My favorite genre is Simulation. These games can make time disappear from the universe if you are not careful. There is a lot of awesome games on this list, including my all-time favorite Cities Skylines. Golftopia, released this year, has gotten into my heart as one of the best simulation indie game of the year.
I also want to point out the tiny game of Townscaper, which is more or less a click build game, but if you get started, its very, very addicting.
Cities Skylines
Cities: Skylines is a modern take on the classic city simulation. The game introduces new game play elements to realize the thrill and hardships of creating and maintaining a real city whilst expanding on some well-established tropes of the city building experience. From the makers of the Cities in Motion franchise, the game boasts a fully realized transport system. It also includes the ability to mod the game to suit your play style as a fine counter balance to the layered and challenging simulation. You’re only limited by your imagination, so take control and reach for the sky!
Euro Truck Simulator 2
Euro Truck Simulator 2 is a vehicle simulation game developed and published by SCS Software for Microsoft Windows and Linux and was initially released as open development on October 19, 2012. The game is a direct sequel to the 2008 game Euro Truck Simulator and it is second video game in Euro Truck Simulator series. Set in Europe, the player can drive one of a choice of articulated trucks across a depiction of Europe, picking up cargo from various locations and delivering it. As the game progresses, it is possible for the player to buy more vehicles, depots, and hire drivers to work for them. Despite the name, players can also choose to deliver cargo in the USA.
Factorio
You will be mining resources, researching technologies, building infrastructure, automating production and fighting enemies. Use your imagination to design your factory, combine simple elements into ingenious structures, apply management skills to keep it working and finally protect it from the creatures who don’t really like you.
Football Manager 2020
Put your opinions to good use and do things your way at your club this season. Every decision counts in FM20 with new features and polished game mechanics adding fresh and authentic dimensions, empowering managers to take greater accountability for both their own and their team’s destiny.
Golftopia
GolfTopia aims to create a humorous management tycoon experience fused with wacky physics-based golf mechanics. Visiting golfers are a picky bunch that will scrutinize everything they see with over 100 thoughts, complaints, or compliments. Beauty is only turf deep; as every tree, every blade of rough, every bump, and roll of the terrain changes how golf is played. Managing a GolfTopia won’t be easy.
Place every tee, every hole and every devious sand trap. Lure in visitors, while keeping them fed, hydrated, and pacified. Make them happy enough and they’ll turn into prestigious members, or drive them to madness in a fiendish golf gauntlet! But picky golfers won’t be your only problem. Defend your creation from a growing infestation of ill-tempered foliage with robotic workers and defensive turrets. Add kooky gadgets like fans, bumpers, launchers, and teleporters to your course, turning it into a finely tuned money-making machine. Develop your course into a world-class attraction with hotels, putting greens, a driving range, bars, restaurants, and more. See to your golfers every possible need, so they never have to go home, EVER!
House Flipper
House Flipper is a unique chance to become the one-man renovating crew.
Buy, repair and upgrade devastated houses. Give them a second life and sell at a profit!
Play it your way
Regardless if you prefer working on interior designs, decorating them or taking care of technical problems and assembling various installations, in House Flipper you will find something for yourself! Thanks to the order system, you will slowly delve into the world of makeovers, to later use this experience when working for the most demanding customers.
Ready for some action?
Grab a hammer and get ready for quite a teardown as it’s time to give those crumbling properties a new life. Get rid of what’s not needed and prepare solid foundations for a brave new… House!
Jurassic World Evolution
Take charge of operations on the legendary islands of the Muertes archipelago and bring the wonder, majesty and danger of dinosaurs to life. Build for Science, Entertainment or Security interests in an uncertain world where life always finds a way.
Jurassic World Evolution is a new chapter in the official Jurassic mythology that puts you in charge of cinema’s most famous tourist destination.
Bioengineer dinosaurs that think, feel and react intelligently to the world around them. Play with life itself to give your dinosaurs unique behaviors, traits and appearances, then contain and profit from them to fund your global search for lost dinosaur DNA.
Control the big picture with deep management tools or go hands-on to confront challenges on the ground or in the air. Expand your islands and choose your own journey in an all-new narrative featuring iconic characters from across the franchise and decades of Jurassic lore at your fingertips.
Planet Coaster
Planet Coaster is a construction and management simulation video game. Similar to its spiritual predecessor, the game allows players to build different theme park rides and roller-coasters. These player-created attractions can be shared through a mechanic called “global village”.
Let your imagination run wild and watch the profits roll in.
Want to build a theme park from the ground up? Build coasters, lay paths, design scenery and customize rides. Raise mountains, form lakes, dig caverns and even build islands in the sky! Planet Coaster’s piece-by-piece construction is easy to pick-up, and rewards you with limitless creativity.
Take your creativity even further with the Thememaker’s Toolkit. Convert your 3D model creations into small bespoke Planet Coaster scenery items, or use them as building blocks to make even more amazing piece-by-piece creations.
Planet Zoo
Build a world for wildlife in Planet Zoo. From the creators of Planet Coaster and Zoo Tycoon comes the ultimate zoo sim. Construct detailed habitats, manage your zoo, and meet authentic living animals who think, feel and explore the world you create around them.
Meet a world of incredible animals. From playful lion cubs to mighty elephants, every animal in Planet Zoo is a thinking, feeling individual with a distinctive look and personality of their own. Craft detailed habitats to bring your animals’ natural environments home, research and manage each species to allow them to thrive, and help your animals raise families to pass their genes onto future generations.
Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley is an open-ended country-life RPG! You’ve inherited your grandfather’s old farm plot in Stardew Valley. Armed with hand-me-down tools and a few coins, you set out to begin your new life. Can you learn to live off the land and turn these overgrown fields into a thriving home? It won’t be easy. Ever since Joja Corporation came to town, the old ways of life have all but disappeared. The community center, once the town’s most vibrant hub of activity, now lies in shambles. But the valley seems full of opportunity. With a little dedication, you might just be the one to restore Stardew Valley to greatness!
Surviving Mars
Surviving Mars is a sci-fi city builder all about colonizing Mars and surviving the process. Choose a space agency for resources and financial support before determining a location for your colony. Build domes and infrastructure, research new possibilities and utilize drones to unlock more elaborate ways to shape and expand your settlement. Cultivate your own food, mine minerals or just relax by the bar after a hard day’s work. Most important of all, though, is keeping your colonists alive. Not an easy task on a strange new planet.
The Sims 4
Unleash your imagination and create a unique world of Sims that’s an expression of you! Explore and customize every detail from Sims to homes, and much more. Choose how Sims look, act, and dress, then decide how they’ll live out each day. Design and build incredible homes for every family, then decorate with your favorite furnishings and décor. Travel to different neighborhoods where you can meet other Sims and learn about their lives. Discover beautiful locations with distinctive environments and go on spontaneous adventures. Manage the ups and downs of Sims’ everyday lives and see what happens when you play out scenarios from your own real life! Tell your stories your way while developing relationships, pursuing careers and life aspirations, and immersing yourself in this extraordinary game, where the possibilities are endless. Play with life!
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is a wacky physics-based tactics game. Experience accurate warfare through the ages. From medieval peasants to modern-day weaponry, TABS uses state of the art physics-based simulation to provide you with never-before-seen insight into our greatest battles of history.
Townscaper
Townscaper is an experimental passion project. More of a toy than a game. Pick colors from the palette, plop down colored blocks of house on the irregular grid, and watch Townscaper’s underlying algorithm automatically turn those blocks into cute little houses, arches, stairways, bridges and lush backyards, depending on their configuration.
Two Point Hospital
Design stunning hospitals, cure peculiar illnesses and manage troublesome staff as you spread your budding healthcare organisation across Two Point County.
Design Your Hospital
Build and customise your hospital – it is yours after all – with specialist diagnosis and treatment facilities, as well as the very latest in ornamental technology!
Cure Your Patients
Feeling light-headed? Just wait until you see the other unusual illnesses afflicting the people of Two Point County. Care for, and profit from, the ill: that seems like it’s probably a win-win. They’ll need feeding, entertaining and curing if they’re going to recommend you to all their equally unwell friends! That cash isn’t going to make itself, now.
Manage Your Staff
Hire your staff, juggle their demands and cater to their personalities. Train a crack team that can handle every sickly challenge that’s thrown at it, and fire anyone that can’t.
Expand Your Organisation
Grow the sickness business across the beautiful Two Point County. Research illnesses and develop new inventions to compete with rival healthcare companies.
Collaborate and Compete with Friends
Once you’ve conquered the world with your medical empire, contribute to Two Point County’s global medical community with collaborative research projects, or demonstrate your medical prowess in competitive multiplayer challenges.