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Best World Building Games

Games often create worlds and spaces for us to explore. Some of these come pre-made, but some allow us to create the world as we play. This maybe by terraforming the landscape with complex tools, or placing bricks and tiles to represent new areas.

World Building games bring us in to the game creation process while still setting boundaries and rules within which our building must take place.

Genre Details

Era: 1989 - 2023
Total Games: 73
Total Likes: 644

Tiny Glade

Release Date: Coming soon

Coming Soon: PC

Skill Rating: 5+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead

Tiny Glade is a simulation game that gets you doodling picturesque castles. More of a toy than a game, you play by placing and moving different elements of your construction. As you do the game magically connects everything together to create beautiful...

My Summer Car

Release Date: 24/10/2016

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 3D First-Person

My Summer Car is a strategy game about doing up a broken-down car over one long summer. It sounds simple, but the level of detail is the attraction here. You start the game with hundreds of loose parts and assemble both your car and engine. Not only do...

Cascadia

Release Date: 01/01/2021

Components: Cards, Placeables, Score Board and Tokens

Cascadia is a collecting world-building game where you create habitats for the wildlife of the Pacific Northwest. You balance building habitats and placing wildlife to score points. It's like Solitaire where you match habitats and wildlife, but with...

Kingdom Builder

Release Date: 01/01/2011

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: Board, Dice, Placeables, Score Board and Tokens

Kingdom Builder is a strategy world-building game where you create a kingdom by placing settlers' houses. You work to build settlements with positions and orientations that meet three specific criteria chosen at the start. This, along with special...

Machi Koro

Release Date: 01/01/2012

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: Cards and Tokens

Machi Koro is a world-building game where you create a thriving city full of different buildings and landmarks. You play by rolling dice, collecting money and buying buildings with unique powers. It is a game of building big and building quickly and...

Miyabi

Release Date: 01/01/2019

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: Placeables, Score Board and Tokens

Miyabi is a world-building brain game where you build elegant Japanese gardens. You place Tetris-shaped garden tiles in your garden matching different flowers, stones and trees with scoring columns. Because the garden tiles are awkward shapes and only...

The Block

Release Date: 16/12/2022

Out Now: Mac and PC

Skill Rating: 3+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Blocks and Grid

The Block is a creative city-building game where you place buildings and trees to make beautiful miniature scenes. Inspired by games like Dorfromantik, there are no time limits, objectives or enemies. The randomly generated...

Meeple Land

Release Date: 01/01/2020

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: Board, Figures, Placeables, Score Board and Tokens

Meeple Land is a world-building game where you race to create the most successful theme park. You place Ride and Concession tiles to attract visitors to your park, but you are also racing other players to collect people from the buses, so can't take too...

Retreat to Enen

Release Date: 05/08/2022

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 13+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Open World

Retreat to Enen is a peaceful survival game where you explore a tropical island and make your life there. With no hostile creatures, you craft a base that must exist alongside nature rather than treating it as an endless resource. The ecological premise...

Disney Dreamlight Valley

Release Date: 06/09/2022

Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Coming Soon: Mac

Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person

Disney Dreamlight Valley is a world building game about restoring a broken Disney world. You interact with famous Disney Characters and decorate the valley with a wide variety of items and famous locations. Like a cross between [link to...

Core Keeper

Release Date: 08/03/2022

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Grid, Open World and Pixels

Core Keeper is a life-simulation strategy game set in a vast cave system where you construct a sprawling base. It crosses the exploration and discovery of Stardew Valley with the camaraderie and adventure of [link to...

Wildmender

Release Date: Coming soon

Coming Soon: PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 3D First-Person, Cartoon, Day and Night, Open World and Weather

Wildmender is a world building game where you unearth the past in the desert. Play involves exploring to discover what has gone before, so you can restore the environment for your future. You work to revive withering plant life, cultivate a garden and...

Dice Legacy

Release Date: 09/09/2021

Out Now: PC and Switch

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Day and Night, Dice, Grid and Weather

Dice Legacy is a city-building simulation game where dice represent your civilians. You roll the dice and then place the skill that lands face-up on the map to gather resources, expand your outpost, or fight hostile invaders in real time. It combines...

Crashlands

Release Date: 20/01/2016, updated in 2018

Out Now: Android, PC, Switch, Xbox One, iOS and iPhone, iPad

Coming Soon: Mac and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Day and Night, Open World and Pixels

Crashlands is a world-building game where you fight monsters, craft resources, and build a base on an alien planet. As you explore, either on your own or with a friend, you encounter locals, complete quests and missions, and meet strange new enemies. It...

Cult Of The Lamb

Release Date: 11/08/2022

Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 14+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Cartoon and Hand-Made

Cult Of The Lamb is a god-sim strategy game, where you are a cult leader rather than an actual god. You play a lamb and start your own cult as you venture out into the world of woodland worshippers. It combines explorative combat like Binding of Isaac...

Fae Farm

Release Date: Coming soon

Coming Soon: Switch

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Cartoon

Fae Farm is a simulation game where you build a farmstead, harvest your crops, and go adventuring. It's an increasingly common set-up for a game. Here though, you use magical spells to grow your plants, defeat enemies and interact with a varied cast of...

Happy City

Release Date: 01/01/2021

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: Cards

Happy City is a city building collecting card game where you buy buildings to attract Residents and increase their Happiness. You do this by purchasing cards that generate short-term Coins as well as add those long-term benefits. As you race to build...

Lightyear Frontier

Release Date: Coming soon

Coming Soon: PC and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 3D First-Person, Day and Night, Open World and Weather

Lightyear Frontier is a peaceful open-world game about farming a new planet. From a first-person perspective, like Slime Rancher, you gather resources and build a working farm to harvest alien crops. It's an unusual game because you are using a Mech...

Oxygen Not Included

Release Date: 30/07/2019

Out Now: Mac and PC

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On, Day and Night and Pixels

Oxygen Not Included is a creative strategy game where you build an underground colony for survivors of a spaceship crash-landing. You need to manage everything, placement and planning for oxygen distribution, energy, plumbing and living arrangements. It...

RoboCo

Release Date: 03/11/2022

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Blocks

RoboCo is a creative physics-based robot-building game where you design and code robots to perform challenging tasks. With the multitude of parts and templates to build from, there are countless ways to approach each situation, be it by creating an...

Tumble Town

Release Date: 01/01/2021

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: Board, Cards and Dice

Tumble Town is a world-building game where you compete to build the best town in the Wild West. You play by rolling dice to match patterns on Construction cards and using those dice to build 3D buildings. It is a town planning game where you need both...

Urbek City Builder

Release Date: 13/07/2022

Out Now: PC, Switch and Xbox One

Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Grid

Urbek City Builder is a city-building and resource management game where you grow, plan and shape a city. It's like the Sim City games, but the twist is that money doesn't feature. Instead, costs come in the impact to natural...

Verdant

Release Date: 01/01/2022

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: Cards and Tokens

Verdant is a puzzle card game where you create cosy interiors with houseplants and other objects. You take turns choosing plants and rooms from the middle and place them in your growing grid of rooms. The novelty is that to grow plants you need to match...

Common'hood

Release Date: 10/11/2022

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person

Common'hood is a squatter simulator where you craft the means to survive in an abandoned factory. You work to create a thriving community by growing food, constructing shelters, workshops, and eventually high-tech manufacturing. It stands out for the...

Everdell

Release Date: 01/01/2018

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: Board, Cards, Figures, Placeables and Tokens

Everdell is a strategy game where you lead a group of animals seeking to build their home in woodland. You play by placing workers, playing cards and collecting resources. It is a game where every tiny decision has a powerful effect on the success (or...

Farworld Pioneers

Release Date: 30/05/2023

Out Now: PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Coming Soon: PS4 and PS5

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On, Open World and Pixels

Farworld Pioneers is a colony-building strategy game where you must adapt to extreme elements, grow self-sufficient communities and deal with aliens. It's a game with simple visuals but surprisingly open play, as you collect resources, develop...

Islands & Trains

Release Date: Coming soon

Coming Soon: PC

Skill Rating: 4+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Blocks and Hand-Made

Islands & Trains is a world building game where you place landscape, buildings, bridges, tracks and trains for no other purpose than to make satisfying vignettes. Inspired by games like Townscaper and Dorfromantik you play at your own pace, clicking to...

Land Above Sea Below

Release Date: Coming soon

Coming Soon: PC

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Blocks

Land Above Sea Below is a calm landscape-building puzzle game where you raise an island out of the sea to keep the flora and fauna above water. You work to increase your island’s area and height by placing tiles one after one.

Lost Seas

Release Date: 01/01/2022

Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds

Components: Placeables

Lost Seas is a world-building game where you create a map of a previously unexplored ocean. You play by selecting and placing Ocean tiles into a 4-by-4 grid. It is a game about balancing ambition with possibility, as you aim for the highest scoring, yet...

Manor Lords

Release Date: Coming soon

Coming Soon: PC

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Day and Night and Open World

Manor Lords is a medieval city-building strategy game with a focus on visual and simulated realism. You grow your settlement, manage its politics and relations with other kingdoms, and fight in real-time battles, all while gathering resources and...

Dinkum

Release Date: 14/07/2022

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds

Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon

Dinkum is a town and life simulator game set in a fantasy Australia. Your main goal is to build a town on an island populated by animals and plants to attract townsfolk and businesses. It's like Animal Crossing but with more multiplayer and a greater...

Guild of Dungeoneering

Release Date: 14/07/2015, updated in 2022

Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, Switch and iOS

Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Cards, Grid and Hand-Made

Guild of Dungeoneering is a humorous dungeon exploration adventure, but instead of controlling the heroes, you build the dungeon. You play cards to create rooms and place monsters, traps, and shiny loot to lure the hero where you want them to go. The...

Heliopedia

Heliopedia (Sokpop)

Release Date: 12/10/2021

Out Now: Mac and PC

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead and Pixels

Heliopedia is a world-building game where you create and manage tiny planets. You play by exploring a solar system, collecting elements and combining them together to create new discoveries. It is an exploration game where the joy in in experimenting...

Imagine Earth

Release Date: 25/05/2021, updated in 2021

Out Now: PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S

Coming Soon: PS4 and PS5

Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead

Imagine Earth is a simulation strategy where you manage space colonies for a huge corporation. You gather resources, manage your finances, shape the planets and expand your cities while fending off rival companies and alien invaders. It stands out for...

Pan'orama

Release Date: 09/05/2023

Out Now: PC

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Cartoon and Grid

Pan'orama is a simulation-building game where you place tiles to score points and lay out an interconnected tapestry world. Play involves deciding where to place each of your tiles to match adjacent land and score the most. It takes the elegant puzzle...

Sprawlopolis

Release Date: 01/01/2018, updated in 2021

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: Cards

Sprawlopolis is a game where you work together to build a new city by placing cards. It's a tiny game comprising just 18 cards but creates endless city-building challenges where you have to balance costly roads and point-scoring neighbourhoods. This...

Takenoko

Release Date: 01/01/2011

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: Cards, Dice, Figures, Placeables and Tokens

Takenoko is a world-building game where you cultivate a bamboo garden for a Japanese Emperor. You play by placing Garden tiles, adding Irrigation pieces and making Bamboo stacks grow. It's a competitive gardening game where you battle other gardeners as...

The Last Night

Release Date: Coming soon

Coming Soon: Mac, PC and Xbox Series X|S

Skill Rating: 12+ year-olds

Components: 2D Side-On and Pixels

The Last Night is a narrative game set in a neon-bathed, hyper-advanced future where you are a second-class citizen wrestling with your place in the world. As you traverse the Blade-Runner-style city districts, you talk with characters, evade constant...

My City

Release Date: 01/01/2020

Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds

Components: Board, Cards, Placeables and Tokens

My City is a world-building game where players compete to create the highest-scoring city by placing Tetris-shaped buildings on their map. However, it's a Legacy game which means the board and rules change as you play through 24 rounds over a number of...

Townscaper

Release Date: 30/06/2020, updated in 2021

Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, Switch, Web, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and iOS

Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds

Components: 2D Overhead, Blocks and Hand-Made

Townscaper is a creative town-building game where you pick colours from the range available and click to put down a house in the sea. As you continue to add houses of different colours the game automatically orientates the architecture for you.

Curated lists:
Game genre:
Style of Play:
Components:

How long to play:
User-generated content:	No
Accessibility features:	Yes

Controls
Gamepad:
Mouse And Keyboard:
Touchscreen:
Motion:	Motion Aiming Motion Pointing Motion Tilting Motion Gesture Motion Camera
Remap Controls:
Button Combinations:	Holding Down Buttons Optional Rapid Repeated Pressing Optional No Simultaneous Buttons
Controller Vibration:
Sensitivity:

Getting Started
Onboarding Before Play:
Assistance Getting Starting:	Tutorials Practice Area View Control Mapping Assistance With Controls Reaction-Time Not Critical Low Pressure Adjust Speed No Jump Scares
Assistance For Progressing:	Guaranteed Progress With God Mode Bank Progress With Frequent Checkpoints Assisted Progress With Boosts Assisted Progress With Hints Assisted Recall for Characters Assisted Recall for Narrative and Dialogue Save Progress Anytime

Reading
Reading Level:
Text Visibility:	Large Clear Text High Contrast Text
Subtitles:
Captions:
Voice Acted:

Navigation
Clarity:
Head-Up Display:
Menu Navigation:

Visual
Contrast:
Interactive Elements:
Visual Distractions:
Audio Cues for Visual Events:
Narration for Visual Elements:
	Motion Sickness Friendly
Colour Options:
Play Without Sight:
Violence:

Audio
	Balance Audio Levels
Audio Events:
	Play Without Hearing

Communication
Player-to-Player Online Communication:
Online Communication Assistance:

Difficulty
Difficulty Options:	Simple and Full Version No Memorisation Advantage No Hidden Information No Deceit Advantage No Colour Advantage No Mathematics Advantage No Weighing Decisions

Getting Started
Assistance Getting Started:	Clear Manual Electronic Version of Manual Electronic Version of Manual for Screen Readers Getting Started Video Digital Version Reference Aid
Assistance Progressing:	Play Order Tokens (Or play order doesn’t change) Reaction-Time Not Critical Low Pressure Low Impact Catch Up Rule

Reading
Reading Level:
Necessary Text Visibility:	Large Clear Text on Board (Or no text required) Large Clear Text on Cards (Or no text required) High Contrast Text (Or no text required) QR Code For Text (Or no text required) Primary and Secondary Text Distinguishable (Or no text required) Information Orientation Clear Icons

Physical
Pieces:	Components are Distinguishable by Touch Components are Replaceable No Non-Standard Dice (Or No Dice) No Tiny Pieces No Paper Money No Sprawl
Cards:	Large Card Size Standard Card Shape Limited Hand Management No Excessive Card Shuffling No Right-Handed Advantage
Placement:	No Unbound Placement Player Components Not Shared No Fiddly Placement Easily Verbalised Actions

Visual
Printed Visibility:	Colour Blind Friendly Design Double-Coding Colour High Contrast Colours
Component Identifiability:	Outline Key Elements No Busy Backgrounds Easily Verbalised Game State No Close Inspection Disadvantage Playable Without Sight

Audio
Communication:	Audio Cues Mirrored Visually (Or no critical audio signals) No Pressured Reveals No Pressured Communication Playable Without Hearing

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Best World Building Games

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