Games like Cities: Skylines
The three best games after Cities: Skylines are Timberborn (the freshest building since the genre began — vertical, wooden, beaver-run), Against the Storm (city-building with the boredom surgically removed) and Anno 1800 (the beauty and the logistics, industrial-revolution edition). Ten entries ranked below — including the sequel, which is still the skip.
Cities: Skylines earned its decade at the top — 93% positive across 291,000 Steam reviews — by being the sandbox where traffic flow became a hobby. If you are here, you have probably watched one intersection for twenty minutes. The good news: the genre around it got interesting while you were rerouting buses.
The ten entries below are ranked by what they actually ask you to manage — water physics, supply chains, survival, or feelings. One is a deliberate skip, and yes, it is the sequel; the note explains where that stands in 2026.
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How we picked these
- Building as the core pleasure — watching a place grow because of your decisions.
- Systems that push back: traffic, logistics, weather or scarcity.
- Readable simulation — when something breaks, you can find out why.
- Runs well on the hardware people actually have.
- Steam ratings quoted per entry, unflattering ones included.
The list
01 Timberborn
Timberborn is the most original city-builder in years: beavers rebuilding a dried-out world, with real water physics — dams, floods, droughts — and verticality no competitor attempts. 96% positive across 41,000 Steam reviews. The 'one more district' pull of Skylines, plus an actual reason districts matter.
02 Against the Storm
Against the Storm fixes the city-builder's oldest flaw — the aimless late game — by ending the city on purpose: 90-minute settlements, an impatient queen, permanent progress between runs. 94% across 37,000 reviews. The most respectful of your evenings on this list.
03 Anno 1800
Anno 1800 is the beauty-and-logistics pick: island supply chains feeding a metropolis you will screenshot unprompted. Its 81% Steam rating carries launch-era DRM anger; the game underneath is the best Anno ever made, and the one Skylines players bounce into most happily.
04 Frostpunk
Frostpunk is the city-builder as moral pressure: one generator, minus seventy degrees, and laws you sign with your conscience. 93% across 136,000 reviews. Shorter and more authored than Skylines — you finish it changed rather than retired.
05 Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic
Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic is the deep end: a planned economy where every brick arrives by truck you routed, at 91% across 27,000 reviews. Skylines' traffic hobby expanded into an entire ideology. Demands spreadsheet patience; repays it like nothing else in the genre.
06 Transport Fever 2
Transport Fever 2 isolates the part of Skylines you secretly loved most — the networks. Trains, trams, ships and 150 years of routes to perfect, at 90% across 32,000 reviews. Cities grow because your logistics let them, which is the correct power fantasy for a traffic person.
07 Tropico 6
Tropico 6 runs the city with a personality disorder: you are El Presidente, elections are negotiable, and the economy includes bribes. 88% across 29,000 reviews. Lighter simulation than Skylines, far better jokes — the genre's best palate cleanser.
08 Manor Lords
Manor Lords is the prettiest medieval village-builder ever shipped and honest about its state: still in early access, 84% positive across 90,000 reviews, with the organic plot-based building already fully magical. Buy it for what it is today — a gorgeous, calm 20 hours — not the finished epic it may become.
09 Foundation
Foundation commits to the gridless idea completely: no zones, no straight lines, villagers wearing paths into the hillside. 87% positive. Smaller in systems than Skylines and deliberately so — this is the organic-growth pleasure with the stress removed.
SKIP10 Cities: Skylines II
Skip the sequel, still — Cities: Skylines II sits at 56% on Steam years after launch, with performance and simulation depth both short of the original. The first game plus a couple of expansions remains the better city-builder per euro, and everything else on this list is healthier than waiting. If a true turnaround lands, this note goes first.
Similar but different
Mini Motorways
Mini Motorways is the Skylines traffic hobby reduced to its essence: draw roads, watch flow, fail beautifully in twenty minutes. 96% across 24,000 reviews. Dangerous at bedtime.
Dorfromantik
Dorfromantik is building with the simulation removed entirely — hexes, hills and a quiet score counter. 96% positive. For the evening you want to make a place, not manage one.
Factorio
Factorio is where logistics people eventually end up: the city is a machine and you are its nervous system. 98% across 233,000 reviews. See our games-like-Factorio page before entering; time behaves differently in there.
FAQ
Is Cities: Skylines II fixed yet?
Improved, not redeemed — 56% on Steam in 2026 tells you the crowd's verdict after years of patches. Performance is better than launch; the simulation still underdelivers. The original remains the safer purchase.
What is the best modern alternative for pure city-building?
Timberborn, and it is not close — real water physics and vertical building make it the first builder in years that does not feel like a Skylines mod. Foundation if you want calmer; Anno 1800 if you want grander.
I want something I can finish. City builders never end.
That is Against the Storm's entire design: cities that conclude in an evening with progress that persists. Frostpunk also ends — memorably. Both cure the 'abandoned save at 40k population' guilt.
Do any of these run on a weak laptop?
Mini Motorways and Dorfromantik run on nearly anything, and Foundation is modest. Timberborn is reasonable at small scale. Workers & Resources and Anno 1800 want real hardware once cities grow — check our low-end PC list for the wider answer.
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