Urbek City Builder
Review

Urbek City Builder (2022) 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 (and human) resources required to build zones and areas for your citizens to populate, work in and enjoy.

Play involves managing your resources to construct buildings, infrastructure and zones with various functions. Since there is no money in Urbek City Builder, everything that you place requires a steady flow of resources to keep running. You start by setting up simple roads and domestic districts with farms to supply them, but quickly develop industry, civic buildings, leisure locations and more.

It seems simple, but part of the challenge is planning ahead of time. Many buildings have an area of influence around them that they provide a bonus or penalty, so it's important to think about where they should go in order to get the most out of them. For example, placing housing near an industrial area's radius of effect pollutes your housing. Part of the game's charm is in the way that houses are influenced by their environment and available services, which changes their appearance and features. In this way, you can construct whatever kind of neighbourhoods you'd like by building a matching area around them.

Urbek City Builder offers a resource-centric take on the classic city-builder games like the Sim City games and Cities: Skylines. Your imagination can run free to create any kind of city you want, provided you can balance the environmental and socio-economic costs.

Our examiner, Joe Eaton, first checked Urbek City Builder 13 months ago. It was re-examined by Andy Robertson and updated 3 weeks ago.