City Building Games For Mac

Unfortunately in recent years a number of great games for Mac have declined because many are no longer supported. Every new version of macOS tends to break a few games, but macOS Catalina in 2019 meant that lot of games that used 32-bit code were no longer Mac compatible.

City Building Games For Mac

At the same time that Apple went 64-bit only it also introduced Metal for 3D graphics, which left a lot of games developers with a decision: make new Mac versions of their games or stop making them. Unfortunately many chose the latter.

Below you will find what we believe are the greatest Mac games out there, together with links to the Mac App Store, Steam and other reputable vendors, so you can buy them right away. These are the very best games for Mac. They are in alphabetical order, not in order of preference.

City life isn't always a walk in the park (unless you're actually walking through a park, that is). It's noisy, crowded, and commutes can be frustrating. If only there was a way to design the perfect city to end all your urban woes...

Updated January 1, 2023 by Ryan Bamsey: City builders are extremely satisfying games. Seeing a settlement that you built from the ground up, especially in games where you start with almost nothing, is a wonderful achievement and fills you with great fuzzy feelings. We've added some more of our favorites to this list to keep you busy for many more hundreds of hours.

As you'd imagine, water plays a very important part of the game, and this is one of the ways that Timberborn sets itself apart from its compatriots on the city builder scene. The game is currently in Early Access, but enjoys a dedicated fanbase and oodles of positive reviews.

The Architect: Paris is a very different type of city builder, but it'll appeal to those detail-oriented and aesthetic-obsessed gamers out there. This game has you customizing and designing buildings down to the minutiae, from heights to awnings and foliage.

In reality, The Architect: Paris is more a city designer game than a city builder, but it offers a unique take on the genre. It encourages creative thinking and perfectionism, and can end up stealing hours of your time.

Cities XL deserves a spot on this list alone for how ambitious it was back at the time it was released. On the surface, it appeared to be a simple city-building game but it had an online multiplayer component which was interesting, to say the least. Cities XL also allowed players to interact with one another in a persistent planet. Each city belongs to a player and each player can even trade with others, basically running a simulated world.

Sadly this online service was closed several months later and Cities XL became just a single-player game instead of an MMO based around city-building. Even so, it was a big deal back in its time and was one of the best city-building games back then before SimCity and Cities: Skylines improved on the 3D city-builder formula.

Roguelikes are very popular a the moment, getting blended with every other genre you can think of. Against the Storm blends roguelike progression into the city builder genre, and adds a dash of fantasy in for good measure.

This game is incredibly compelling - turning a city builder into a 'just one more game' experience works incredibly well, and the randomized nature of the game means you won't get bored easily. It feels like a well-rounded, full experience, despite still being in Early Access.

Kingdoms Reborn is a city builder that mostly revolves around resource management and the betterment of your residents' lives. You're responsible for choosing their location, providing them with food and luxuries, and expanding your territory to attract more people.

If incredibly complex colony simulators are what you enjoy, Songs of Syx might scratch the eternal itch. Less a city builder and more a city-state builder, Songs of Syx lets you dive into the minutiae of your residents' lives and encourages micromanagement.

Going Medieval is a colony sim game that follows a small group of people who find themselves without a home thanks to the Black Death. You'll start out with a handful of raw material and eventually work your way towards building a whole settlement.

While the game is still in Early Access, Going Medieval boasts a great deal of content, consistent updates, and the capability to pull of some really impressive building projects, if you have the time and patience to pursue such a thing.

While Townscaper isn't a city builder in the traditional sense, there is no doubt that the whole purpose of this game is to build a settlement. You have many options for colors and styles, and it's a very calming experience overall.

Townscaper has come into its own as a tool for those who wish to use their manufactured towns as set pieces in their tabletop games. It lets you make a town exactly as you need it in exactly the configurations you need.

The SimCity franchise has been around a long time. The first entry in the series dates back almost 30 years. It is essentially the grandfather of all city-building games and paved the way (no pun intended) for many games to come. These titles are still relevant in the gaming sphere, extending from PC and consoles to find a new home on mobile devices.

Medieval Dynasty is an odd one where rather than being some omniscient figure dictating where buildings are built and what your residents do, you are instead just some guy who dictates where buildings are built and what your residents do.

While this title is currently in Early Access, Foundation is a very promising medieval-era city builder from Polymorph Games who proudly advertise their game's lack of a grid and focus on the procedural nature of settlement building.

If your greatest goal in life is to gain favor with a Nordic God and earn your place in Valhalla, have we got a game for you! Valhalla Hills is a throwback to the popular Settlers games in which players will build settlements in an attempt to earn favor with Odin. If you're looking for a more laid-back city-building experience, this is one we highly recommend.

Urban Empire is a city-building sim that takes a slightly different approach. Rather than focusing on the building aspect, Urban Empire tasks you with furthering your civilization through diplomacy. You spend the bulk of your time competing for votes and favor among your citizen.

Your job as overseer is to ensure the survival of your citizens. This involves mining minerals for resources, building hospitals, and maintaining order. Once your city is stable, the game then introduces bigger goals to entice you further. This may include large-scale military operations or exploration missions.

The Settlers have always been one of the longest-running hybrid video games in modern history and it oddly combines city-building with real-time strategy (RTS) and many other elements from other genres. This depends on which Settler game we're talking about but The Settlers: Paths to a Kingdom is one of the rare gems in the franchise.

It takes place in a medieval world, making it a unique title in this list as well for its ingenuity alone. It borrows mechanics from Civilization games where you get to pick a leader or faction and build your mere plot of land into your own empire through military actions, development, and many more aspects not present in other city builders.

Banished is one of the most unique takes on the city-building formula for this list since it delves into a setting that's practically unexplored in its genre: medieval era. In that regard, you control a group of exiled travelers in Banished whereupon you're forced to build your village and eventually city from scratch after being banished by a feudal lord.

This also makes Banished a survival title on top of a city-builder-- something you don't usually experience in city-builder games. The game even makes it so that your primary resource is townspeople who get old, get sick, and even die, making managing them an important element of this game. It's worth playing alone for its unique take.

Continuing with our space theme, we have Madruga Works' Planet Base. All the usual suspects are here: base building, resource management, and citizen satisfaction. Where Planet Base sets itself apart is its varying types of planets.

Brought up on mascot platformers and role-playing games from Japan, Ryan has been passionate about gaming for over two decades. As an Evergreen Editor, he gets to blend his love for writing with a lifelong hobby.When he's not working or gaming, he can usually be found baking, reading about pirates, or watching classic sitcoms. He also loves manta rays and has a master's degree in clinical psychology that he never intends to use.

The previous games in the Civilization series have all followed the same basic pattern, putting you in control of a group of primitive settlers who fight and trade their way to world domination before eventually developing rocket ships and advanced technologies that allow them to reach for the stars.

The basic mechanics of Beyond Earth will be familiar to anyone that has played previous Civ games, but the space colonisation theme gives the game a different feel and introduces new elements that will provide plenty of challenges for strategy fans.

After its recent detour into the future-fantasy of Warhammer, the Total War series of strategy games returns to its historical roots for Three Kingdoms. Set in China around the year 200AD, the game focuses on the mighty Han Empire that now faces collapse after ruling the country for almost 400 years.

With an interface similar to SimCity, The Tower swapped residential blocks for condominiums and hotel suites; commercial zones for offices, restaurants, and shops; and industry for parking, medical centers, housekeeping and laundry facilities, recycling facilities, and the like. In place of roads and rail, it had stairs, escalators, and elevators. The goal was to build a hundred-floor tower with a five-star rating. To get there, the player divided her time between expanding the tower, managing elevator traffic and capacity, monitoring the happiness of tenants (their silhouettes turned increasingly red as their happiness decreased), and handling business affairs such as number of staff and cost of a room, office, or condo.