Cities Skylines 2 is the biggest building and management sim nowadays, but it wasn’t always so. Created by Will Wright and Maxis, particularly in the ‘90s, SimCity was a mainstay of PC gaming. Build your residential and industrial zones. Design the power grid. Levy taxes. SimCity 2000 and SimCity 3000 are the games that brought it all together, but the fundamentals were there from the start. Between Dusk, Cultic, Turbo Overkill, and more, it feels like the boomer shooter heyday of the FPS is enjoying a resurgence right now. It’s high time the strategy sim got the same treatment. If you want a new SimCity game, with modernized mechanics but that classic ‘90s style, well, there’s something very exciting available to try right now on Steam.
This is Metropolis 1998, from independent developer Yesbox Studios. A city building game in the spirit of Cities Skylines, SimCity, and more, it marries the two greatest eras of the genre into a single, very pretty strategy experience.
The simulation is complex – citizens will sleep, eat, go to work, relax, and so on. Likewise, there is an in-depth pathfinding system for more than 100,000 cars and people. The needs of your citizens are granular, and broken into dozens of categories. You can even see inside their homes, or swap between the isometric view of later-day city building sims, and the top-down view of classic SimCity.
But all these modern features and technology are lovingly cloaked in a retro, pixel-art visual style. SimCity 2000 is the biggest influence, but you can also recognize Bullfrog’s Theme Park and Theme Hospital in here. It looks wonderful, and while we’re still waiting on a full release date, you can play the first demo of Metropolis 1998 on Steam right now. If you want a slick city builder with a classic look, this is made for you.
Alternatively, try the best strategy games, or maybe, if you want a little more nostalgia, the best old games you can still get on PC.
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