I'm creating a new city-building game with a powerful Building Creator tool

[pedroseabramedeiros 166]

Hi everyone,

For many, many years I visited Simtropolis regularly, always hoping for that one announcement: “SimCity 5 is coming!”
Like many of you, I was deeply inspired by SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4 — and like some of you, I was also disappointed by the direction the franchise took afterward. For years, I dreamed of a game that could bring back that spark... and now, I'm trying to build it myself.

I'm an architect by profession and a long-time fan of city-building games. Last year, I finally decided to take the leap and start creating my own game — CityArchitect.

It’s a city-building game with a unique focus: not only do you design the layout of the city, but you also design the architecture of each individual building, using a powerful modular tool inspired by SimCity 3000’s Building Architect Tool — but far more flexible and easier to use.
You can mix real architectural styles (from historical to modern), combine façade elements, roofs, terraces, and decorative pieces, and create highly customized buildings that still harmonize with the city’s overall aesthetic.

The game is still in development, but I’ve just launched the Steam page and plan to release an early test version later this year. This first version will focus on the building creation tool and allow you to create small city blocks and place your custom buildings in them.
The full city simulation is still in progress — but it's evolving every week.

I’d love to hear your feedback, especially from people here who truly understand the legacy and magic of SimCity. You can also follow the development on Instagram at  @play.cityarchitect .

It would mean a lot if you could wishlist the game on Steam — it really helps spread the word!

Thanks for reading — and thank you, Simtropolis, for being such an important part of my inspiration all these years.
Let me know what you think!

  Edited June 25, 2025 by CorinaMarie  
Added clickable linky to the Steam page.

[CorinaMarie 29,856]

Very impressive looking! I'll follow along here to see how it goes.  

I love that the farm fields look like they were plowed and planted with real tractors. 

[pedroseabramedeiros 166]

51 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

Very impressive looking! I'll follow along here to see how it goes.  

I love that the farm fields look like they were plowed and planted with real tractors. 

Thanks Corina!! Haha, that's the idea, to look like real farms, and you can shape them as you like

[matias93 7,535]

Those buildings are GORGEOUS! The attention to detail and the flexibility is fantastic!

[hugues aroux 3,854]

Wow, It's... breathtaking! I just came back from your Insta... the building construction possibilities are impressive. I love textures ... I'll be following your project closely.

[CorinaMarie 29,856]

@pedroseabramedeiros

Your initial post just got the big heart (10+ positive reactions) so I've also added the Featured Gold Star too so it'll get listed in the feed on the front page as well.  

[simmering 2,721]

It really does look great, well done!

For those who want to support the project, here is the link to the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3810830/CityArchitect/
Just click on "Add to your Wishlist".


 

[Kel9509 1,476]

Wow, that looks great!  I really appreciate the SC4-inspired style!  It truly looks amazing.

To be fair, though, we have tons of city painters.  What sort of actual city-gaming elements are planned?

[pedroac20c 132]

I honestly like how the game looks, it's interesting, I'll look for it on Steam right now.

[sklis 10]

The SimCity 3000's B.A.T. was used to build iyems for use as part of the SimCity 3000 game.  Could this Tool be used to creat items for SimCity 4 as well?

[Aka 429]

Magnificent, the game looks really promising. Being able to customize buildings is a really important option I think, it will make building even more unique. Sometimes, that's what's missing in today's city-building games. And the graphics are very nice too, a bit retro (ho nostalgia) in the vein of SC3 and 4, but so much nicer than CS 1 and 2! I'll be keeping a close eye on this one!

[CryoZero 3]

Looks good! Wishlisted!

[pedroseabramedeiros 166]

6 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

@pedroseabramedeiros

Your initial post just got the big heart (10+ positive reactions) so I've also added the Featured Gold Star too so it'll get listed in the feed on the front page as well.  

Wow, thank you so much, Corina! I was honestly surprised (in the best way) when I saw the post on the Simtropolis front page — never thought I’d see my project featured like on Simtropolis! Really appreciate the support  

[pedroseabramedeiros 166]

11 hours ago, hugues aroux said:

Wow, It's... breathtaking! I just came back from your Insta... the building construction possibilities are impressive. I love textures ... I'll be following your project closely.

Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoyed the content — I’m putting a lot of effort into making the building creation tool flexible and fun to use, while keeping the visual quality high. Your support means a lot!

[nikoxlaux 253]

Very impressive 

[pedroseabramedeiros 166]

16 hours ago, matias93 said:

Those buildings are GORGEOUS! The attention to detail and the flexibility is fantastic!

Thank you so much! I’ve been working hard to make the building system both detailed and flexible — really glad you noticed and enjoyed it! 😊
 

4 hours ago, simmering said:

It really does look great, well done!

For those who want to support the project, here is the link to the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3810830/CityArchitect/
Just click on "Add to your Wishlist".


 

Thank you so much for the kind words and for sharing the link — I really appreciate the support! 🙏

 

2 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Wow, that looks great!  I really appreciate the SC4-inspired style!  It truly looks amazing.

To be fair, though, we have tons of city painters.  What sort of actual city-gaming elements are planned?

Thanks a lot! I definitely took inspiration from SC4 and SC3 for the visual tone.
Right now, I’m focusing on polishing the creative side — especially the building tool — but I’m planning to add city simulation elements like transportation, mixed uses (a single building can have multiplele uses), population demand, and even some economic systems over time. Step by step!

 

2 hours ago, pedroac20c said:

I honestly like how the game looks, it's interesting, I'll look for it on Steam right now.

Thank you! Really glad it caught your attention — and I appreciate you checking it out on Steam!

 

1 hour ago, sklis said:

The SimCity 3000's B.A.T. was used to build iyems for use as part of the SimCity 3000 game.  Could this Tool be used to creat items for SimCity 4 as well?

My tool is built entirely for CityArchitect and isn’t compatible with SimCity, but it’s definitely inspired by the BAT from SC3000. About the BAT, I don't think you can use it to create Simcity4 buildings, if I'm not wrong...

 

57 minutes ago, Aka said:

Magnificent, the game looks really promising. Being able to customize buildings is a really important option I think, it will make building even more unique. Sometimes, that's what's missing in today's city-building games. And the graphics are very nice too, a bit retro (ho nostalgia) in the vein of SC3 and 4, but so much nicer than CS 1 and 2! I'll be keeping a close eye on this one!

Thank you so much! I completely agree. Being able to create your own building, mixing up different architectural styles, can make the cities much more diverse, unique, and less repetitive. I’ll keep working to make the game as creative and satisfying as possible

[MstrFox1982 9]

Wow! This will totally flip the game for sure, in a very positive and groundbreaking way. I am so excited. I will be following this and of course partaking when the official release occurs! Keep up the great innovative work

[CorinaMarie 29,856]

2 hours ago, pedroseabramedeiros said:

Corina!

Btw, feel free to call me Cori. (It's what I go by IRL.)  

 

2 hours ago, pedroseabramedeiros said:

I was honestly surprised (in the best way) when I saw the post on the Simtropolis front page — never thought I’d see my project featured like on Simtropolis!

We feel Simtropolis is open to all city building games so you are most certainly welcome to showcase your creation here.

And, btw, it was a team effort putting your intro picture into the carousel on the front page. (My little gold star featuring merely put you in the text list of topics.) I see @simmering came along and made a proper Feature Request with the image and then @CaptCity is the one who approved it.  

 

21 hours ago, pedroseabramedeiros said:

It would mean a lot if you could wishlist the game on Steam — it really helps spread the word

Next, I was chatting with CB (@Cyclone Boom) in our private channel and he suggested making an embedded linky in your first post so I edited it to make the above part clickable using the URL simmering posted. Now any new peeps reading won't have to wait to see it a few posts later.  

[Ducio 285]

I've been dreaming of a game that includes easily designing our own buildings for a long time! Best of luck with the next step. 

[CaptCity 4,893]

5 hours ago, pedroseabramedeiros said:

I was honestly surprised (in the best way) when I saw the post on the Simtropolis front page — never thought I’d see my project featured like on Simtropolis!

 

3 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

We feel Simtropolis is open to all city building games so you are most certainly welcome to showcase your creation here.

Always great to see the fabulous creativity in projects such as this within the city building community. It's great that we can present them and follow along in their development.

[Gunzerino 26]

WOAH! That looks insane! Great job Looking forward to see more of your project soon!

[marcio1977 210]

It looks really great!
Expecting to see some carioca feelings...!

[petersonyip 136]

Your screenshots triggered my memories. 

Don't know if you heard of this - a city building game called "城市百分百". Made in Taiwan back in the 2000s I think. It never has much exposure outside Taiwan / Hong Kong though - probably never have an English version. It has a very similar art style and building customization system to yours.

Worth taking a look.  
 

[kergelen 742]

Woow! Truly impressive! 

I love the SC4 style based. It's promising. From now on I'm a new follower of your instagram account

[Ura 223]

On 25.06.2025 at 4:30 AM, pedroseabramedeiros said:

Hi everyone,

For many, many years I visited Simtropolis regularly, always hoping for that one announcement: “SimCity 5 is coming!”
Like many of you, I was deeply inspired by SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4 — and like some of you, I was also disappointed by the direction the franchise took afterward. For years, I dreamed of a game that could bring back that spark... and now, I'm trying to build it myself.

I'm an architect by profession and a long-time fan of city-building games. Last year, I finally decided to take the leap and start creating my own game — CityArchitect.

It’s a city-building game with a unique focus: not only do you design the layout of the city, but you also design the architecture of each individual building, using a powerful modular tool inspired by SimCity 3000’s Building Architect Tool — but far more flexible and easier to use.
You can mix real architectural styles (from historical to modern), combine façade elements, roofs, terraces, and decorative pieces, and create highly customized buildings that still harmonize with the city’s overall aesthetic.

The game is still in development, but I’ve just launched the Steam page and plan to release an early test version later this year. This first version will focus on the building creation tool and allow you to create small city blocks and place your custom buildings in them.
The full city simulation is still in progress — but it's evolving every week.

I’d love to hear your feedback, especially from people here who truly understand the legacy and magic of SimCity. You can also follow the development on Instagram at  @play.cityarchitect .

It would mean a lot if you could wishlist the game on Steam — it really helps spread the word!

Thanks for reading — and thank you, Simtropolis, for being such an important part of my inspiration all these years.
Let me know what you think!

That's really interesting! It looks very impressive. !!

[Ceafus 88 1,843]

On 6/24/2025 at 8:30 PM, pedroseabramedeiros said:

Hi everyone,

For many, many years I visited Simtropolis regularly, always hoping for that one announcement: “SimCity 5 is coming!”
Like many of you, I was deeply inspired by SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4 — and like some of you, I was also disappointed by the direction the franchise took afterward. For years, I dreamed of a game that could bring back that spark... and now, I'm trying to build it myself.

I'm an architect by profession and a long-time fan of city-building games. Last year, I finally decided to take the leap and start creating my own game — CityArchitect.

It’s a city-building game with a unique focus: not only do you design the layout of the city, but you also design the architecture of each individual building, using a powerful modular tool inspired by SimCity 3000’s Building Architect Tool — but far more flexible and easier to use.
You can mix real architectural styles (from historical to modern), combine façade elements, roofs, terraces, and decorative pieces, and create highly customized buildings that still harmonize with the city’s overall aesthetic.

The game is still in development, but I’ve just launched the Steam page and plan to release an early test version later this year. This first version will focus on the building creation tool and allow you to create small city blocks and place your custom buildings in them.
The full city simulation is still in progress — but it's evolving every week.

I’d love to hear your feedback, especially from people here who truly understand the legacy and magic of SimCity. You can also follow the development on Instagram at  @play.cityarchitect .

It would mean a lot if you could wishlist the game on Steam — it really helps spread the word!

Thanks for reading — and thank you, Simtropolis, for being such an important part of my inspiration all these years.
Let me know what you think!

Very very impressive!! I look forward to seeing updates!  

[matias93 7,535]

On 6/25/2025 at 4:38 PM, pedroseabramedeiros said:

My tool is built entirely for CityArchitect and isn’t compatible with SimCity, but it’s definitely inspired by the BAT from SC3000. About the BAT, I don't think you can use it to create Simcity4 buildings, if I'm not wrong...

There's a BAT for SimCity 4, which works with gMax (and was later ported to 3DSmax), but considering that all of your buildings are more or less rectangular prisms (or composites of a handful of them), they should be relatively easy to port to SimCity 4 directly as FSH images and S3D simple models. Maybe @rivit could say with more certitude.

[rivit 3,402]

@matias93 - I agree it sounds plausible. The buildings that @justforfun makes are all made that way (by hand) - essentially a scaffold mesh with textures over them just like automata are made. They would not have self shadowing or cast shadows in SC4 but that doesnt mean they couldn't (be made to) look like they do.

Looking at the 3d-ness of the pics at the top of this post the meshes will be mostly be more complicated than one prism - but the principle remains intact - assembly from relatively simple meshes.  In the end it degree of difficulty depends on their internal representation in the building tool, which looks quite slick, and a willingness on the part of the author to subvert its intent from his own (game) uses for it.

I can imagine win-win sharing scenarios of ideas/content going both ways though. For instance, apart from S3D and FSH for SC4,  if you can get buildings into an .obj mesh format with or without textures then they become exportable to a number of 3D rendering tools tools including Blender. Thence going the other way with meshes made in the right way isn't necessarily impossible either.

Be sure though, between brainstorm and implementation is a fair bit of software work. 

[pedroseabramedeiros 166]

On 25/06/2025 at 6:08 PM, MstrFox1982 said:

Wow! This will totally flip the game for sure, in a very positive and groundbreaking way. I am so excited. I will be following this and of course partaking when the official release occurs! Keep up the great innovative work

That means a lot, thank you!! I’m really excited to keep improving it and get a solid version out soon 😄 

 

On 25/06/2025 at 7:48 PM, CorinaMarie said:

And, btw, it was a team effort putting your intro picture into the carousel on the front page

Thanks Cori!! The intro picture looks great! And thanks everyone from Simtropolis too @simmering, @CaptCity and @Cyclone Boom 😀😀😀

 

On 25/06/2025 at 10:57 PM, CaptCity said:

Always great to see the fabulous creativity in projects such as this within the city building community. It's great that we can present them and follow along in their development.

Totally agree — the creativity in this community is inspiring. Really glad to share it here!

 

On 25/06/2025 at 10:20 PM, Ducio said:

I've been dreaming of a game that includes easily designing our own buildings for a long time! Best of luck with the next step. 

Same here — Since I was a kid I always wished for that too. Hope this project gets close to that dream! 😀

 

On 25/06/2025 at 11:21 PM, Gunzerino said:

WOAH! That looks insane! Great job Looking forward to see more of your project soon!

Thank you!! Can’t wait to show more soon 😄
 

On 26/06/2025 at 12:19 AM, marcio1977 said:

It looks really great!
Expecting to see some carioca feelings...!

Hahaha For a moment I didn't know how you knew I'm from Brazil too. Saudações irmão 💚💛

 

On 26/06/2025 at 7:17 AM, petersonyip said:

Your screenshots triggered my memories. 

Don't know if you heard of this - a city building game called "城市百分百". Made in Taiwan back in the 2000s I think. It never has much exposure outside Taiwan / Hong Kong though - probably never have an English version. It has a very similar art style and building customization system to yours.

Worth taking a look.  
 

Whoa, I hadn’t heard of it — just looked it up! Super interesting. Love discovering those lesser-known gems. Where can we find it to play??

 

On 26/06/2025 at 8:04 AM, kergelen said:

Woow! Truly impressive! 

I love the SC4 style based. It's promising. From now on I'm a new follower of your instagram account

Really appreciate it — and thanks for following on Instagram!

 

15 hours ago, matias93 said:

There's a BAT for SimCity 4, which works with gMax (and was later ported to 3DSmax), but considering that all of your buildings are more or less rectangular prisms (or composites of a handful of them), they should be relatively easy to port to SimCity 4 directly as FSH images and S3D simple models. Maybe @rivit could say with more certitude.

 

13 hours ago, rivit said:

@matias93 - I agree it sounds plausible. The buildings that @justforfun makes are all made that way (by hand) - essentially a scaffold mesh with textures over them just like automata are made. They would not have self shadowing or cast shadows in SC4 but that doesnt mean they couldn't (be made to) look like they do.

Looking at the 3d-ness of the pics at the top of this post the meshes will be mostly be more complicated than one prism - but the principle remains intact - assembly from relatively simple meshes.  In the end it degree of difficulty depends on their internal representation in the building tool, which looks quite slick, and a willingness on the part of the author to subvert its intent from his own (game) uses for it.

I can imagine win-win sharing scenarios of ideas/content going both ways though. For instance, apart from S3D and FSH for SC4,  if you can get buildings into an .obj mesh format with or without textures then they become exportable to a number of 3D rendering tools tools including Blender. Thence going the other way with meshes made in the right way isn't necessarily impossible either.

Be sure though, between brainstorm and implementation is a fair bit of software work. 

I’m not sure how well buildings from my game could be translated into SC4, since CityArchitect is entirely 2D while SC4 uses 3D models. Right now, I can only export PNG images of the buildings, so I don’t know if that would be enough for the SC4 BAT system. But if there’s a way to make it work, I’d be all for it! I’d love to see the buildings used in other games too — definitely not against the idea, quite the opposite.

[pedroseabramedeiros 166]

Just wanted to share some new screenshots of the city-building interface I’ve been working on, along with a few of the construction options that are already available in the game