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RANKING · 7 TITLES

The 7 best city builders on Steam in 2026

Among city builders on Steam, Dwarf Fortress leads right now, then Banished and Medieval Dynasty.

Ordered by fit with the genre, Steam review score, number of reviews and how each game plays. Steam figures checked 13 Sept 2026. How the order works

The 7 best city builders, ranked

  1. 01
    Steam artwork — Dwarf Fortress
    94.8% positive · 31,493 reviews · USD 29.99

    Dwarf Fortress

    Dwarf Fortress is a colony sim: you dig a fortress into a generated world and manage dwarves whose moods, needs and mistakes write the story.

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  2. 02
    Steam artwork — Banished
    90% positive · 43,276 reviews · EUR 18.99

    Banished

    Banished is a harsh village sim: food, firewood, and a winter that does not care whether you named the dead. A famine is a schedule you wrote when you built one house too many.

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  3. 03
    Steam artwork — Medieval Dynasty
    90% positive · 51,942 reviews · EUR 29.99

    Medieval Dynasty

    Medieval Dynasty is a first-person village: hunt, marry, tax, repeat. A house becomes a street, and the save is a family that still needs grain.

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  4. 04
    Steam artwork — Prison Architect
    89.2% positive · 73,680 reviews · EUR 24.99

    Prison Architect

    Prison Architect is a management game where the product is a facility that can riot if the toilets and the regime disagree. A census is the HP bar, and the yard is a plan you will defend on the news.

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  5. 05
    Steam artwork — They Are Billions
    85% positive · 51,313 reviews · EUR 29.99

    They Are Billions

    They Are Billions is a colony RTS that ends when the horde finds the hole you left in the wall — a campaign of postponing that minute.

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  6. 06
    Steam artwork — Northgard
    85.3% positive · 68,738 reviews · USD 9.79

    Northgard

    Northgard is a compact Viking RTS: expand a clan, survive winter, contest victory conditions.

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  7. 07
    Steam artwork — Mini Motorways
    96.3% positive · 24,327 reviews · EUR 8.19

    Mini Motorways

    Mini Motorways is a traffic puzzle that ends when the city clogs. A colour wants a road, then another colour, then the river you already spent.

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How this ranking works

Asks whether a settlement can fail in an interesting way. Dwarf Fortress and Northgard both qualify; a furniture pack on an action game does not.

How this list is ordered →

Related rankings

What is a city-builder? →