off architecture. Some like grain to eat, while others prefer fish. Satisfying the needs of a growing population often requires a deep analysis of who your citizens are. 

The simulation isn’t as deep as Dwarf Fortress, but there’s a lot going on with each individual member of your society. Indeed, part of the game’s compelling problem space is resolving tensions between the various species in your city. Do you build separate neighborhoods to keep one group away from the others, or focus on attracting immigrants of only one species?

Don’t be put off by the game’s retro graphics – the unusual art direction is entirely intentional and utterly charming in motion. 

Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic

Another title with a long early access run, Workers & Resources finally launched its 1.0 version this year. The end result is a playable, polished, and customizable city-builder – a great example of how to do early access right. A clever and frequently subversive title, Workers & Resources puts the player in the role of central planner for a fully controlled Soviet-style economy from the mid-twentieth century onward. 

Depending on how you dial in the realism and difficulty settings, you might deal with an incredibly large problem set. Your power plants need coal; coal mines and coal plants need workers; workers need somewhere to live. Those workers need food, heat in the winter, water, and sewer systems. Their trash needs to go somewhere, and they need schools and entertainment.

Brick by brick, piece by piece, a thriving (albeit bleak) network of small towns and bustling Soviet-style block housing springs up across the map. The game’s complex industrial supply chains start to resemble something out of Factorio – twisty networks of conveyors and trucks and trains hauling goods and materials to where they’re needed.

I’ve yet to see a city-builder that goes as deep as Workers & Resources does into the practical elements of keeping an infrastructure functional. Unlike a lot of city-builders, the happiness of your citizens is a secondary priority. Sure, it would be nice to let them all have cars and groceries – but their number one job is to keep the gravel trucks rolling and the coal plant fueled.

Amazing Cultivation Simulator

One of the strangest games I’ve ever played, Amazing Cultivation Simulator can best be described as “Chinese mythology Rimworld.” Yet that shorthand only does the game so much justice.

Certainly, the setup is very Rimworld-like. You control three or four survivors of a martial arts sect, recently wiped out by enemies unknown. Initially you’re engaged in basic survival tasks like gathering wood and food as you rebuild living spaces, kitchens, and workshops.

But your eventual goal is for your disciples to ascend to higher states of being through training, meditation, and martial arts – at which point, what seemed like a relatively straightforward city-builder explodes into a glorious mess of new mechanics, stats, and complexity.

Amazing Cultivation Simulator is the most unpolished of the three games. The English translation of the original Chinese is often confusing; the UI is messy and poorly laid out; several of the many, many mechanics barely work. Yet it’s still a compelling experience, generating the same kind of offbeat stories that Rimworld does.

Disciples starve to death, play games with each other, fall in love, lose limbs and regrow them, and fight fearsome mythical bosses. They go on adventures and trade and compete with other martial arts sects. They eat odd herbs, attain higher states of being, and transform into ultra-powerful godlike beings with thousand-year lifespans.

I can’t recommend Amazing Cultivation Simulator for everyone. But if you have an interest in Chinese mythology – or Rimworld seems too lightweight for you, and you want something with more complexity – give it a shot.

We Built This City

City-building is the genre that keeps on giving. While other genres rise and fall, there’s always been an audience for a good city-builder’s ant-farm appeal.

The themes and mechanics have changed over the years. The settings are often more fanciful than the grounded real-world setting of the original SimCity. But the core appeal remains the same. The bones of the smart parts of Will Wright’s design, obvious in games like Cities: Skylines and Tropico, are present, albeit better disguised, in Workers & Resources and Songs of Syx.

It makes sense. Building cities has been a human impulse since thousands of years ago when the ancient Sumerians scratched out the first roads and permanent buildings in the Fertile Crescent. When we see a bare patch of ground, something deep in our souls drives us to construct a thriving metropolis on top of it.

But the appeal of city-builder games goes beyond our normal human desire to carve out a place to live and work from the natural landscape. In a game like SimCity, as in a 4X game like Civilization, we are like gods- watching busy inhabitants scurry about, witnesses to the hustle and bustle of their daily lives unfolding in a space we (mostly) control.

As the Scottish town planner and all-around smart guy Patrick Geddes said, “A city is more than a place in space; it is a drama in time.” It’s that very human drama, the stories that a good city-builder creates, that keep us coming back.

The Scree Games blog focuses on game industry news, game reviews, and personal stories about my years in the industry. New content appears on Tuesdays.