SimpliCity

A quieter city-building game

SimpliCity is a small, classic city simulation game about building a place and watching it breathe. It is free, open source, and built upon the original 1989 game Micropolis (AKA SimCity Classic).

Zone homes, shops, and factories. Lay roads and rails. Bring power to new neighborhoods. Balance growth, traffic, pollution, services, and money. Then let the city run, slow down, adjust, and see what happens.

SimpliCity is made for relaxed play, not constant attention.

NEW: Graphics themes!

Not every city builder is made the same

There are excellent modern city simulations out there. SimCity (modern) is deep, polished, and visually spectacular. Pocket City is smart and well-crafted. If you want a rich, feature-packed experience, both are great choices.

However, they are designed to keep you engaged: missions to complete, objectives to chase, upgrade tracks to climb, and graphics rich enough to pull your attention at every turn. That is a deliberate design choice, a good one for many players. It is just not what SimpliCity is.

SimpliCity goes the other way. There are no missions, no season pass, no store, and no artificial urgency. It runs offline, without accounts, online services, notifications, or anything trying to pull you back in. The map does not flash at you. The game does not tell you what to build next. You play because you want to shape a city and enjoy the quiet rhythm of the simulation.

_{Free download · no account · no ads · no tracking}

Simple does not mean empty

Under the simple surface, the city still has moving parts:

• residential, commercial, and industrial zones
• roads, rails, and power lines
• taxes, budget choices, and public services
• traffic, pollution, land value, and crime
• growth, decline, mistakes, and recovery

The fun is in reading the map and making small decisions. A road here. A park there. More power before the next district grows. Lower taxes when the city needs a nudge. Nothing is shouting at you, but the city is always responding.

A good game to share with a child

SimpliCity starts with gentle settings: automatic budget handling is enabled, and disasters are turned off by default. The pace is calm and the rules are readable. There is no competitive pressure and nothing to fail at quickly.

That makes it a natural choice for playing together with a younger child: you can talk through what you are building, why the traffic is backing up, or what might happen if you add a park. The simulation is honest enough to spark real questions, and slow enough to give you time to answer them.

If you want more challenge later, harder levels and disasters are still there to explore.

For players who miss slower games

SimpliCity is also for anyone who likes games that leave space to think:

• younger players learning how systems connect
• parents looking for a calmer shared game
• retro players who enjoy classic city simulations
• anyone tired of games built around attention traps

Learn more

• See what’s new
• Read the player’s guide (also in Italian)
• Deepen your knowledge with the original game manual from Internet Archive and OpenRetro
• Visit the project on GitHub for technical details and source code

SimpliCity is a hobby project and not affiliated with Electronic Arts, Maxis, or the SimCity trademark.