Colony management games

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Browse All Time Most Popular. Showing 1 - 15 of 73 results. Theme Hospital might be the first popular management game to dwell on the dark side of profiteering, but Prison Architect is an even darker proposition. Can you keep your inmates happy? Can you make a profit? How important is it to process death row residents efficiently? What happens when a riot breaks out? The brilliance of Introversion's game is in its recognition that a prison is a series of systems - of housing and treatment, of security and recreation - and then in its application of sturdy simulations to each of those systems.

Like the best management games, it allows you to create a smoothly running machine, but it also embraces chaos and roleplaying. During the most intricate planning, you can forget what the theme implies about the resources you're processing, but Prison Architect is only ever a moment away from reminding you of the humanity within the machine.

Honestly, throw a rock in the air and just play whichever Tropico game it lands on - they're all a solid good time and they're all based around the exact same concept: you're the comedy dictator of an initially poor island nation, attempting to transform it into a land of tourist'n'trade riches while ruling with an at least partially iron fist. A great many of the complexities of, say, a Sim City are discarded - there's no real worrying about powerlines or water supplies, and instead you get on with the business of plopping down buildings, with the twin goals of making it all look lively and attractive and generating ever-more filthy lucre.

This is more of a toy box to rummage in than it is a strategic puzzle, but it has an extra layer of mild moral dilemmas that keep you hooked. For instance, the exile or death of troublemakers, bribing protesters, ignoring environmental concerns, rigging elections or cramming people into dangerous housing.

Or you could stay the course, do the right thing and hope that it will all come good in the end. Tropico 6 also finally adds some much-needed spice to this most conservative of management series by stretching out your latest empire across an entire archipelago of islands, switching your traditional goal of expansion for expansion's sake to something you're actively striving towards.

It's a small change, sure, but as that old saying goes, even the smallest change can make a profound difference. Banished is a different sort of a management game.

At first glance, it looks a lot like a Settlers or Anno - good-natured, brakes-on building and tree-chopping, enjoying the gradual and all-but-inevitable expansion from scruffy one-horse town to bustling old world metropolis. But no. Banished is about scratching out a rudimentary life in the dirt and cold, and maintaining that life even as the elements turn against you - striving to subsist rather than to explode into glory.

If approached wanting a cheery city-builder, you're going to have a horrible time. If approached as a sterling test of planning and resource management, in which failing to get it right means great suffering and even death for the handful of people in your charge, it's going to keep you very busy, challenged and, ultimately, feeling far prouder of yourself than most anything else in this list could hope to manage. It's cruel, but it makes the things we take for granted in other management games feel like titanic accomplishments.

Zeus: Master of Olympus might be as old as its Ancient Greek hills, but this 2D, historical city builder continues to hit the sweet spot of complexity, accessibly, prettiness and sheer charm.

There is war if you want it, but really this is a game about making cheese. Also wool, olive oil and theatre. An artisanal colony all of your own. Just watch out for wolves. And there are puns. Lots of Ancient Greek puns. You'll want the player-made resolution and widescreen fixes if you're planning on playing it today, but it remains an absolute delight. Sure, it's free of the strife and toil of ancient life, in favour of a colourfully genteel take on the pre-tech era, but it just gets on with being the very best pure town-builder it can, those nerve-calming loops of gentle expansion and efficiency-pursuit.

Complex but approachable, Zeus is designed to be something you lose yourself in. Management games have nobly struck off in so many new directions now, but Zeus' take on their economy'n'craft core might just have never been bettered. The true star of the show, though, is its Steam Workshop support, where you can import or upload remarkable and terrible constructions. People have built some jaw-dropping stuff in Planet Coaster, and this age of massive monitors means that riding them is a genuine thrill.

Even if you're not into sharing with or borrowing from the wider world, Planet Coaster's focus is much more on building stuff yourself than it is plopping down prefabs.

This is the designer's management game, not the accountant's management game. Its construction tools are delightfully accessible, and you'll be able to coax meaningful results out of them very quickly indeed. Keeping your guests happy and the coffers overflowing is still a fundamental part of the game, though, and you'll need all the ancillary theme park money-rinsers, such as cafes and gift shops too.

After all, if you build it, they will come. Where can I buy it: Steam , Humble. Most management games are secretly puzzle games too: figuring out how to fit all these pieces into this finite space, and how to get x resource to y place as efficiently as possible.

Factorio takes this idea and runs with it to its natural extreme: impossibly dense, maze-like conveyor belt constructions shuffling massive networks of production back and forth between endless auto-factories, making this to make that to make this to make that, loop upon loop upon loop upon loop. To gaze upon a late-game Factorio screenshot without ever having played the game yourself is to gaze into the face of madness itself. But Factorio's greatest accomplishment is how quickly that obscene mountain of mechanised noodles makes sense once you've put a couple of hours into it.

From the humble starting point of a single conveyor belt forlornly shifting resources to the next machine, a portal of possibilities opens up - if I do that, then this , but I'll need to link it to that , but oh that will need one of those and then, well, bang goes your life. Factorio is an achievement as frightening as it is remarkable: the mind that was able to design this game surely transcends humanity as we know it.

Two Point Hospital is a hectic hospital management sim, but it's immensely satisfying at the same time. When you finally get a brief window of respite, you expand, create new problems, compensate for those problems, and are able to enjoy watching the machine operate as smoothly as it's ever going to.

Then it will throw a helicopter full of patients convinced they're Freddie Mercury at you, and suddenly the game's jaunty radio jazz transforms into a mocking dirge that guffaws at your efforts to maintain control. Oxygen Not Included is often praised for its difficulty and its production management systems, with it earning a few comparisons to Dwarf Fortress.

Much like in other colony simulators, death is something that's both inevitable and part of the experience. All of this combined make Oxygen Not Included a must-play for colony simulator fans.

Most colony simulators have some darkness to them, as many of the player's decisions have the potential to walk a fine moral line. Frostpunk takes these moral decisions and puts them at the center of its gameplay, which is what one might expect from the developers of This War of Mine. The dark tone and setting are two huge points of praise for the game, with many feeling the tone works well with the genre's gameplay. In Frostpunk, players must keep the last bastion of humanity alive in a world that's been completely frozen over.

The Steam page describes the game as a "society survival game," highlighting that certain decisions will force players to make tough calls.

These choices put morality up against efficiency, the latter being a core gameplay mechanic of colony simulator games. It's a different kind of experience from the other games on this list, one that's uniquely challenging and thought-provoking. All are beautifully animated and will keep you on your toes as you strive to keep them and your guests alive.

It may be a few years old, but this is still the reigning champion of city builders after the SimCity series fell into disrepair. The basic format of creating residential, industrial, and commercial zones and building roads and providing services will be familiar to SimCity players, but some intriguing city management options pop up as your city grows.

Distilling the satisfying challenge of gathering resources and automating processes to turn them into increasingly complex machines, Factorio is frighteningly addictive. The drive to constantly research and refine as you optimize your factory and balance defenses to cope with increasingly tough aliens is incredibly engrossing.

The best games always inspire others, and Factorio fans must also try Dyson Sphere Program , an early-access game that takes factory building interstellar. Beavers have inherited the earth, and Timberborn tasks you with organizing them to construct a smoothly running colony.

The core game is familiar management fare: Collect resources, build a functioning village, research and unlock new buildings, and ensure you have enough food and water for your growing population. Droughts of random length frequently occur to provide some challenge.

Luckily, beavers love to build dams. What you do get is a fun combination of cute beavers, vertical colony construction, and gentle engineering puzzles. This gorgeously detailed city-builder throws you into 19th-century Europe and challenges you to start a village and gradually grow it to become a metropolis. To do this, you must set sail for the New World and establish colonies capable of delivering the resources you need to foster a thriving economy and drive industrialization. Anno provides a deeply absorbing challenge.

Catering to demanding citizens, finding and securing the right resources, and managing your urban sprawl takes some serious juggling skills. Oxygen Not Included is another great space colony sim. Banished is a smart city builder.

This War of Mine is a bleak survival sim. For a blend of city-building and real-time strategy in a zombie apocalypse, try They Are Billions. Courtesy of Paradox Interactive.

Tropico 6 via Simon Hill.