Looking for a solarpunk city building game
I want a city building game, where I can build a working, car-free city. I want lots of pedestrians, cargo bikes, bicycles, public transport with trams, trains, subways and some buses. I’d like renewable energy as well for my electricity.
Which game can you recommend?
#solarpunk #citybuilder #citybuilding #linuxgaming
@linux_gaming
I’m trying to involve the network of eco-social collectives, along with universities and video game companies, all local, to take the digital twin of my city, Seville, and gamify it as a prototype for a multiplayer Solarpunk City-Builder Serious Game Edutainment (CRPG-LARP XR). This involves community brainstorming ideas and adapting ones from the board game Zapatista Autonomy to build, through quests, Solarpunk Seville, the eco-metropolis we want (and the parallel law that would regulate it). That’s why I propose the game be called LAWCRAFT: Forks the Law into a Solarpunk; and to use an AGPLv3 License.
Making digital twin playable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XliX7KaAA9gZapatista Autonomy
https://viajezapatista.eu/es/autonomia-zapatista-juego/Serious Game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious/_gameI kinda wonder if you’re going through the same pipeline I did.
Where initially I was looking for “city builder but solarpunk and bicycles” but found what I *actually* want is “resource management for a community, but you’re incentivized to balance your production to your needs, and disincentivized from overproduction”.
and like, both of those are niche genres atm, but they’re distinct.
I’ve found Arcs (board game) and Against the Storm (video game) scratch the second itch well, because it’s not really possible to snowball to complete control - only to keep responding to your environment in more complex ways.
(Block’Hood ticks both boxes!)
deleted by creator
I think that “ECO” is exactly what you’re looking for. I haven’t played it myself, but I have had it in my wishlist for a while now. You can find it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/382310/Eco/
I haven’t tried yet for myself, but Transport Fever series is another similar to Cities Skylines. TF2 had been heavily discounted on Steam recently, with #3 announced (2026 release).
Transport Fever is a logistics simulation game. It is not a solar punk city builder. Brilliant game though.
Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic could be your jam! https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources_Soviet_Republic/
I have not tried it on Linux. It is a very detailed city builder with a wide variety of public transport.
There are different game modes, one where you start in the 60s (I think) and need to research solar and wind power. Another where all tech can be available.
It works on Linux
I kind of liked per aspera in the ecological aspect. You have to start with fossil fuels to create an atmosphere, but then you have to eventually go renewable to make it sustainable.
Surviving Mars… A chance to start again with pedestrians and trains.
Good game but the balance was utterly borked. Either needed to constantly spam import from Earth or the game wouldn’t function. Or you needed mods with auto resource factories to fix this problem.
Didn’t take me all of those 2,000 hours to figure it out 😁
I got it, but didn’t like that your colonies couldn’t be self-sustaining. Certain resources could only be gained by importing them from Earth, including critical ones.
Nah. That’s only while the colony is young.
That’s just how colonies work.
Long term, totally go self sustaining. In the latest version you can declare independence from Earth and go it alone, but you gotta have the colony ready for it!
Okay, sounds like they updated the game a lot. Last time I played about the only thing you could get an infinite amount of was water. All other Mars-sourced resources, including concrete, were limited. Eventually your resources would run out, you couldn’t afford anything from Earth anymore, and your colony would collapse and die. Forum threads even said this was the normal loop. Granted, this was a few years ago.
Cities Skylines with some of the DLC and Mods gets you pretty much this.
Not quite a serious city building game, but Islanders is about building the most efficient city, and it’s made in a cutesy solarpunk aesthetic.
Works perfectly smooth on Linux.
@django @linux_gaming I wrote about it - there is no such game, but multiple are close
https://alxd.org/notes-towards-a-solarpunk-game-design-overview.html
@django @linux_gaming Oh yes, I want that as well. A modernized version of Banished, where the village/city thrives if it’s built in a sustainable, solarpunky way that doesn’t deplete resources.
@django @linux_gaming I most assume cars or are limited to the medieval/fantasy world, but there is “Endzone - A World Apart” and you could modify “Workers & Ressources - Soviet Republic” to support this kind of gameplay.
I’m pretty sure you can achieve that with Cities Skylines.
@django @linux_gaming - You might look into taking one of the sim citites and intentionally building it car free (example: https://community.simtropolis.com/omnibus/simcity-4/tutorials/how-to-make-a-roadless-city-r89/)
You can use all mass transit forms except for busses (as building for busses would also allow for cars): https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/Mass/_transit
Here is one discussion of someone building similar: https://www.reddit.com/r/simcity4/comments/g0cwic/my/_first/_serious/_attempt/_at/_making/_a/_city/_with/_no/
You would focus on renewable energy: (see multple variants both current to our world and future tech: https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/List/_of/_power/_plants )
Look into various libraries and community centers and mods etc.
@tinker @django @linux_gaming Hmmm… Could you do something like that in Cities Skylines? #CitiesSkylines
I mean - CS has these options by design already built in (although not fully without cars AFAIK)…
It might be worth checking for solarpunk mods, though… 🤔
@tinker @django @linux_gaming …and to approach this from a slightly different perspective, there is also good old #Anno2070 , where you can choose the path of money-hoarding, planet crushing corpo oligarch-bro😈, or achieve the same with green healthy technologies (and society 🙂 )
