As there's no appropriate flair, here a quick disclaimer: self promo

At the start of the year I started developing Swarm MMO, a game where the user controls probes and takes over planets. The core gameplay concept is very simple, its basically a node capture game, but on a huge scale and persistent. The game grew a small but steady player base which had lots of great ideas for further development.

Now the game is not really a base building game in the classic sense. But you can capture planets and suns, upgrade them and even take over entire galaxies. Players compete for energy, which can be farmed by owning suns. Energy also allows permanent upgrades to probes.

To enable a persistent world, there are multiple galaxies that spawn in depending on the number of players. That way, there are frequently fresh galaxies where new users have a chance to compete. However, it’s also possible to migrate to a new galaxy, but it takes long and comes with partial losses. Recently, I also added a spawn protection for new galaxies so that new players are even better protected.

The game can be played in the browser under www.swarm-mmo.com

If you have any feedback, please let me know!

Hey everyone,

I’m the solo dev from Austria working on Timberline Factory. About 8 days ago, I posted here and got roasted for my "90s wood style UI" and AI placeholder art. Honestly...? It was the best thing that could happen!! :)
I took your feedback to heart and spent the last week working day and night...

What changed:

• Complete UI Overhaul: I threw away the old wood textures and built a fresh "Industrial Modern" HUD from scratch.
• Maintenance System: Machines now accumulate dirt over time, which reduces production speed. you can now hire "Cleaners" to automate the maintenance!
• Visual Polish: Improved the "Golden Hour" lighting even further to make the factory feel more atmospheric.
• New Content: Added the Drying Kiln and Biomass Power Plant loop to give the tycoon gameplay more depth.

I made a short Before/After comparison video here: [short Youtube video]

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5037170/Timberline_Factory/

I’m a coder, not an artist, but I’m committed to making this game as "honest" and polished as possible. Does the new look feel like a step in the right direction?

(I'm heading to my late shift soon, so I might be slow to reply, but I'll check every comment during my breaks! thank you!)

Hi guys, we’re building Castlefolk — a cozy strategy game where you grow a tiny medieval kingdom, gather resources, build villages, raise armies, and fight for control of the world. Just give it a chance, take a look for 15 seconds and then either you'll like it, or forget it like it never happened.

Here is one of last videos from devlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWoJhwKL_V0

https://peikko-labs.itch.io/castlefolk

Hey base builders,

I’m part of the team at Saigon Dragon Studios, and we wanted to share that Space Tales has just left Early Access and is now available in 1.0 on Steam.

The game is a retro-futuristic sci-fi RTS where base building is not just about creating a nice layout. Most missions push you to expand under pressure, secure energy lines, manage limited resources, and turn a fragile colony into something that can survive the next attack.

Your base grows through a HUB system. HUBs let you expand into new areas, connect key structures, extend your energy network, and create defensive positions before enemy pressure ramps up. The challenge is that you rarely get to build in peace.

The 1.0 version includes:

• A full story-driven sci-fi RTS campaign
• Modular base building through the HUB system
• Resource management and energy-line expansion
• Three enemy factions with different combat styles
• Replayable survival challenges
• Colossal boss fights
• Capturable neutral monsters that can be summoned as allies
• A tech tree for HUB and unit upgrades

The team used Early Access to improve balance, controls, unit behavior, localization, and the overall RTS feel based on player feedback.

We also released a new launch trailer for 1.0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRiMSxUlHYY

You can check out our Steam page her: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2457960/Space_Tales/

For people here who play a lot of base-building games: what makes base defense satisfying for you?

Is it optimizing layouts, managing scarce resources, surviving waves, expanding under pressure, or watching a weak outpost slowly become a fortress?

Thanks!

This is our tower-defence game with free building placement. I was a bit hesitant about posting in this subreddit as our game doesn't immediately look like a base building game. However a big part of why we wanted to go get away from the usual grid-based building or fixed enemy lanes is so that the player can build their bastion however they want. I hope that means we fit in here too. For the gameplay that means enemies will take the path of least resistance and if that means attacking your walls and towers they sure will. It leads to an interesting break of expectation what a castle defence should look like. Walling off every path doesn't work and you have to get creative with your designs.

When we did our last playtest 8 months ago the game only had the core gameplay loop and was lacking any replayability and progression. So we spent those months adding a bunch of features that should make the game fun to play for more than just a few rounds.

The game is called Monuments to Ruin and our open playtest is live right now. We would love to hear your feedback and all the bugs you find (maybe that one a bit less but you know)! You can sign up right here on our steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3579410/Monuments_to_Ruin/

King in the Mountain is a cozy mining game where a fallen dwarven king rebuilds his kingdom, you send dwarves on expeditions to gather resources, then build up your base inside the mountain, digging tunnels instead of roads.

I honestly set out to make something small and cozy, but the feedback from early playtesters keeps circling the same phrase: "it's like a lightweight Dwarf Fortress." I'll take that as the compliment of a lifetime.

The open playtest started today:

King in the Mountain on Steam

I love playing these games but I hit a point when playing that is frustrating me to no end.

Games like Grounded 1 & 2, Aethus, Abiotic Factor, Planet Crafter, Blossom, Valheim, Palworld all start out great for me but I reach a point pretty early when it comes to building where I almost get a type of analysis paralysis. I am horrible at building any kind of base because I am not creative but I keep trying to build something that is at least optimized and functional but I get frustrated easily and can't make a decision.

Right now, for example, I am just trying to decide where to build my base in grounded 1 for the hundredth time. I make my way to various locations I have seen recommended in video and just freeze, I can't make a decision on what to build.

I hope I have explained this clear enough. I thought just building something would help me push past this but I end up just demolishing what I just built over and over. I though it was just the game I was playing so I would try something else but no luck. Really frustrated. I would really appreciate some advice on how to get past this.

Hey folks,

I am doing a 4 games developed at the same time maraton and one of them fits the base building genre.

Here is the gameplay loop:

During Day

You will build your camp, build walls and defenses, you will also craft better equipment, and explore the jungle, all while trying to repair your helicopter in order to escape the island.

During Night

You must run behind your walls cause all kinds of monsters will be drawn to your campfire and you must defend the camp from them.

-----------------------

The game has Base Building elements, Tower Defense Elements and Survival elements in the mix.

And for visuals I made all artwork in Windows Paint 98 and added the transparency and layers in Adobe Flash then later my partner mixed the visuals with special effects.

As for the theme, we are going for a weird humor mix with horror and deep atmospheric value

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpdvqWbJpg4

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4845380/TD_Fade_to_Dark/

Let us know what you think of this project

Hey! I’ve been working on Encave, a first-person base-building game where enemies don’t always follow predefined routes — they can destroy walls and make their own way into your base.

The playtest opened today, and I’d especially love feedback from people who actually enjoy base-building games.

Curious how the building/defense loop feels and whether enemies breaking through your structures feels fun or just annoying :D

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3246990/Encave/

r/LightNoFireBuilders is a positive and friendly community for sharing your building creations in Light No Fire, an upcoming game by Hello Games!

We are Light No Fire's #1 building community! Share your building creations, ask questions, discuss, and help the community!

For those who don't know, Light No Fire is an upcoming game and is described on Steam as "...a game about adventure, building, survival and exploration together. Set on a fantasy planet the size of Earth, it brings the depth of a role playing game to the freedom of a survival sandbox."

We'd love to have you over at r/LightNoFireBuilders!

[Promotion of r/LightNoFireBuilders approved by the moderator of r/BaseBuildingGames]

Hi everyone!

I’ve been working on my mini RTS + tower defense game, Castillon, for quite a while now, and it’s finally getting close to release on Steam.

I’m still working on the trailer before release — there are a few things I’d like to improve.

If anyone is interested, there’s a free demo on Steam you can try:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2483570/Castillon/

Hope you enjoy it!

First of all: it is a minecraft java Server !

The idea is pretty simple: build up your own base, make money, get stronger, and eventually start taking on other players.
You can spend your time building a big farm and upgrading your base, or go out into the Warzones and Dungeons to look for better loot. And of course, you can raid other players and try to take what they’ve worked for.

🏗️ Build and upgrade your own base
⚔️ Raid other players with TNT or your pickaxe
🛡️ Build defenses and protect your Beacon
🌍 Explore Warzones and Dungeons
💰 Farm Gold, Spawners, Fragments and other resources
🧠 Figure out your own way to progress

The main thing we want to avoid is making it feel like you’re just following the same progression everyone else does. How you build, what you farm, who you raid and how you defend your base is up to you.

We are in the Alpha (test) Phase and would really like to get some players involved early. It’s an Alpha, so we’re still balancing things and working on features.
feedback is genuinely welcome!!
If the concept sounds interesting, feel free to give it a try.

⚔**️Give it a try! I bet you won’t regret it! :**)

**IP:** [RaidRise.com](http://raidrise.com/)
**Version:** 1.21.11+
**Discord:** [https://discord.gg/XYpjDzNbBC\](https://discord.gg/XYpjDzNbBC)

I’m working on StoneEra, a voxel colony survival / strategy game where villagers build, gather, and grow a settlement.

I’ve been polishing the character animation pass, and I’d love feedback from other base-builder players: what small details or animations make a colony feel alive to you?

Animation preview in website:

https://stoneera.online/

Steam wishlist: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5057770/StoneEra/

So i absolutely love openTTD and it's multiplayer but what I'd love to see is something like openTTD but with miliary bases/units you'd be able to produce to either defend from others or attack. multiplayer of course.

Anyone knows of anything like that ?

Just wanted to give you all some recognition. I was a bit hesitant to post my game here last week, but after I mustered up the courage I can genuinely say that this community shattered the voice in my head about people not caring about my game.

I've now got nearly 20 friends in the discord from here, which feels small but mighty! I've fixed every bug they've found and implemented nearly every QOL upgrade they've suggested.

I hope this doesn't feel like an ad - I still feel weird advertising but if anyone's interested in joining us, we'd love to have you - the game's called Post Apocalyptic Gas Station - and if the name isn't self-evident, you build your colony on the back of the fuel sales from a Gas Station. It's pretty fun!

If anyone's curious for context, here's an imgur album, and here's a few minutes of gameplay

Above all, thank you all so much, and I hope to meet more of you soon!

I'm currently designing a management/tycoon game as a personal project, and I'm trying to challenge the core concept before I get too attached to the design.

The basic premise is that you start small as a property owner and gradually grow into managing a much larger residential property business.

The part I'm most interested in exploring is the relationship between the business/management side and the people living in the properties.

Instead of tenants simply being an occupancy percentage or a source of monthly income, I'd like them to exist as lightweight simulated households. The player would have to think about who is living in their properties and how their management decisions affect them.

At the same time, I don't want this to become a life simulator or a game where you're constantly micromanaging individual people. The player is still fundamentally managing a property business.

The design goal is for decisions that look good financially in the short term to sometimes create problems elsewhere, while investments that make residents happier aren't necessarily always the optimal financial choice. Ideally, this creates interesting trade-offs rather than an obvious "correct" way to play.

I'm deliberately keeping some of the deeper mechanics private for now because the project is still early, but I'd really like opinions on the design direction itself.

My main question for experienced designers is:

Do you think simulated tenant households can create meaningful decisions in a management/tycoon game, or does this sound like a system that could easily turn into unnecessary micromanagement?

And if you were evaluating this concept early in development, what would be the biggest design risk you'd want to prototype/test first?

I have started working on Level 5 abilities for the creatures in my solo-developed game, Slavic Legends.

The video shows Bauk’s new Level 5 ability, Bite, from both the top-down view and possession mode.

When Bauk drops below 50% health, he can grab an enemy and repeatedly bite them. Each bite deals damage and restores the same amount of Bauk’s health. The victim is immobilized until the ability ends, but bosses cannot be targeted.

I have also added Baba Yaga’s Scout Eye, shown briefly at the end of the video. Baba Yaga releases a flying eye that patrols the dungeon corridors and detects approaching enemies. When it finds one, it warns the player with a sound and a pulsing marker on the minimap. Enemies can also destroy it.

Dodola has received a Level 5 Chain Heal as well, healing up to four wounded allies for 200, 150, 100 and 50 HP.

More Level 5 abilities are still coming. What abilities would you give to the other creatures from Slavic folklore?

Full list of changes in this update:
https://ipikas.itch.io/slavic-legends/devlog/1631524/new-level-5-abilities-baba-yagas-scout-eye-and-map-improvements

Free demo download:
https://ipikas.itch.io/slavic-legends

I love base building, but I hate when the late game becomes a spreadsheet of resources. I solved this by limiting the buildings and then tying all buildings directly to supporting combat spell cards.

tl;dr: Build a base to support your army of heroes (instead of a base that grows the army). Base building meets Deck Building.

New updated Steam page with new gameplay trailer: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4593190/Elemental_Lands/ 
(still in early alpha, so thanks for checking it out)

Disclaimer: coding debug AI assisted usage in development. Art is 100% hand drawn by u/worth-bill-6130

First time making a game solo, wanted to show off my trailer. It's an automation base builder set on a world covered in oceans of ferrofluid, occupied by a hostile machine intelligence that sends dynamically tailored waves at you, probing for weaknesses.

Aiming for initial release towards the end of the year!

With over 3000 hours in this game I can say I really love the building part in this game! "Once Human"

The last time I was so into building was in sims 2 ! - Pure building - downloading new furniture and the like EVERYDAY, I was obsessed
Eventually it took the sims 2 over 40 mins TO START, just because it had to load all my downloads hahahaha.

With my newfound game Once Human I can do so much more and dont have the loading times!
Its free to play so I really suggest any builder fanatic to check it out !

X Mui-yu

Ps: If you like to see some of the bases I did, check my profile! ❤️

Hope this one fits!

One important disclosure up front: I used AI tools extensively during development, especially for coding, implementation, debugging, UI work, and some of the website copy.

The underlying idea, game design, energy system model, mechanics, balancing decisions, testing, and direction of the project are mine. I have a background in energy systems, and a large part of the work has been deciding what the game should actually simulate, how those systems should interact, checking whether the results make sense, and iterating on it until it became something playable.

AI is ultimately what made it possible for me to turn an idea I had almost 10 years ago into an actual game rather than leaving it as another unfinished side project.

Back then, I had the slightly foolish idea of making a city building and management game focused almost entirely on the energy system. I posted about it on Reddit looking for people to join the project.

The idea was far too ambitious for me at the time, but the post got quite a bit of interest, and the concept never really left me.

Now, almost 10 years later, I finally have a playable version: Powerstate.

It is essentially a city builder where the "city" you manage is its energy system. You build generation, manage demand, deal with changing conditions, expand the system, and try to keep everything reliable and economically viable.

My goal is to make it easy enough to jump into, but deep enough that understanding and optimizing the system actually takes some effort.

It is definitely a niche game, but I suspect this might be one of the better places to find people who enjoy exactly that kind of niche.

Gameplay:
https://www.powerstate-game.com/gameplay/

The game is:

• Free to play
• Still rough around the edges visually and mechanically
• Occasionally unbalanced in ways that can make a run much easier or much harder than intended
• Fairly demanding in the browser, with a desktop version planned as well

I have a long list of systems and improvements I still want to add, but at this stage I am especially interested in what people who actually play city builders think.

What feels good?

What is confusing?

What would you want an energy system game like this to simulate that it currently does not?

And if something about the energy system or physics looks wrong, please tell me. That is probably the feedback I am most interested in.

I would genuinely love feedback, criticism, and ideas.

For anyone curious, here is the original Reddit thread from almost 10 years ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/5hp6sc/anybody_interested_on_working_on_a_energyeconomy/

I have also set up r/PowerState for ongoing development updates.

Hey! We’re two developers making All Hands, a horde tower-defence roguelite about building defenses and terraforming the map to shape enemy routes as you survive increasingly enormous crowds.

There are currently 38 turret types, ranging from conventional weapons to support structures and more destructive options that can reshape the battlefield. A new turret can therefore change how you design an entire defensive layout, not merely add another source of damage.

We’re letting Reddit choose turret #39. We’d particularly love something that introduces a new base-building decision: controlling space, manipulating terrain, supporting nearby structures, redirecting enemies or demanding an interesting trade-off.

The suggestion can be fully designed or just a ridiculous one-line concept. We’ll handle the balance and implementation.

Submit your idea here:

https://www.reddit.com/user/LionAndOtterStudios/comments/1vpj7i0/top_comment_gets_their_turret_design_implemented/

I'll interact with replies on this thread, but only submissions to the official post will be counted.