We ‘ve selected all different kinds of management games below, with something to satisfy you whether you want to run a family, keep colonists reasonable, march poisonous gases, or ob over conveyer knock efficiency. The merely predominate is that it needs to be fun to play good now. That means we ‘ve excluded some formative classics that feel less well recommended – although you ‘ll even find a handful of games here that are erstwhile adequate to drink .
here ‘s a video recording version of this list for those of you who like words to be spoken and pictures to move. It does n’t highlight every individual one of the management games on our list, but it does focus on the games nearer the top .
Best management games
The list below contains our picks for the 20 best management games to play on personal computer, split across two pages. You can hit the links to go lineal to the write-up of the game in question. If you do n’t see your favored on the list, it must be at phone number 21. You can write your own entry for the crippled in the comments, and we ‘ll consider it for inclusion in a future revision to this number .
20. Oxygen Not Included
oxygen not Included is one of a handful of Dwarf Fauxtress games in this list where you take charge of a little group of hapless people arriving in an inhospitable localization, in this case the center of an asteroid, and you must mine and construct the tools they need to survive. Where it differs from most of its peers is in the technology cogency it requires from players .
You ‘ll start by growing crops and turning alga into breathable oxygen, but resources consume and demands increase quickly. Block by block you ‘ll expand to create more space, more resources, and before you know it your colony is a batch of inefficient pipes and electrify, your crops are withering from the heat, and your duplicants are urgently building life-saving machinery while holding their breath inside a toxic mottle. It ‘s barbarous, but it ‘s besides wonderfully engrossing. The challenges feel average, excessively, because they all spill outwards from the game ‘s careful simulation of basic scientific principles .
Where can I buy it: Steam .
19. Anno 1800
Anno 1800 is arguably one of the finest city builders always made. Set in Western Europe during the nineteenth hundred, this is a game that starts out with idyllic rural farmsteads and ends with the hulking big railways and smoke-pumping factories of industrial commerce. Its early hours may feel excessively companion for Anno veterans, but once you ‘ve gone full moon industrial revolution, it truly comes into its own. With one island up and running, it ‘s clock time to move onto the future, each one coming with its own population, resources and parturiency requirements. Soon, you ‘ve got colonies all over the worldly concern with ships going back and away all across the earth .
It gets even better when played with a friend in its multiplayer cooperative modality, excessively. Whether you want to split the load or good truly get into the nitty game of one colony ‘s urban development while your partner keeps things ticking over everywhere else, Anno 1800 caters for dozens of different play styles. Or, you can test your world-conquering chops by going promontory to head with said friend in its competitive multiplayer mode. Whatever you ‘re after, Anno 1800 has it all .
Where can I buy it: Epic, Humble .
18. Megaquarium
pisces are charming beings aren ’ metric ton they ? Well, anything that lives submerged is pretty impressive – therefore obviously, the best thing to do with them is to keep them in bantam little pisces prisons so you can gaze longingly at their gratifying, gaumless faces forever. Megaquariam is a bet on that ‘s all about managing an aquarium, from hiring the best staff members to making certain your tanks are the best they can be for your fishy friends. Some pisces are bullies, while others are perfectly able of life in harmony with one another. Others might like rocks, or plants, but largely, they merely want a bit of mooch, kept at their optimum temperature, and for the glass to not be tapped .
The people you have coming to your aquarium must besides be kept glad or else they ’ ll leave, get tired, need to pee, or get hungry. Plus, in the spirit of all those Bullfrog management games of yore, you ‘ll besides need to make sure there are lots and lots of bins. People who come to these places don ’ t fair take their rubbish home with them if there are n’t any bins knocking about. They ’ ll barely drop it on the floor, the monsters. Benches, drink machines, toilets, and bins. The lone things you need to keep people felicitous. And the fish, of run, let ‘s not forget the fish .
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Humble .
17. Slime Rancher
Slime Rancher might look cute on the surface, but beneath its gelatinous, googly-eyed exterior lies a affection of pure chaos. Unlike the beasts you ‘ll find in other animal management sims such as Planet Zoo or flush jurassic World Evolution, the smiling spot of Monomi Park ‘s farming sludge ’em up excel at getting themselves into scrapes while you ‘re off exploring and meet resources, whether it ‘s bouncing out of their respective pens and escaping, or unintentionally eating the “ plorts ” ( or nincompoop ) of other slimes and turning into all-consuming pitch monsters. If you ‘ve ever wanted to experience the anarchic world of rearing unpredictable livestock, then Slime Rancher is the management ( or possibly that should be wrangling ? ) game for you .
Yes, the stallion economy is based around the buy and sell of slime manure, but it sure puts a jolly old face on it. It ‘s this cheery film on the grow games that makes Slime Rancher one of more accessible management games on this tilt a well. It does n’t get bogged down in the complexities of slime diets, penitentiary conditions or anything else. All you need to do is make sure all that stern is scooped on a regular basis, because otherwise bad, regretful things can happen while you ‘re away. hush, even if you do come home to find entire sections of your farm have gone up in smoke, one expect at a slime ‘s jiggle smile is all it takes to make everything approve again. You might be starting over, but d’awww just look at their little faces .
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Humble .
16. Dungeon Keeper
not every horse in Bullfrog ‘s fabled static of genre-defining 90s management games stands up well by today ‘s standards, peculiarly in terms of interface, and that ‘s why Themes Park or Hospital of old are n’t hera. Dungeon Keeper sails close to the tip, excessively, but it remains diabolically playable, particularly if you install the release KeeperFX fan expansion pack which unlocks all sorts of high resolutions and assorted third-party fixes and maps. This plot is about building a monster lair, keeping said beasties glad, and ultimately hurling them at invading ‘heroes ‘ .
It might be a bit balmy compared to more modern games on this list, but there ‘s a palpable loneliness to Dungeon Keeper. Its crabbed creatures shuffle through dark, rocky tunnels, angrily trying to sleep in their filthy lairs, roll up daily pay they have no apparent manipulation for, tinkering away to build traps and spells that only benefit a distant employer and … oh God, the metaphors. Am I … am I a bile demon ? But that ‘s the thing : where indeed many management games in the Bullfrog idiom were built around a core of pleasing people, this is, honestly, built around abusing them. Be it the monsters who toil and fight endlessly for your gain, or the humans you murder, imprison or torment to far swell your ranks, Dungeon Keeper is a lusciously dark game in a far more profound way than its snickering voice-over .
Where can I buy it: GOG, Origin .
15. OpenTTD
Transport Tycoon Deluxe remains one of our front-runner transportation management sims, even if the original is nobelium longer available to buy on today ‘s personal computer storefronts. thankfully, we ‘ve got OpenTTD rather, a fan-made remake of Transport Tycoon Deluxe that expands on Chris Sawyer ‘s 1994 master by adding more map size american samoa well as LAN and online multiplayer that supports up to 255 players. The isometric countryside and urban landscapes are inactive beautifully tranquil in OpenTTD – despite the game ‘s industrial core, settlements resemble picture-postcard villages and towns quite than smoggy iterations of Dickens ‘ Coketown. Watching the landscape develop in synchronize with your ambitions is adenine reward as watching a level 1 Squire become a level 50 Demigod .
Business management games come in many flavours, but few offer the same kind of gentle challenges and immediately recognizable environments as this. Transporting goods and passengers might seem like a banal occupation, specially appearing aboard future wars and subject parks, but it ‘s the familiarity of the systems that makes the crippled so engage .
Where can I buy it: It ‘s free .
14. Surviving Mars
This crimson planet colonization sim has come along room since it beginning came out in March 2018. Back then, it felt a little morsel barebones and kept tripping over its own user interface. today, it ‘s a different fib. With a greater assortment of domes and buildings, a more coherent UI, and the ability to link up your diverse flimsy settlements, Surviving Mars is highly arduous to put down .
The decelerate growth from a handful of drones laying cables in the dust up to a thrive society of colonists is vastly meet, and the hostile environment and starkly restrict resources means it feels like indeed much more an accomplishment than merely ordering some serf to go build you a sign of the zodiac by the river. By twinning management sim custom with a survival brain – your colonists need air, water and heating system adenine well as food, and woe befall you if you fail to provide them – what could have been an antique build crippled becomes a thoroughly modern one .
Where can I buy it: Paradox, Steam, GOG, Humble .
13. Frostpunk
Most management games are about indulging yourself as opposed to providing a real challenge. They ‘re about an ever-widening circle of construction possibility – the more hours you put in, the more things open up. Frostpunk is different. Frostpunk ‘s interest is in starkly limiting what options are available to you, to the point where you ‘re frequently making some absolutely squash decisions about what you have to sacrifice in order to gain or fix something else .
Set during a kind of steampunk post-apocalypse, you ‘re tasked with keeping a handful of shivering, starving refugees of a new frosting long time alert. There are scantily any resources, and anyone who does not live close to the life-giving heat generators wo n’t last long. illness is inevitable. But you need the workers to bring in fuel and food to keep everyone else alive. Do you let the ill mend – or do you amputate ? What about children ? More hands on deck, or is having a childhood more important ?
Frostpunk is management on the edge, where about every decision you take – about every construction you erect – is a huge risk. It can be mastered in time, but until then, it is desperate, harrowing and a deft inversion of the common race-to-riches approach .
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Humble .
12. Prison Architect
Theme Hospital might be the first democratic management game to dwell on the dark side of profiteer, but Prison Architect is an flush colored suggestion. Can you keep your inmates felicitous ? Can you make a profit ? How important is it to process death rowing residents efficiently ? What happens when a riot breaks out ?
The brilliance of Introversion ‘s game is in its recognition that a prison is a series of systems – of housing and treatment, of security and diversion – and then in its application of hardy simulations to each of those systems. Like the best management games, it allows you to create a smoothly tend machine, but it besides embraces chaos and act .
During the most intricate planning, you can forget what the theme implies about the resources you ‘re processing, but Prison Architect is only ever a moment away from reminding you of the world within the machine .
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Humble .
11. Tropico 6
honestly, throw a rock in the air and good play whichever Tropico bet on it lands on – they ‘re all a solid commodity meter and they ‘re all based around the exact like concept : you ‘re the drollery authoritarian of an initially poor people island nation, attempting to transform it into a land of tourist’n’trade riches while ruling with an at least partially iron fist .
A great many of the complexities of, say, a Sim City are discarded – there ‘s no real number worrying about powerlines or water supplies, and rather you get on with the commercial enterprise of plopping down buildings, with the twin goals of making it all look alert and attractive and generating ever-more cruddy boodle. This is more of a dally box to rummage in than it is a strategic perplex, but it has an extra layer of balmy moral dilemma that keep you hook. For case, the exile or end of troublemakers, bribing protesters, ignoring environmental concerns, rigging elections or cramming people into dangerous housing. Or you could stay the course, do the right thing and hope that it will all come good in the goal.
Tropico 6 besides finally adds some much-needed spiciness to this most cautious of management series by stretching out your latest empire across an integral archipelago of islands, switching your traditional goal of expansion for expansion ‘s sake to something you ‘re actively endeavor towards. It ‘s a small change, indisputable, but as that old pronounce goes, even the smallest change can make a profound deviation .
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Humble .
10. Banished
Banished is a unlike kind of a management game. At beginning glance, it looks a lot like a Settlers or Anno – good-natured, brakes-on build and tree-chopping, enjoying the gradual and all-but-inevitable expansion from scruffy jerkwater town to bustling old worldly concern city. But no. Banished is about scratching out a vestigial life in the soil and cold, and maintaining that animation tied as the elements turn against you – striving to subsist preferably than to explode into glory .
If approached wanting a cheery city-builder, you ‘re going to have a atrocious time. If approached as a greatest test of plan and resource management, in which failing to get it right means bang-up miserable and even death for the handful of people in your tear, it ‘s going to keep you very busy, challenged and, ultimately, feeling far proud of yourself than most anything else in this list could hope to manage. It ‘s barbarous, but it makes the things we take for granted in other management games feel like titanic accomplishments .
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Humble .
9. Zeus: Master of Olympus
zeus : dominate of Olympus might be angstrom honest-to-god as its Ancient Greek hills, but this 2D, historic city builder continues to hit the sweet spot of complexity, accessibly, prettiness and sheer charm. There is war if you want it, but actually this is a game about making cheese. besides wool, olive anoint and dramaturgy. An artisanal colony all of your own. Just vigil out for wolves. And there are puns. Lots of Ancient Greek pun .
You ‘ll want the player-made settlement and widescreen fixes if you ‘re planning on playing it today, but it remains an absolute joy. sure, it ‘s detached of the strife and labor of ancient life sentence, in prefer of a colourfully genteel take on the pre-tech earned run average, but it precisely gets on with being the very best pure town-builder it can, those nerve-calming loops of ennoble expansion and efficiency-pursuit. Complex but approachable, Zeus is designed to be something you lose yourself in. management games have nobly struck off in so many new directions now, but Zeus ‘ take on their economy’n’craft core might precisely have never been bettered .
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG .
8. Planet Coaster
The true successor to the Rollercoaster Tycoon series, Planet Coaster is a game of subject park management with a particular focus on construction ( and, most importantly, riding ) increasingly elaborate and/or impossible rollercoasters. The true asterisk of the read, though, is its steamer Workshop support, where you can import or upload remarkable and atrocious constructions. People have built some jaw-dropping stuff in Planet Coaster, and this age of massive monitors means that riding them is a genuine thrill .
even if you ‘re not into sharing with or borrowing from the across-the-board world, Planet Coaster ‘s focus is a lot more on building stuff yourself than it is plopping down prefabs. This is the interior designer ‘s management game, not the accountant ‘s management game. Its construction tools are delightfully accessible, and you ‘ll be able to coax meaningful results out of them very quickly indeed. Keeping your guests felicitous and the coffers overflowing is hush a fundamental part of the game, though, and you ‘ll need all the accessory theme park money-rinsers, such as cafe and endow shops excessively. After all, if you build it, they will come .
Where can I buy it: Steam, Humble .
7. Factorio
Most management games are secretly puzzle games excessively : figuring out how to fit all these pieces into this finite space, and how to get x resource to y target vitamin a efficiently as potential. Factorio takes this estimate and runs with it to its natural extreme : impossibly dense, maze-like conveyer belt belt constructions shuffling massive networks of production back and away between endless auto-factories, making this to make that to make this to make that, loop upon loop upon loop upon loop .
To gaze upon a late-game Factorio screenshot without always having played the game yourself is to gaze into the expression of madness itself. But Factorio ‘s greatest accomplishment is how promptly that obscene batch of mechanized noodles makes feel once you ‘ve put a match of hours into it. From the humble starting point of a individual conveyer belt forlornly shifting resources to the next machine, a portal of possibilities opens up – if I do that, then this, but I ‘ll need to link it to that, but oh that will need one of those and then, well, spang goes your life. Factorio is an accomplishment a terrorization as it is remarkable : the take care that was able to design this game surely transcends humanness as we know it .
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Humble .
6. Two Point Hospital
Two Point Hospital is a feverish hospital management sim, but it ‘s vastly meet at the same time. When you finally get a brief window of respite, you expand, create new problems, compensate for those problems, and are able to enjoy watching the machine operate on angstrom smoothly as it ‘s always going to. then it will throw a helicopter full of patients convinced they ‘re Freddie Mercury at you, and suddenly the plot ‘s dapper radio jazz transforms into a mocking dirge that guffaws at your efforts to maintain control .
Two Point Hospital is a business sim inaugural. It ’ mho about staying afloat, whether that be through fleecing your patients or by building your repute as the best hospital around. It can much be just as entertaining when you ’ rhenium fail, though. Since it balances ocular chaos with feasible, informative interfaces, you can closely always find out what the trouble is with a few clicks. It ‘s arsenic colorful as it is compulsive. It celebrates the bequest of Bullfrog ( creators of spiritual predecessor Theme Hospital ) even as it vastly improves and expands on then many elements. Want some light social comment on the machine-like nature of public services that prioritise efficiency over patient wellbeing ? It ’ mho got that ! Want some toilets made out of solid gold and DLC that lets you save Christmas with a Yeti ? It ‘s got that, excessively .
Where can I buy it: Steam, Humble .
5. The Sims 4
The strangest thing about Maxis ‘ world-straddling life management series is how few other games ripped it off. The Sims remains efficaciously matchless within its honking great recess : undisputed giant ace of the human needs, drives and desires simulation world .
From managing actual Sims – making sure they get to work on clock time, do n’t get alone, do n’t lose all their friends, do n’t run forbidden of money to pay the bills and ( most importantly ) do n’t end up dying – to building homes they can properly navigate, there ‘s a lot to keep you busy. Life-long Simmers will probably tell you that The Sims 2 is the best in the series, but we swear by The Sims 4. It ‘s besides got one of the most robust and thriving modding communities around, and has received a shed-load of expansion packs, game packs, and stuff packs that each add more and more message and play time to the plot. In fact, Maxis have equitable launched a new ‘ challenge ’ expression to the game with Scenarios .
Where can I buy it: Origin, Steam, Humble .
4. Cities: Skylines
not indeed long ago, we ‘d have picked SimCity 4 to represent modern-but-traditional city builders, but nowadays that Cities : Skylines has had a match of years to go to bed in, with copious DLC and the gigantic shock of its modding residential district, there ‘s no doubt that Colossal Order ‘s exultant revival of the music genre picks up Maxis ‘ dinge baton .
A session with Skylines is evocative of the aureate age of bet on. That ‘s not any particular year ; it ‘s related to your own relationship with games. Remember when you ‘d spend hours playing without worrying about the outside populace, or even feeling any blackmail from within the plot itself ? Hours of comfortable, calming bliss, laying roads and watching a city turn before your eyes. Skylines creates those farseeing holidays from reality. It ‘s relaxation in game kind .
That ‘s not to say the actual simulation is n’t complex, though. If you want a challenge, Skylines can deliver, though you ‘ll often have to set your own parameters. The glare of the game is in the assortment of cities it can host, from perfective geometric machines to fantastic recreations of veridical life locations. It ‘s like the biggest box of build blocks in the world .
Where can I buy it: Steam, Humble, Paradox .
3. Dwarf Fortress
Dwarf Fortress is much more than a management game, but where else could we file it ? The question should actually be – if Dwarf Fortress is a management game, by what standard is it not THE BEST management bet on ? Because it ‘s unfinished ? Because it ‘s besides broad and baggy to allow for definite managerial approaches to emerge ? Because learning the obtuse interface is actual make ? Because it ‘s about dwarves and we all know that management games are all about taxes ?
true, Dwarven Tax Tycoon would be a fine proposition, but the actual reason behind Dwarf Fortress ‘ position as the 3rd best management plot of all time is known alone to a blue-ribbon few. Whether you ‘re allergic to the number three or not, you should play Dwarf Fortress good now – it ‘s one of the most remarkable, building complex and unpredictable games always made, and probably always will be. even over a ten on, nothing else drills as deep into the mantel of community-simulation as Dwarf Fortress. Yes, it ‘s a bear to learn, but the rewards for doing so are off the chart .
Where can I buy it: It ‘s free .
2. Stardew Valley
All the best management games bring something extra to the core gather/build/grow stream. With Stardew Valley, it ‘s role-playing. by and large, you ‘re diligently plating, tending and harvesting crops, then selling or trading them on, and this lightly productive loop is why about anyone who hears the words “ Stardew Valley ” will look simultaneously misty-eyed ( because it ‘s such a warm game to be in ) and guilty ( because it effortlessly consumes any spare time you can give it ) .
But merely as you tend your fields, so excessively do you tend relationships with the NPC town, lento coaxing their stories out of them, lento opening up newly possibilities in what you can do / grow. Context is something that ‘s so frequently lacking in early management games : you exist in some invalidate, building and outgo, with no sense of connection to anything or anyone else outside of it. You only care about people in terms of numbers. here, you care about them as people, and then managing your farm, the core acts of collection, growth and expansion, has meaning. It is connected to the township, it brings good things to the town. You bring good things to the town .
But, by and large, waking up and rushing to see if nowadays ‘s the day your potatoes have finished growing never stops being a thrilling as it is charming. This is management through a microscope, alternatively of the usual city-scale view. Stardew Valley is an wear, crossing over achiever, and rightfully sol .
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Humble .
1. RimWorld
There are management games about buildings, and then there are management games about people. RimWorld, for all the bird’s-eye perspective and homespun wooden structures, is very much about people. The survivors of a crash-landing on an unknown world, to be specific, trying to survive and then thrive in a hostile target. But the heart of the game is their AI-driven personalities, their preferences, limitations, specialities, fears, hobbies and relationships with each early. If you do n’t pay heed to these, the beasts outside are the least of your problems. Each settler has their own beware, and you will have to learn it well .
Personality even comes into play with your choice of ‘storyteller ‘, a screen of AI dungeon dominate who controls the pace and nature of the disasters you face, and those crises do extend to build and farming besides – expect out for exploding might cells, crop blights and vomiting chickens amongst the many, many ways your colony might be laid abruptly humble. There is an ultimate objective – evasion – but the flair of RimWorld ‘s flair is how free-rolling and wildly unpredictable it is, and how it quietly writes a raw floor for you every time you play. together, they cement its place as the best management crippled you can play today on personal computer .
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Humble .
