The visitors to my town in Go-Go Town have a lot of suggestions. One wants water, so I build a water fountain on the street. One thinks I should sell 20 pet rocks. Oddly specific, but I can do that—once I build a craft shop, hit the mine, and gather more stone. In between satisfying the demands of tourists, who then move in as I build houses for them, I explore the limits of my little town. On the northern fringe, on the far side of a lake, there's a crashed drone that keeps beeping. It seems messy. I ride around on my bike and clear it up, at which point I'm surprised to find a text log.

I was not expecting lore in my cute early access town management sim. Yet here it is, a report from a town scouting agent explaining the parameters of their search, which include "low economic turnover + high levels of misplaced community trust." Rude! My pet rock-based economy is going to take off any day now.

Cheryl Vance, game director at indie studio Prideful Sloth, explains that Go-Go Town does indeed have a story. "We do actually have a setup for it in a cinematic," she says, "but we just never had time to get to work on it before we got into early access. At some point, we will go back to that cinematic and actually fix it."

As the introductory cutscene will show, you didn't inherit Go-Go Town because your grandfather died or anything like that. Instead, you read a leaflet that promised an opportunity to be your own boss and make your own hours. "It's the total internet scam job basically," Vance says. As soon as you sign up you're abducted and dropped off in the remote town you're now in charge of.

To be fair, even without a cinematic the beginning of the game sets this up just fine by having you arrive in a duffel bag dumped out of a van, with the tutorial delivered by suit-wearing men in black. It's an unexpectedly sinister introduction to a miniaturized city builder that's all about whimsy, where you ride around town on a skateboard or in a dinky little pickup fixing your town to attract the tourist dollars of guests who include aliens and a pack of friendly wolves.

Unlike, say, SimCity, you don't spend a lot of time looking at the menu. I physically grab a chainsaw to chop down trees so I can turn the wood into planks, and hit stone with my drill before I can make bricks. Then I scoot over to a block of land, clear some weeds and leaves by hand, and plonk down the next structure I need.

"We wanted all of the actions in the game to be very hands-on, very tactile" says Anthony Massingham, programmer on Go-Go Town. "A term we used when we were developing was 'no hidden pockets'. A lot of these sorts of games, you collect something, it goes in your backpack, and it's invisible. It's hidden. But we wanted to make everything very tactile. When you pick up something it's visible in your backpack. When you want to interact with something you have to use a tool or you physically interact with the object yourself."

"Anything an NPC can do a player can do," Vance adds. "And anything a player can do an NPC can do. There's probably a few roles that aren't quite there yet."

"The general eventual goal is, yeah, anything that an NPC or a tourist can do, the player should be able to do as well," Massingham agrees.

All those actions have a pleasing physicality thanks to the animations. When you hop off a bike with a full inventory the contents of your backpack leap in the air before settling back in place. Every time you dedicate a new building to its task you cut a ribbon to open it, and the cleaning tool for removing street garbage is a gun that shoots bubbles of cleaning fluid. 

"I believe the term we use is squishy," Vance says. "Keep things squishy. That's been a pillar in a way, the nice little squishy jumpies that you see."

"I mean, the characters are only so big on the screen," Massingham adds. "It's all about making reactions visible enough and emotive enough that you can see what's going on, understand what's going on, but also enjoy what you're seeing."

Go-Go Town is a low-poly game, which adds to its readability but also ensures it runs well on handheld platforms. I imagine it'll get a lot of play on the Steam Deck. "We have designed the game for handhelds in general," Massingham says. "Font size and interface size and control schemes and all those sorts of things. And performance obviously, try and make sure the game runs as well as possible. We've got the Steam Deck dev kits, and Cheryl does a lot of her own personal playtesting on hers. I've got a ROG Ally so I do a lot of stuff on that."

Getting hold of a Steam Deck in Australia, where Prideful Sloth is based, isn't as easy as it is in some parts of the world. Steam Decks aren't available directly from Valve here yet, and so Vance had to get one indirectly.

"That was a rather amusing process that felt like some sort of illicit smuggling scheme," Vance says. "Our community manager's based over in the US so last year, when I went over to GDC, she ordered one and brought it up to me and then handed it to me in a bag. I was like, I shouldn't feel like I'm some sort of criminal just because I got a Steam Deck!"

One of the best things about the small scale of Go-Go Town is that you're not handling a faceless mass like you would in a traditional city builder. Everyone who moves to town has a name and a distinctive look, which makes it easier to remember who I've put in charge of the fried "gronut" stand. "You can remember specific people in specific roles," says Massingham. "The guy with the green skin, Grumbo, you remember him, and you remember the ghost and you remember the mummy with the Pharaoh hat."

"I'm waiting for all the player feedback about wanting to romance Grumbo," says Vance.

Prideful Sloth's plans for Go-Go Town include more player customization, expanded industries, and a bigger map. "Probably the biggest piece of feedback we've had from a lot of people is when they've reached the end of the game, their map is as full as it can be, but they want more space," Massingham says. It's not as easy as just moving the boundaries further out, however. Tourists all arrive at the train station and propagate from there, so if the town gets too spread out they won't have time to explore the whole thing and see all its attractions before they catch their train home. The solution? "We'll add subways to the map," Massingham says. "The player can set up various subway buildings and different lines, and the tourists and the player can use those to fast travel around the map."

Go-Go Town is currently available in early access on Steam.  

Terra Nil is kind of like a reverse city builder—instead of planning and managing a bustling town, you expand its base into the wilderness that surrounds it, bringing nature back to a desolate wasteland, trying to restore dead biomes as you go. There's already a lot to love with this strategy game, but now developers Free Lives are getting ready to add even more. 

An upcoming major update will be the first of its kind for Terra Nil and will expand "on its deeply satisfying nature restoration gameplay… and a dramatic overhaul of the wildlife system," according to a press release. 

"New levels include Polluted Bay, a dead landscape carved in half by a badly polluted river, and Scorched Caldera, a vast volcanic crater that you must terraform into a life-filled freshwater lake. These, and all the new maps in the Vita Nova update, will put your reclamation skills to the test in interesting and unusual ways." 

Another change that may not be as impressive as the various new levels but is still undeniably great is the new Vita Nova map. Now it's fully 3D, players can freely rotate it letting them get their bearings and also find locations easier, and plan projects out with more accuracy. It may be a small detail, but I always find static maps quite frustrating for city builders—I like to pay pretty close attention to mapping out current and future builds and have found the rotating maps let me paint a more accurate mental image of what the future of my builds will look like.  

Aside from this, there's also a new overhauled wildlife system to look forward to in this update. Apparently, it should make "these transformed landscapes feel more alive than ever," the press release says. "Animals emerge more naturally as you play, and have a deeper set of needs to fulfill to keep them happy and abundant. This not only adds a new dimension of strategy to the game but gives you more animals to admire—including a brand new species, the jaguar—as nature is steadily restored."

I usually go for city builders that actually let me build a city, but Terra Nil's nature-first approach is refreshingly pleasant. It's nice to not just try to restore the natural environment but to put some real thought into making the ecosystem habitable for the animals that'll take up residency there. 

Terra Nil is also really relaxing which may be surprising considering the fate of several biomes and the lives of its inhabitants rest in your hopefully capable hands. One of the features that helps with its meditative vibe, alongside its simple puzzles, is definitely the fact that after all your hard work is done, you pack all your equipment up and move on, leaving no trace that you were ever there. It's a nice change from the usual megacities that I leave in my wake and is definitely a more morally sustainable way to play city builders. 

A little over five years after it launched into Early Access, city builder Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic has released its completed 1.0 version. Standing out from other city builders by its emphasis on industry, transportation, and the use of material goods in manufacture, Workers & Resources has a reputation as a hardcore simulation that's quite good at its chosen areas of focus. If you've ever disliked how buildings in other city games just pop up without the requisite amount of steel, wood, concrete, and bricks produced and delivered beforehand—well, this one's probably for you.

Workers & Resources has come a long way since launch, but maintains its focus on the mining of resources, manufacturing of goods, and construction of buildings. That, of course, also means keeping your workers happy, healthy, fed, and loyal to the state—otherwise they'll abscond with themselves over the border for a life in the affluen capitalist West. It's a challenging game on its highest difficulties and realism modes, but an enjoyable industrial city-designing sandbox on its infinite money modes.

If you're the kind of city building enthusiast who obsesses over industrial layout in factory games, logistics in transport games, or just loves the kind of hyper-detailed materials gameplay you get in Dwarf Fortress, I really can't recommend Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic enough.

The game launch also came alongside the release of a new DLC, Biomes. That adds three new maps to build in: an arid desert, snowy tundra, and monsoon-stricken tropics. I've played around with them a bit, and while the map variety is low the gameplay tweaks are fun if you've been playing a lot of this game over the past five years.

Besides the tweaks, fixes, and stability boosts you'd expect from the release version, the 1.0 patch has also added some new stuff to build. There're new cultural buildings like an amphiteater and larger stadium, as well as playgrounds too keep young kids healthier. There are also a few new Western vehicles to import.

"This project has taken 7 years of my life, and it has changed my life," said developer 3Division lead Peter in a release post. "Thank you to all the team members: Martin, Michal, Vlado, Karel, Robs, Krzysztof, and many others who dedicated their souls to this project and helped me finish this monster."

He was clear that the 1.0 release was not the end of development: "While you play the game, we will continue updating it and even adding new features," he said.

You can find Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic on Steam for $40, or at launch sale price of 35% off until June 27.

Ubisoft Forward showed off a bit more than just what we expected today (such as Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin's Creed Shadows), like a new entry into its long running Anno city builder series. Anno 117: Pax Romana was announced, and that's exciting news since it's the first Anno game to tackle Ancient Rome. Anno 117: Pax Romana is planned for release in 2025.

The short live-action trailer, on the other hand, is a bit disappointing: I would have preferred at least a glimpse of gameplay and art, especially for a series known for its beauty and aesthetic. All we got to see today is a public herald (known as a praeco) who in Ancient Roman times would orate messages aloud for an audience while pantomiming. 

IGN talked to the developers at Ubisoft about Anno 117: Pax Romana, and this praeco will indeed appear in the game. (Side note: I'm amused by this because I'm currently watching the Rome series on HBO for the first time, and I'm always appreciative of the praeco filling everyone in on the events that occur between episodes, like a human "previously on Rome" announcer.)

IGN also reports that you play as a Roman governor dispatched to manage provinces outside of Rome, such as "the Celtic Wetlands of Albion and the traditional Roman heartlands called Latium."

It's been a minute since the last Anno game launched: Anno 1800 was released in 2017. We'll share more information about Anno 117: Pax Romana when we learn more.

The city builder genre has never been healthier, and not only are there more new city builders coming out than ever before, but there's an amazing diversity on display: urban builders, survival builders, strategy builders, roguelikes, puzzle games, and even cozy, no-stress city builders.

Best of all you can play so many of these upcoming city builders this week during Steam Next Fest. In fact, there are so many free city builder demos that you can actually play three new ones every single day for the next week and not run out. Amazing! To help all of you aspiring mayors out, I've collected a heaping truckload of city builder demos below you can play this week. 

Citadelum

Strategy city builder Citadelum takes you back to Ancient Rome to grow your settlement from a tiny camp to a city so resplendent it would please the gods. That's no exaggeration: towering gods will visit your city to walk the streets and help, or perhaps hinder, your efforts.

Airborne Empire

I've already put a few hours into Airbone Empire, so you've got some catching up to do. The sequel to Airborne Kingdom features a bigger world to explore, lots of aerial combat, and so many quests the lead designer jokingly worried the game was almost too big.

Beyond These Stars

Why not build a city in space? Beyond These Stars takes place on the back of a giant space whale slowly swimming through the void. Build supply chains, encounter alien societies, and travel the galaxy while carefully balancing the ecosystem of the gentle giant you're living on.

Kaiserpunk

Kaiserpunk blends city building with grand strategy in an alt-history setting where World War 1 and 2 are basically just one big, unending conflict. Grow and manage your city's production chains and the supply lines that keep your armies stocked during the greater global conflict.

Ark of Charon

Another city builder where you're expanding atop a living creature, the settlement you construct in Ark of Charon serves as a mobile fortress. The walking tree you build on is the sapling of a sacred World Tree which is traveling through a perilous realm. Gather, build, and keep the sapling safe from relentless attacks.

Goblin Camp

You've heard of Dwarf Fortress, but now it's time for the goblins to do some building. Construct and manage a thriving settlement, survive harsh winters, and protect your tribe from disasters both natural and supernatural in Goblin Camp.

Super Fantasy Kingdom

I love how city building can crossover into so many different genres, and that includes roguelikes. Build your city while engaging in some frenetic Vampire Survivors-like action as you battle mobs of monsters swarming your castle in Super Fantasy Kingdom.

More city builder demos

Those seven city builders are just the start, though. There are even more city builder demos to try this week during Steam Next Fest. Lots more! 

Even more city builder demos!

If that's not enough, don't worry, there are somehow still even more city builder demos for you to check out this week:

⛏️ EcoGnomix: Manage a city in the surface world while delving deep for underground resources in this roguelike builder.
💀 Endzone 2: Lead humanity to a new start in the bleak badlands of the post-apocalypse in this challenging survival colony sim.
🎂 Chocolate Factory: Build your own sprawling sweet manufacturing business, like Willy Wonka meets Satisfactory.
🙏 Fata Deum: There's some strong Black & White vibes as you oversee a settlement and compete with other gods for influence.
🧩 Townframe: In an interesting twist on the genre, you recreate cities from people's memories in this chill puzzle game.
🚗 Go-Go Town: You're the mayor of this adorable but rundown little city, charged with giving it new life and a healthy tourist trade.
🧝‍♀️ Elven City Simulator: Build and manage a colony of elves living in a mystical forest while protecting them against the encroaching darkness.

Manor Lords is still in early access, and despite developer Greg "Slavic Magic" Styczeń releasing a massive patch that fixes a great deal of the small issues players have encountered so far, there are still some pretty helpful and wacky mods that can also get the job done. 

If you haven't seen the latest experimental patch yet or just don't want to encounter the King's tax, then this mod can help smooth out ale production for you. It can be difficult to get the balance of crops right to maintain constant ale production, especially since villagers tend to go through the supply so quickly.

This is where the Jesus Ale Tech mod can help you out, as it removes the need for malt to make Ale and so makes production cost nothing. The description gets right to the point: "Oh god, those crazy bastards figured it out. That upgraded church sent Jesus to your people and taught them his ways. Except they learned Ale instead of wine." There may even be a possibility for churches to brew beer in the future, something that many monasteries and churches were well-known for during the Middle Ages. 

But not all the mods need to make your game easier. Some, like Adaptive Bandits, will challenge your skills as Lord. This mod stops bandit raids from being capped at a specific number (which is usually four): "The size and frequency of bandit raids now increase according to your total wealth (regional wealth + treasury) and your total units." But if you're not happy with that number, then you can customise the mod's configuration. It's also recommended to use mods Unlock Militia Limit, Increased Garrison Limit, Mercenaries Pool Fix, and Hildebolt's Vanguard Army (Difficulty mod) alongside it, as they'll make sure it's a fair fight. 

It's pretty amazing that Manor Lords already has 144 mods of varying sizes, considering it's been out for less than a month and is only in early access, but despite the sheer amount out there, most players don't actually use any. 

A discussion on r/ManorLords revealed that most players are going bare bones, at least until Styczeń can work through the initial issues and updates. 85% of people who responded to the question of if anyone is actually using mods said that they weren't. "I'm waiting for the game to be more "finished" before I start slapping mods onto it," one player says. 

And while players have found some funny aesthetic mods, like the one that lets you walk around your villager as Geralt from The Witcher 3 or another that gives Manor Lords a VR mode for you to enjoy, most are just happy to wait for fixes, and play the game like Styczeń intended.