Microlandia, a deeply simulated city-builder gets a big game engine upgrade
26 Oct 2026 at 4:37 pm UTC By Liam Squires-HandEvery single citizen counts in Microlandia, a deeply simulated cozy-looking city-builder. And now, it should work better than ever. It also wasn't on my radar at all before…
By Liam Squires-Hand
Every single citizen counts in Microlandia, a deeply simulated cozy-looking city-builder. And now, it should work better than ever. It also wasn't on my radar at all before now, until I happened to come across it on my travels diving into the depths of Steam.
More about it:
"Microlandia is a city builder that combines a cute, classic look with a deep socioeconomic simulation under the hood, modeled after real-world research and statistics.
Build a city from the ground up
Plan a city where people will live and work. Lay down roads and a bus network. Build housing, businesses and public works of many types, each with its own functions, upsides and tradeoffs.
Every citizen counts
All residents of your city are simulated one by one. No fake crowds, no statistical approximations. Each one holds a job at a real company, pays rent to a greedy landlord, and can get sick and need a hospital with real staffing and capacity. If they go broke and jobless for long enough, they consider a career in the criminal underworld. None of this is random: it is all side effects of your choices as mayor."
The game originally released back at the end of 2025, and it was originally using web-browser tech. But, they've gone and made their own dedicated game engine for it. Seems like from their testing, it's a lot more efficient now and they still have plenty more optimizations to do yet. They said they have some ambitious plans to keep updating it long-term to keep expanding it, so hopefully this now gives them the platform to do so.
See their most recent trailer below:
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- Every citizen, household and company is simulated one by one. No fake crowds, no statistical approximations.
- Set income, sales and corporate taxes, plus fees and licenses, then live with the economy you create.
- Win or lose elections: your approval rating is the only win condition.
- A newspaper that covers your city and pins the bad news on you.
- Random incidents that test your plans: heatwaves, recessions, droughts and more.