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5 Best Colony Sims on Steam, According to User Reviews

Each of these five games brings something new to the colony simulator subgenre, which may explain their immense popularity on Steam.

Colony simulators are a subgenre of management games where players are in charge of setting orders, putting together schedules and organizing resources for a group of people in a survival situation. Colony simulators range from difficult tales of survival against the odds to games where the entire point is to lose, though sometimes they apply the survival game formula to more traditional management-style situations.

Here are the five most popular colony simulator games that are currently available on Steam based on player feedback and reviews.

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Rimworld

Rimworld is an indie sci-fi colony simulator where players help a group of crash-landing survivors thrive on an alien planet. One of the biggest draws of Rimworld is how the game presents itself as a story simulator in which each playthrough generates a new story for every player. On top of that, the sandbox nature of the game means that players can choose exactly how they want to enjoy the game.

Once players get Rimworld’s vanilla experience down, the Steam Workshop has thousands of mods available that add new features and expand upon what the game is already capable of. Rimworld’s popularity comes in part from the number of options it gives players, both in the vanilla game and through mods. It also manages to keep the game itself fairly simple to understand and follow, which is something other colony simulator games like Dwarf Fortress have trouble with.

Prison Architect

Unlike other colony simulator games, Prison Architect doesn’t involve players guiding characters through a traditional survival situation. Instead, players are tasked with constructing a prison. This type of gameplay focuses on the automation and scheduling aspects of the colony survival genre. In a way, there are still plenty of survival aspects in Prison Architect.

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Players have a lot of things to manage, such as prison security and money. Failure can lead to the player being evicted from their designer position and losing the game. There’s also the fact that riots can break out if the prisoners’ needs are too low. Prison Architect is a different kind of colony survival game that really emphasizes management elements.

Oxygen Not Included

Created by the team behind Don’t Starve, Oxygen Not Included has a lot of elements from Klei Entertainment’s previous title. Survival is a top priority as players establish a base on an oxygen-less planet. This means, alongside things like food and power, players also need to make sure that their colonists have enough breathable oxygen to survive.

Oxygen Not Included is often praised for its difficulty and its production management systems, with it earning a few comparisons to Dwarf Fortress. Much like in other colony simulators, death is something that’s both inevitable and part of the experience. All of this combined make Oxygen Not Included a must-play for colony simulator fans.

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Frostpunk

Most colony simulators have some darkness to them, as many of the player’s decisions have the potential to walk a fine moral line. Frostpunk takes these moral decisions and puts them at the center of its gameplay, which is what one might expect from the developers of This War of Mine. The dark tone and setting are two huge points of praise for the game, with many feeling the tone works well with the genre’s gameplay.

In Frostpunk, players must keep the last bastion of humanity alive in a world that’s been completely frozen over. The Steam page describes the game as a “society survival game,” highlighting that certain decisions will force players to make tough calls. These choices put morality up against efficiency, the latter being a core gameplay mechanic of colony simulator games.  It’s a different kind of experience from the other games on this list, one that’s uniquely challenging and thought-provoking.

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Banished

Banished Game Town

Banished hits all of the notes for a classic colony survival game and could be considered a baseline for all other titles. It’s not as complex as Rimworld and lacks the tone of Frostpunk, but it perfectly nails the genre’s core gameplay. The player must manage a newly constructed town through the agricultural revolution, using a mixture of town management and survival game mechanics.

Those who have played other colony simulators will probably find Banished to on the simpler side, though that simplicity has often been cited as a positive. The Steam reviews really emphasize the game’s more passive style of colony simulator gameplay. Banished manages to be a relaxing game and a nice alternative to the typically complex genre.

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