Cities: Skylines
There are city-builders, and then there’s Cities: Skylines, a city-building game so good it’s favored by actual urban planners and transit experts. Instead of placing individual buildings, you zone swathes of your city as residential, industrial, retail, or corporate districts. Your citizens will do all the building. (This makes sense: In real-world cities, the mayor hardly ever deigns to get their hands dirty.) You do have some creative leeway, of course, though your efforts are focused on improving the city in tangible ways: constructing transit, switching to green energy power sources, and setting aside enough funds to construct a bike lane on every road. Right? Right???
Rough Average Playtime: Up to 128 hours
