What are the best building games on PC? Building games are a great way to indulge some architectural creativity, but there are so many great building games on PC to choose from. Thankfully, we have the brick and mortar necessary to put together a list of the best building games on PC with the strongest of foundations.
SimCity sets you as the mayor of a new municipality, with the responsibility of building and maintaining a place where citizens can move to and work and be happy. The first task is to place essentials such as housing, transport links, schools, factories and shops. Play SimCity online! SimCity game description.
From compulsive free-to-plays to fully-fledged triple-A titles, building games allow us to stake our claim on another world and bend it to our will. Whether you need a base to defend against oncoming dinosaurs in Ark: Survival Evolved or are scrabbling together rusted scrap in the post-apocalypse of Fallout 4, there are nearly as many reasons to build as there are building games.
Building games on PC come in all shapes and sizes. Construction in Fortnite Battle Royale is essential for victory, if you know how best to do it. On the other hand, building and Minecraft are inseparable, whether you’re scrabbling together a base to defend, or crafting a creative structure. Whatever kind of building game you’re after, we’ve got the right set of blueprints for you here.
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The best building games are:
Minecraft
Minecraft is the building game that captured the imaginations of millions of gamers worldwide, and established itself as the first game that comes to mind when we think of the best building games. You can even get the game to construct amazing worlds for you with the best Minecraft seeds.
But, if you have been living under a landslide of blocks, Minecraft is a sandbox building game with blocky graphics and an emphasis on creativity. In an almost endless world, you can build impenetrable fortresses and cool Minecraft houses to fend off creatures of the night – not that kind – in survival mode or ramp up the danger in hardcore mode. The possibilities are limitless, and that is before you expand the game with Minecraft mods and Minecraft maps, just in case your creative juices are not quite flowing.
Creative mode is where Minecraft shines as one of the best building games on PC, though. Free from the constraints that face builders of the poxy real world, in creative mode you have access to an unlimited number of blocks and items. With all limits on your creativity lifted, you can have all the fun of making more elaborate creations than you ever could with Lego, without any of the clearing up.
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Ark: Survival Evolved
Where base building is a bit of frivolous fun in other building games, in Ark: Survival Evolved it is all about one thing: cold, hard survival. If you are lucky enough to endure the first few moments amidst some dangerous dinos – as we did for our Ark: Survival Evolved PC review – you are going to need to whip something up sharpish to keep yourself safe. Unless you want to see only your freshly savaged corpse when you log back in.
Related: Here are the best survival games on PC
Yes, when you log out of Ark, your body stays exactly where you left it in a perilous state of purgatory. If you have not used your survival building games know-how to put together a smartly designed base and protect yourself from the elements, prepare to see your progress swiftly eaten up. That counts for your food, farming supplies, and crafting equipment, too.
All bases require some core elements but, other than that, you can make them as ridiculous as you like. You can also get even more creative with the best Ark: Survival Evolved mods. So it is helpful if you opt for a location close to the materials you need. In ascending order of durability these materials are thatch, wood, stone, and metal. Metal, obviously, is going to be the best at staving off any would-be looters.
Rust
Like Ark, this is up there with some of the most punishing survival building games around, so make note of these Rust console commands so you’re not caught short. And, akin to Studio Wildcard’s effort, you start your adventure with nothing, cowering away from other potentially hostile players before you can find two sticks to rub together.
But once you have skilfully scavenged some supplies, you must defend them. First, you need a building plan to create a ‘twig tier’ foundation – there goes your two sticks. This first tier is one of five, with the wood, stone, sheet metal, and armoured tiers increasing your protection from raiding. There are plenty of other ways to buff your base such as locks and strategic wall placement, but be wary that it will decay. Just like everything does in this kind of survival building game.
Satisfactory
Few expected the follow-up from the studio behind Goat Simulator would be an early access building game about colonising a planet by constructing elaborate automated factories. Satisfactory is essentially conveyor belt porn, encouraging you to create increasingly beautiful assembly lines that hug the abstract landscape of the alien world you now call home.
While Satisfactory is a building game at its core, you can also indulge in light combat, explore the terrain with a range of vehicles, and – thanks to four-player multiplayer – tour the genius creations of your best pals. But the best thing about Satisfactory is that you can tour your creations in first-person, marvelling at every automated vehicle, production line, and monolithic processing facility in more detail than is ever afforded by the traditional top-down view.
Fortnite
If you like Minecraft, Fortnite is also one of the best building games you can play. In fact, Epic Games’ founder, Tim Sweeney described it as “Minecraft meets Left 4 Dead.” It is every bit as enticing as that sounds. And that is before we get onto this survival building game’s other form as one of the best battle royale games on PC which you can be triumphant in with our Fortnite tips.
In vanilla Fortnite – which you too can master with our Fortnite Save the World guide – you and three intrepid heroes fight to reclaim your homeland after it has been ravaged by the mysterious darkness known as ‘The Storm’. That’s where the building game element comes in: you will need to construct forts and traps to ward off the remaining monsters.
Building is essential in Battle Royale, too, but this time it is essential in your survival against 99 other players. As you scavenge for gear and attempt to stay within the shrinking safe place known as the ‘Eye of the Storm’, hastily constructing fortresses can be the difference between life and death. Whether you prefer Fortnite vs. PUBG is up to personal taste, but, either way, use our Fortnite building tips to explore the nuances the game has added to this exciting genre. And, with Fortnite Creative mode you can make your own mini games using Epic’s powerful tools, and share them via Fortnite Island codes.
Trove
Trove is a free building game and sandbox MMORPG featuring countless realms and biomes. It is an open-ended adventure from Trion Worlds that lets you build to your heart’s content.
First, you need to get your cornerstone – your home base that you take from world to world – up to scratch. You can craft new weapons, creatures, and environments when you are not tricking out your home with the help of the many Trove mods and Trove console commands.
If you are going to make your cornerstone the envy of all other Trove players, you need resources and loot. Thankfully, procedurally-generated dungeons keep loot collecting a fun experience as you scamper through unique worlds and complete quests with your pals. Trove is one of the best building games on PC to play with friends.
Fallout 4
In previous Fallout games we had to be satisfied with having a great time collecting loot, collecting a cast of colourful companions, and blowing raider brains out with a massive laser. But, in Fallout 4, we have a house building game, too.
Once Preston Garvey has, once again, asked you to liberate an area on behalf of the Home Guard-esque Minutemen, you can start to use the junk burning a hole in your carry weight to give post-apocalyptic Boston a new lick of paint. You can choose prefabricated structures to get your base going tout suite, but the tools you have at your disposal can lead to some quite astonishing Fallout 4 settlements – with the help of some handy Fallout 4 console commands.
As the population of your burgeoning town grows it is easy to ignore the main quest and treat Fallout 4 as a de facto house building game. Inviting wandering entrepreneurs to set up shop and trade in your settlement is one of many perks you have access to as you attract more bodies; you can even set up supply lines between multiple settlements and establish yourself as a post-apocalypse property magnate. If that all sounds a bit overwhelming, have a read of our detailed Fallout 4 guides. But if you’re already a Fallout 4 building expert, check out our Fallout 76 tips to give you a head start on rebuilding the wastes of West Virginia.
The Sims 4
The Sims 4 is a game about taking a bunch of humans and performing horrific experiments on them – or, at least, it is for us once we’re done experimenting with all the Sims 4 sex mods. But, after you are done starving your Sims or maliciously locking them away until they pee their pants, The Sims 4 can be one of the most satisfying house building games on PC.
Perhaps your behaviour towards your much-maligned human pets – and, if you’re a true sadist, your Sims 4 Cats and Dogs, too – are making you feel guilty, so why not treat them to a tastefully designed pad with The Sims 4’s myriad building tools? Enter build mode to create anything from a trendy city pad to a resplendent mansion.
Building in The Sims 4 takes some getting used to, so it might be worth having a pen and paper to hand to properly realise your dream abode/torture chamber. Start simple by keeping your exterior to a square shape before you try something more complex. Once you have chosen a roof you can experiment with room layouts, decor, and furnishings. Then, once you have added a pool and a tricked-out sound system, even the cool kids might stop by.
No Man’s Sky
Once the No Man’s Sky Foundation Update landed, the game transformed into a fully-fledged house building game, in space. No Man’s Sky allowed us to let loose our inner space architect – with help from some No Man’s Sky mods, of course.
Offered in all four game modes, you can now have a single base at any one time, which you can use for farming, storage, healing, shield recharge, and as a home for the NPCs you recruit across the galaxy.
Space is a dangerous place, so you need to ensure your home can support life. Do this by flying over the planet’s surface, using your ship’s scanner from space, or by building a signal booster. Once you have found a planet that can support your task force, you can start using your resources to build a home in a galaxy far, far away. You do not want to get lonely in your space pad, though, so upload your base so it can be discovered by other players. Just make sure you put the hoover round first.
Planet Coaster
Theme parks are, obviously, great fun. We need only to picture Thorpe Park’s Nemesis Inferno for a moment to dampen our pants from nervous excitement. But Planet Coaster is a building game made with the faith that we virtual architects can do better.
Looking at the exquisite and intricate Planet Coaster creations that exist already, that faith seems to have been well placed. Using all the skills at their disposal, we have seen players create wonderful reimaginings of the Millennium Falcon and the Enterprise – surrounded by g-force-boasting shenanigans.
Planet Coaster, along with the original Rollercoaster Tycoon series, make developers Frontier Developments building game stalwarts. With the endless tools that games such as this have to offer, you will be well on the way to producing roller coasters that leave your virtual park attendees shoving their way to the front of the queue.
Cities: Skylines
Certainly one of the best city building games out there, Cities: Skylines will consume the life of any budding mayor. Whether you create a city replete with natural disasters or piles of corpses lining the street, or create a vegan utopia with the Green Cities expansion, you are bound to have fun in this city building game.
Cities: Skylines has all the tools to give building games experts everything they need to create wonderfully intricate cityscapes – and even more if you count the many Cities: Skylines mods. And they have done it without the always-online DRM nonsense of 2013’s SimCity.
Poly Bridge
As much a physics puzzler as it is a bridge building game, Poly Bridge makes the depths of its maths-based mechanics accessible, so you can at least have a decent stab at getting people where they need to go without plunging them into the river below.
Even if at first you do not succeed, the relaxing acoustic soundtrack and bright art style in this bridge building game will make you feel somewhat better about the watery graves you have just made for your poor passengers – as we found in our Poly Bridge review. With 24 challenges in the base version and hundreds more on Steam Workshop, Poly Bridge will keep you entertained for hours.
Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
Real mechanics are liars: cars obviously run by magic and we will not hear anything to the contrary. Don’t tell us that that mind-boggling tangle of pipes, pistons, and cogs is anything other than sheer wizardry.
That said, Car Mechanic Simulator 2018 is a car building game that makes the construction of a vehicle intelligible to non-wizards. Once you’ve got your skills up to snuff, you can expand your vehicle repair empire. Perhaps you’ll even be good enough to repair the cars from the very best racing games.
There’s a reason why Car Mechanic Simulator 2018 is up there with the best car building games: the many, many paint jobs, sprays, and parts can turn your broken old bangers into a sexy, shining racer. What will be the first thing you do once you have a garage packed to the rafters will beautiful cars? Get snap happy in photo mode, of course.
Raft
You’re miles out at sea and all that separates you from a frenzy of sharks are a few slabs of wood. Not great, not terrible. Raft is a building game where crafting a ramshackle pontoon is your best shot at survival. Thanks to a handy hook, you’ll start by pulling in remains of barrels and other flotsam for crafting materials. If you manage to avoid getting guzzled up by a shark, your hodge-podge raft will slowly turn into a floating paradise.
Make shift: the best crafting games you can play on PC
Once you’re up and running, you can go diving for more materials to build your dream floating abode. In terms of what you can create, it may seem standard fare – shelves, rugs, chairs, and all that stuff. It’s the setting, however, and the looming sense of danger that makes it thrilling. Once your makeshift mansion is floating along the sea while the sun sets, you’ll come to admire the shark trophy plastered to your wall.
- More Fortnite:
That’s construction completed on this list of the best building games on PC. Why not check out the best sandbox games if you’re looking for a slightly different type of creative freedom. With that over and done with you can down tools, put your feet up, and relax.
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I’ve spent hours of my life toiling over virtual cities in Maxis’ Sim City series, and it must have rubbed off after all these years. I still enjoy meticulously planning infrastructure, zoning and carefully tweaking finances to this day.
The other day whilst trying to work, I accidentally (oops) went looking for some online heirs to the Sim City throne. Despite simple Flash gamesMUO Games - The Best Websites to Play Flash GamesMUO Games - The Best Websites to Play Flash GamesRead More lacking the depth of even the original Sim City, I guessed there had to be a few decent, free city building games out there.
ElectroCity
A simple turn-based Flash game created by New Zealand energy company Genesis Energy to give players young and old a shot at managing a town or city’s growth and impact. Players must pay close attention to the levels of energy used, sustainability and environmental factors.
Build Your Own City Games
Players are given 151 turns to alter tax rates, build things, destroy things and generally oversee the planning of a city from an environmental point of view. It is up to you to keep your citizens happy, maintain finances and get the highest score possible out of 100 available points.
If you’re seeking inspiration then there’s plenty of completed cities to gawp at, and you can even save your progress and come back to it at a later point. Remember – it’s all about balance.
IBM CityOne
A very in-depth city management game that allows you to choose one of four aspects of city life to manage – energy, water, retail and banking. This game also uses a turn-based system which scores you after each turn made.
There’s a fairly chunky registration form to fill out before you can play (which asks for all sorts of intrusive data) but the game itself functions well, especially if you’re a business-minded individual.
Your city starts off sketchy and greyscale, with colour gradually introduced as you implement much-needed change. At times it plays like a big advert for IBM, but remains enjoyable and looks pretty good to boot. Probably not great on slower PCs, especially those with an aversion to resource-heavy Flash.
City Creator
Not necessarily a simulation or a management game, City Creator simply allows you to do just that – create a sprawling landscape from a set of pre-fabricated buildings and features.
The game features charming pixel art from and an isometric viewpoint, which complements the laid back5 Casual Linux Games You Probably Don't Know About5 Casual Linux Games You Probably Don't Know AboutRead More style of play. Simply drag items from the left hand side of the screen to your city on the right and see what you come up with.
There are 3 building sets to choose from, each with their own unique style. If you register on the site you can save your creations and share them with your friends. If you just want to build a city then City Creator should entertain for a while at least. Be sure to check out their other project Castleford.
Zanpo Virtual Cities
Lovers of MinecraftCreate, Survive & Fight In The Online Game MinecraftCreate, Survive & Fight In The Online Game MinecraftRead More and pixel art rejoice in this Flash block-based city building game. Instead of building preset structures and features Zanpo Virtual Cities allows you to build fairly detailed city blocks using individual building pieces.
Users then vote on the best ones, and they get added to the virtual city. This one strikes me a bit like online Lego, and the emphasis is very much on building and not management.
You’ll need to register to build, or you can simply choose a city from the drop down list and click City View and see what everybody else has been building.
CityVille
I know, I know. You’re sick of FarmVille3 Tips and Tricks to Avoid FarmVille on Facebook3 Tips and Tricks to Avoid FarmVille on FacebookRead More, so why on earth do you want to hear about CityVille? Well considering there’s already more than 20 million people playing it I figured it would be an injustice to not include it on the list.
If you’re fine with yet another application accessing all your personal data and posting whatever it feels like to your wall then CityVille might appeal. The game is a casual Sim City-esque sim in which you take a humble town and turn it into a sprawling metropolis.
Graphically the game looks awesome, and there’s the added social interactions provided by the Facebook platform. If only it didn’t clog up your feeds, eh?
There are a few more Facebook games, that I’ve left out (it’s quite a saturated market, and Facebook isn’t for everyone6 Reasons I Hate Facebook6 Reasons I Hate FacebookRead More). If you’re interested, they were:
City Building Games Free Pc
Have you found any other cool city building games? Do you prefer building or managing? Let us know in the comments!
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- It is easy to play Pixel Gun 3D online.
- Dress up games princess jasmine. I found a cool simple simulation game, called 3d.cities
( http://lo-th.github.io/3d.city/index.html )Its a simple 3D game, runs in the browser, and has the basics of residential,comercial and industrial zone, put keeps taxes, pollution and other citizen needs in mind. It also has a traffic system :D - Das sind keine grad lustige oder gute spiele ist teilweise für kleinkinder.
It's not really a fun or a good game. Sorry I must say its for toodlers. - No no no no no more hours that could be used to build my business are going to be used to build virtual cities now - this post is evil.
- I like the approach you took with this topic. It is not every day that you find a subject so to the point and enlightening. Scratch To Cash - Games to Earn Money
- This is going to seriously affect my productive pc time, thanks!
- I am fond of building games, and mostly I had played are the SIM Games and the Tycoons games Series. I haven’t found a city building game that is close to real.
- I am fond of building games, and mostly I had played are the SIM Games and the Tycoons games Series. I haven’t found a city building game that is close to real.
- Wow, 20 million playing CityVille? That's the first time i am hearing about that game! Going to check it now.
- very beautiful apps that, unfortunately, need very much time to play with
- very beautiful apps that, unfortunately, need very much time to play with
- As for CityVille, you can actually remove its permission to post stuff on your wall through your privacy settings (http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications) or go to Account > Privacy Settings > Apps and Websites (In the left column just before the bottom) > Apps you use (click Edit Settings) > CityVille (click Edit Settings and then remove for permission to post)!
- As for CityVille, you can actually remove its permission to post stuff on your wall through your privacy settings (http://www.facebook.com/settin.. or go to Account > Privacy Settings > Apps and Websites (In the left column just before the bottom) > Apps you use (click Edit Settings) > CityVille (click Edit Settings and then remove for permission to post)!