The Best Builders, Your Opinion

[LordMortis]

Almost any builder will do. Turn based, real time, survival, kingdom, world, small group.

No FPS style, and I guess no lone wolf, in general, which then also rules out automation sims, which I enjoy but I don't think of in the same way.

I'm getting the hankering to play a game in small bouts after I do my morning exercise (which at this point is still just walking for about an hour, weather permitting).

I'm looking through my library and I wonder if anything will grab me more than RimWorld. I own RimWorld vanilla but am debating buying all DLC and staring up a new colony but I'm cheap and I don't want to drop that money for nothing now that I am on a very fixed income. I tried Going Medieval some time ago but all it did was make me want to play RimWorld again.

Foundation has a lot I really enjoy but I don't think it's done cooking yet. It could be a grand kingdom builder when it is done but right now it's still more a game about building and aesthetic than it is building a kingdom and doesn't grab me.

Going way back, the sorts of builders that led me to where I am started with SimCity and Populous and then Children on the Nile and Tropico 2 (builder light, but so fun to raid and build, repeat...) were the next ones to get me and then it was Banished, RimWorld, and Surviving Mars and to a lesser extent Oxygen Not Included (which let me down at "end game".

I can give reviews but I'm more interested in your thoughts than my own. This is where I miss Lorini.

Free free to show your love for automation and FPS style builders. I'll just disregard them as a matter of personal preference.

[Fardaza]

Wish I could help, but I'm not much of a builder fan. I do play Minecraft on my XBox 360. That's about it though.

[AWS260]

I'm not sure what counts as a "builder," but the game in which I most enjoy building things is Planet Coaster.

[YellowKing]

I'm not sure if it leans too heavily in the strategy direction, but I've really enjoyed JURASSIC WORLD EVOLUTION. The sequel just hit Xbox Game Pass for console and PC, so I'm really looking forward to trying it out this weekend.

[Chraolic]

Anno 1800 is really good.

[LordMortis]

Wow. You'd think Jurassic World pricing would drop with the sequel being out. You'd be absolutely wrong. I'd pick up some of the DLC and pick up the game again on the cheap to see what the DLC adds, but nope.

[hitbyambulance]

Minecraft

+1

[Blackhawk]

Wow. You'd think Jurassic World pricing would drop with the sequel being out. You'd be absolutely wrong. I'd pick up some of the DLC and pick up the game again on the cheap to see what the DLC adds, but nope.

Check Humble?

[Carpet_pissr]

Epic gives Jurassic World away for free occasionally. I played it just a bit and came away impressed.

I’ll second Anno 1800 but really any game in that series is amazing IMO (just make sure you get the remasters).

The remastered version of Pharoah is dropping soon I think.

[Anonymous Bosch]

Almost any builder will do. Turn based, real time, survival, kingdom, world, small group.

If you can handle the vicissitudes of RNG, Dice Legacy may well scratch you where you itch:

[naednek]

not a true builder, but i've been playing transporation fever 2 the last week. Weak ass tutorial but once you figure things out it's fun

[jztemple2]

I liked Nebuchadnezzar, which is on sale for 35% off for the next few days.

[Victoria Raverna]

This count as a builder game?

[Daehawk]

Cities Skylines

[Dave Allen]

Where else can you build a tower so tall it will touch outer space and then take your spaceship out to admire it?

[jztemple2]

I've also enjoyed Timberborn, a different take on city/colony builders that's got very interesting water mechanics. It's in Early Access but has pretty complete gameplay with just some additional features like different beaver cultural groups being added.

[Zarathud]

Rim World is my favorite.

[dbt1949]

Townsmen followed by Simcity 3000.

[jztemple2]

How could I have forgotten Cities: Skylines?

[jztemple2]

If you're looking for a different type of builder, I can recommend Prison Architect. It's a game with a lot of depth and interesting gameplay. I have almost a hundred hours on it and would probably have much more except I rather burned myself out when it was in Early, Early Access and lost interest by the time the first DLCs were coming out.



And speaking of different sorts of builders, there's also Evil Genius 2: World Domination.

[jztemple2]

And finally, for the more different type of builder (but still a builder), there's Two Point Hospital.

[LordMortis]

How could I have forgotten Cities: Skylines?

City skylines was one of the games that was "well let's just get to this point and plunk this building down" and then add aesthetics. I enjoyed it well enough to get to point X and then I was done.

Evil Genius 2: World Domination.

When last I played it wasn't done cooking and yet they were releasing DLC on schedule rather than fixing the game. My biggest disappointment was that I played it too much to return before I released the worldview part of the game was meaningless which made the tactical game all but meaningless as well.


(This is not me poopooing your reviews generally, these are just two specific games I own and paid for and feel like if I had a good enough featured demo, I'd have never bought the game unlike PA which I bought early access and dont regret at all even if I'll likely never go back to it)

[jztemple2]

(This is not me poopooing your reviews generally, these are just two specific games I own and paid for and feel like if I had a good enough featured demo, I'd have never bought the game unlike PA which I bought early access and dont regret at all even if I'll likely never go back to it)

I actually somewhat agree with your evaluations, but I figured they would be worth mentioning in case you hadn't tried them.

[Carpet_pissr]

And finally, for the more different type of builder (but still a builder), there's Two Point Hospital.

Damn I love that game. Never thought of it as a builder, but it really is if you break it down to the basics.

It’s similar to Rollercoaster Tycoon in that it mixes building with growth management.

[Gryndyl]

I'm not sure if it leans too heavily in the strategy direction, but I've really enjoyed JURASSIC WORLD EVOLUTION. The sequel just hit Xbox Game Pass for console and PC, so I'm really looking forward to trying it out this weekend.

I tried it out last night and ended up rage-uninstalling during the 2nd campaign mission so I'm curious if you have a different experience.

[LordMortis]

I'm not sure if it leans too heavily in the strategy direction, but I've really enjoyed JURASSIC WORLD EVOLUTION. The sequel just hit Xbox Game Pass for console and PC, so I'm really looking forward to trying it out this weekend.

I tried it out last night and ended up rage-uninstalling during the 2nd campaign mission so I'm curious if you have a different experience.

Hmm. I really liked it. I liked it enough to get a couple of the DLC on sale. I'm trying to remember would have been enraging and not coming up with anything. I especially like when you got to carve out a big enough park to run a sky monorail though the herds of giant herbovores. It ultimately gets a bit paint my numbers so I've not gotten back to it but if the DLC ever goes on deep discount I'm apt to pick it up the packs I'm missing and pick up the game again.

[stessier]

Factorio? Or is that too lone wolf?

[LordMortis]

Factorio? Or is that too lone wolf?

It's too lone wolf in that I enjoy automation but it's not something I can just pick up and put down and pick and put down. It's something I mull over long periods of time to try and optimize. So for me automation games get their own niche and are not what I'm looking for right now. I like to think that I can survey a builder and the pick up and work on a town, kingdom, world, dungeon, island, prison, colony, whatever for twenty minutes and then set it back down. For me, automation games are their own grab bag.

[Gryndyl]

I'm not sure if it leans too heavily in the strategy direction, but I've really enjoyed JURASSIC WORLD EVOLUTION. The sequel just hit Xbox Game Pass for console and PC, so I'm really looking forward to trying it out this weekend.

I tried it out last night and ended up rage-uninstalling during the 2nd campaign mission so I'm curious if you have a different experience.

Hmm. I really liked it. I liked it enough to get a couple of the DLC on sale. I'm trying to remember would have been enraging and not coming up with anything. I especially like when you got to carve out a big enough park to run a sky monorail though the herds of giant herbovores. It ultimately gets a bit paint my numbers so I've not gotten back to it but if the DLC ever goes on deep discount I'm apt to pick it up the packs I'm missing and pick up the game again.

Just to be clear on the specifics, I'm talking about the sequel that dropped on gamepass last night, not the original. Very minor spoilers follow.

The second campaign mission asks you to capture a couple of big carnivores and put them in an enclosure. However, they only let you build small electric fences, or the option to select a different fence type was so buried in the UI that I was unable to find it. The dinos just walked up, gave the fence a kick to knock it over and then ran amuck. I did manage to scan one, which was the only way I could find to determine what their actual needs were, rather than, y'know, being able to look that type of info up in advance because I'm supposed to be a government agency that specializes in dealing with dinosaurs. Again, maybe I did have this info somewhere but it was buried and I was unable to find it. Armed with my scan info I tried again. After determining that the way to get a better fence was to research it and that the research facility wasn't available at that point in the campaign I tried pre-building a large enough enclosure with all the amenities, hoping that the dinos would love it so much they wouldn't bother with the fence.

That seemed to work out ok, at least long enough for the objective to complete, so the game then sent me to collect a bigger carnivore. My concern at this point was that once again, I was adding a dinosaur that I didn't know the needs of so I was unable to prepare the enclosure in advance. I just had to hope he was mostly happy with it because if my fence didn't hold against smaller carnivores it certainly wasn't going to be a match for an allosaurus. In order to build an enclosure large enough to keep my prior dinos happy I'd had to use the majority of my allotted build space so I figured, hey, just stick the new big guy in with the other tenants. I obviously wasn't given enough room for him to have his own gigantic enclosure, they must be meant to be together, right? The two smaller carnivores immediately killed him and the mission failed, an outcome which I would have hoped the dino-scientists on my staff might have mentioned earlier.

Reloaded once again and as I was surveying the build area to try and work out how to squeeze in another enclosure, one of the dinosaurs tore down the fence of their new luxury enclosure and began running wild so I watched as he ate a few people and then I uninstalled.

And that's my review of JP Evolution 2.

[YellowKing]

Ugh, sorry that was your experience Gryndyl.

I haven't had time to sit down with it, but I'll report back after I get a chance to try that mission this weekend.

[WYBaugh]

This count as a builder game?

Man I loved this game.

[WYBaugh]

jz, have you looked at One More Island? Was curious about this compared to Nebuchadnezzar

[jztemple2]

jz, have you looked at One More Island? Was curious about this compared to Nebuchadnezzar

I hadn't looked at that game, but when I did I could see that it's not my cup of tea. And it appears not to be very much like Nebuchadnezzar.

[Lordnine]

Maybe try Per Aspera?



I haven't gotten super far in it yet but it is giving me Surviving Mars feels which was my favorite "builder" since Anno 2070. Also, Annoy 2070 if you've never played it and are willing to put up with the Ubisoft launcher.

[The Meal]

For just diddling around without much of any real point (other than, you know, surviving), Rimworld is my go to. For a guy on a budget, I'd say to skip the DLCs (Royalty came out first and it spruced the game up a tad for folks who were used to the vanilla experience, but I basically turn it off for my current playthroughs; Ideology has a ton for experienced players to discover and fiddle with, but its a layer of complexity that newish players wouldn't necessarily find enjoyable). What Rimworld really has going for it is its very capable modding community. If you want to play with spells and elementals, then A Rimworld of Magic is amazing. If you want different combat equipment or to overhaul the GUI, then there are an infinite number of available options (the Steam workshop makes it really easy to find DLC, and the game itself makes it really easy to implement mods on top of mods). I probably have about 50-80 going at once for a "generic" game.

Honestly I felt obligated to pick up the DLCs just based on how much enjoyment I got out the base game (and the modding community).