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
Cities Skylines with some of the DLC and Mods gets you pretty much this.
@django @linux_gaming I think for a city building simulation the option to have cars and fossil and all that shit would be very insightful. So you can learn and see, what the sustainable solution would be.
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.
Lost a lot of hours trying make a totally walkable city. Workers and resources is great. Playing on realistic mode is a very long game though. Be prepared to hear complaints from your wife
Same, I really enjoy starting from scratch and building self sufficiency. It’s my favorite city builder for the depth!
It works on Linux
+1 this game’s transport systems go DEEP and the best cities are walkable. 400hrs and i’m still not an expert.
there’s mods for solar and wind farms aswell :)
Yes, how about a city builder for advocates of New Urbanism? I think this dovetails pretty well with Solarpunk as a movement. It focuses on walkable neighbourhoods, community living, mixed use spaces, public transit and transit-oriented development.
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/
Surviving Mars… A chance to start again with pedestrians and trains.
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.
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 😁
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@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.
it should be possible to do something like this with Cities Skylines 2 but it’s not because they never finished the game
@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 - 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 🙂 )
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.
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.
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.
