12 Awesome Management Games for Armchair Tycoons
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Locked UpPrison ArchitectRead more
El PresidenteTropico 6Read more
Planet HarvestSatisfactoryRead more
Funny BoneTwo Point HospitalRead more
Before kids and other responsibilities, when I regularly gamed into the wee hours, playing management sims was one of my favorite things to do. I spent countless days building in Sim Tower, SimCity, and Theme Park. I ran a studio in The Movies, managed a menagerie in Zoo Tycoon, and constructed the pyramids in Pharaoh. My villainous lairs in Dungeon Keeper 2 and Evil Genius were beyond compare. I built impregnable castles in Stronghold, and I sank days into Game Dev Story—a game about making games.
These games are the perfect foil to multiplayer madness, offering a table of absorbing escapism for one. As the kids have grown, I’ve found myself with a little more time to scratch that management and building itch, and these are the games that have sucked me back in.
A note for potential players: While there are often console versions, you tend to get better controls and greater depth if you play on PC.
Updated December 2021: Added Satisfactory, Jurassic World Evolution 2, and Timberborn. Also updated pricing throughout.
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- Courtesy of Paradox Interactive
Locked Up
Prison ArchitectDesigning and running a successful prison isn’t easy. Take the warden’s job and you must build cells and facilities to cater to all manner of depraved criminals intent on violence or escape. Run a punishing regime with tiny cells and regular shakedowns or rehabilitate prisoners through learning programs and creature comforts. Building different prisons to test your ideas is a lot of fun, but it can be tough to maintain order and turn a profit. Even if you cultivate a network of informants, the odd shower shanking is inevitable. The base game is great, just beware of disappointing DLC.
- Tropico 6 via Simon Hill
El Presidente
Tropico 6Can you turn a tropical backwater into a major player on the world stage? Cast as a dictator, you must decide what’s best for your people and guide your fledgling nation to throw off its colonial overlords, survive the world wars and the Cold War, and reach the modern day.
The satirical political simulation sits atop a classic city builder that challenges you to extract resources, manufacture profitable goods, and keep your discontented citizens happy—or find a way to silence them. The series formula hasn’t evolved much, but it’s an interesting mix of ideas that will have you striving to build a tropical paradise and line your pockets in the process.
- Courtesy of Coffee Stain Studios
Planet Harvest
SatisfactorySet in a vague, dystopian future, Satisfactory drops you on an alien planet. You're tasked with building a gigantic machine to suck the resources out for a soulless corporation. Finding what you need, mining or extracting it, and combining resources to make new things depends upon exploration and the construction of smelters and manufacturing units linked by pipes, conveyor belts, and power lines. It’s a puzzle with constantly shifting goals that makes you repeatedly realize what you just built was stupid and inefficient because you’ve already thought of a better way to do it.
Billing it as a 3D Factorio is partially accurate, but that description sells it short. What I was unprepared for is just how beautiful the game is. Playing in first-person makes factory design tougher in sometimes frustrating ways, but that’s eclipsed by the joy of exploring alien worlds teeming with exotic wildlife. There are also Minecraft vibes to the lonely struggle for survival and the incredible satisfaction of successfully designing and building something increasingly complex at your own pace. While Satisfactory is still officially in early access it has been in development since 2016, and the single-player experience is surprisingly polished.
- Courtesy of Two Point Studios
Funny Bone
Two Point HospitalTaking clear inspiration from Theme Hospital, which I played to death, Two Point Hospital strikes a similar comedic tone with silly afflictions from Bed Face and Freudian Lips to Leopard Skin and Jazz Hand. The frivolity helps keep this hospital management simulation from getting too serious.
Tasked with running struggling hospitals, you must build treatment rooms, wards, and other facilities and staff them properly as you race to diagnose and treat an ever-growing intake of needy patients. It never gets very challenging, and some aspects feel half-baked, but sometimes you want something lighthearted. There’s lots of DLC, but it’s a mixed bag (Bigfoot is the best).
- Courtesy of 11 Bit Studios
Chill City
FrostpunkWonderfully bleak and utterly unforgiving, this game tasks you with battling for survival as you carve a city out of the frozen wastelands of a doomed late 19th-century earth. Try to extract resources, provide shelter, and research new technologies as you struggle to keep your citizens warm in circular cities built around a central heat source. The steampunk styling and haunting score combine to give this game a unique identity. Challenging gameplay has you constantly teetering on the brink of oblivion, with the fate of humanity weighing heavy on your shoulders, and it’s so satisfying when you manage to pull through. A sequel is in development.
- Courtesy of Sports Interactive
Soccer Strategy
Football Manager 2021Few games blur the line between fantasy and reality as effectively as Football Manager. The challenge of assembling a soccer team and guiding them to glory is mammoth and has grown increasingly complex as this series has matured. The stats and data on players are accurate enough that pro coaches have reportedly used it, and everyone with a fondness for the beautiful game is susceptible to its charms.
Developer Sports Interactive first found success with the Championship Manager series before splitting with publisher Eidos. The latest Football Manager is easily the most complete management simulation around, but it can become all-consuming. If soccer isn’t your thing, try the Out of the Park Baseball series.
- Ludeon Studios via Simon Hill
Space Colony
RimworldI am a Rimworld addict. Sometimes it stops me from trying other games because anything vaguely reminiscent just makes me want to play Rimworld. It combines the challenge of resource management and colony building on random alien planets with colorful characters and emergent stories.
Fans of this game who want to branch out should consider one of its inspirations, the incredibly inaccessible madness that is Dwarf Fortress and games like Going Medieval, which is a great introduction to colony sims, though it’s an early access game on Steam right now. Still, nothing nails the chaos of sci-fi colony-building like Rimworld.
- Courtesy of Frontier Developments
Dinosaur Disaster
Jurassic World Evolution 2Movie tie-ins are rarely successful, but the Jurassic Park series has long cried out for a good theme park sim. Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis was fun, but the rebooted franchise needed a park-building game of its own. The original Jurassic World Evolution featured more than 40 dinosaurs and challenged you to build and manage parks across five different islands. This sequel stirs flying and marine reptiles into the mix, taking the total number of dino species to 75, and offers a short campaign, a fun new chaos mode, and some other improvements.
Scouring the globe for fossils, you must nail DNA sequences to recreate extinct species. We know building a dinosaur park inevitably ends with someone getting eaten, but the disasters here take many forms, and the option to jump into third-person and observe dinosaurs up close adds a lot to the experience. Sadly, the park-building side of the game is still quite shallow and repetitive, but it’s the dinosaurs we’re really here for, and they look fantastic. Species have different environmental needs and genetic problems to overcome. All are beautifully animated and will keep you on your toes as you strive to keep them and your guests alive.
- Courtesy of Paradox Interactive
Urban Sprawl
Cities: SkylinesIt may be a few years old, but this is still the reigning champion of city builders after the SimCity series fell into disrepair. This open-ended city construction simulation is an absorbing challenge, and it’s easy to get lost tinkering with the transport system.
The basic format of creating residential, industrial, and commercial zones and building roads and providing services will be familiar to SimCity players, but some intriguing city management options pop up as your city grows. The potential scale in the base game is awesome, several DLCs have been added over the years to provide even greater depth, and there’s a lively modding scene.
- Courtesy of Wube Software
Automation Optimization
FactorioDistilling the satisfying challenge of gathering resources and automating processes to turn them into increasingly complex machines, Factorio is frighteningly addictive. You disturb the native life as your factories grow to consume more of the planet’s resources. The drive to constantly research and refine as you optimize your factory and balance defenses to cope with increasingly tough aliens is incredibly engrossing. The best games always inspire others, and Factorio fans must also try Dyson Sphere Program, an early-access game that takes factory building interstellar.
- Courtesy of Mechanistry
Dam Droughts
TimberbornBeavers have inherited the earth, and Timberborn tasks you with organizing them to construct a smoothly running colony. The core game is familiar management fare: Collect resources, build a functioning village, research and unlock new buildings, and ensure you have enough food and water for your growing population. Droughts of random length frequently occur to provide some challenge. Luckily, beavers love to build dams.
The game mechanics don’t take long to figure out, there isn't much depth in the tech tree, and the endgame is lacking, but this is still an early-access title, after all. What you do get is a fun combination of cute beavers, vertical colony construction, and gentle engineering puzzles. Sometimes you want a relaxing management game that’s absorbing enough to occupy your frazzled mind without spilling over into stressful territory, and that’s exactly what Timberborn is.
- Courtesy of Ubisoft
Industrial Revolution
Anno 1800This gorgeously detailed city-builder throws you into 19th-century Europe and challenges you to start a village and gradually grow it to become a metropolis. To do this, you must set sail for the New World and establish colonies capable of delivering the resources you need to foster a thriving economy and drive industrialization.
As the competition for resources heats up, there’s a real-time strategy element where you must fight off competing nations. Anno 1800 provides a deeply absorbing challenge. Catering to demanding citizens, finding and securing the right resources, and managing your urban sprawl takes some serious juggling skills.
Honorable Mentions
More Management GamesIf these titles don’t grab you or you’ve already played them, there are plenty of alternatives that narrowly missed inclusion in our top picks.
For twists on theme park fun, try Parkasaurus, Planet Coaster, Parkitect, or Planet Zoo. Oxygen Not Included is another great space colony sim. Banished is a smart city builder. This War of Mine is a bleak survival sim. Dungeons 3 is as close as you’ll get to a modern Dungeon Keeper. For a blend of city-building and real-time strategy in a zombie apocalypse, try They Are Billions. For farming with RPG elements, there’s always Stardew Valley, and if that is too cutesy for you, go for Graveyard Keeper instead.
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