Some six months since it launched, Cities Skylines 2 is still a dubious prospect. The foundations are there, but Colossal Order’s sequel is still struggling with performance and, more recently, DLC issues. If you want an alternative, one of the best but most overlooked city building games on Steam just got bigger and better thanks to a new trains-based expansion. Currently available for half price, this is the modern SimCity and CS2 alternative you’ve been waiting to play.
As you might imagine, Urbek: City Builder is a city building game – but it has a few smart twists. Firstly, there is no money. Whether it’s a university, hospital, more houses, or wider roads, if you want to build anything, you need to mine and harvest the resources yourself. Secondly, the growth of your city is simultaneously prescriptive and organic. You create the infrastructure, set zones, and place down key utilities, but everything you build with naturally evolves over time. Houses will get bigger, neighborhoods will expand, and the conditions and appearance of your buildings will vary depending on the economic factors around them.
Lastly, you can zoom down to the micro level and view your city as a pedestrian. If you ever made an especially intricate road network in CS2, or a well-designed park in SimCity, and wanted to see it up close, Urbek gives you the option. Boasting gorgeous voxel visuals and an intuitive interface, Urbek has nevertheless gone largely unplayed.
At its peak, the game attracted 665 concurrent players on Steam – in the last 24 hours, it’s pulled only 48 builders at the same time. Its reputation is strong however. Of the more than 1,000 reviews Urbek has received from players, 91% are positive. And now it’s about to get even better, as developer Estudios Kremlinois launches the ambitious new Trains DLC. You get 30 models of railroad car, and can use the new locomotives to more effectively connect your city and streamline your production chains.
And there’s one more thing – if you want to get involved with Urbek, the base game is currently available at its lowest price ever, thanks to a 50% discount that brings it down to $9.49 / £8.14. You can pick it up and find the new Trains DLC right here.
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