Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to SimCity, but with Permits
A free city-building game in your browser. You are the mayor. You know what the city needs. Now get it past the zoning board, the neighbors, the appeals court and the next election.
Permit Pending is a free browser-based city-building game where players take on the role of an elected mayor tasked with developing their city. Unlike traditional city simulators, projects require approval from zoning… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
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A isometric city builder in JavaScript. Contribute to victorqribeiro/isocity development by creating an account on GitHub.
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2AA
This is a weekend project that spiraled out of control. I was originally trying to get Claude to play a ROM of the SNES SimCity. I struggled with it and that led me to Micropolis (the open-sourced SimCity engine) and was able to get it to work by bolting on an API. The weekend hack turned into a headless city simulation platform where anyone can get an API key (no signup) and have their AI agent play mayor. The simulation runs the real Micropolis engine inside Cloudflare Durable Objects, one per city. Every city is public and browsable on the site. LLMs are awful at the spatial stuff, which…
Feb 2026 · hallucinatingsplines.com · its alternatives →
- 3
How well do you know your area? Test your knowledge by locating streets on a map.
2022 · backofyourhand.com · its alternatives →
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This is a little game implemented over a week of tinkering and targeting Emacs. The point is both to have fun with this kind of simulations, and also explore the "functional core / imperative shell" approach to architecture. I also developed a tile and tile effect definition DSL, which makes this even easier to extend. From this point of view it's a success: easy testing, easy extension, Gameplay-wise the simulation is too simplistic, and needs input from people interested in this kind of toys. The original Micropolis/SimSity is the last time I built a virtual city.
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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- 7
A city planning deck building game!
2015 · store.steampowered.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Match Your City, Then Destroy It!
2015 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Craft and grow your own village
2015 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
- 10
- 11
Hi HN community! We want to share AI-town, a deployable starter kit for building and customizing your own version of AI simulation - a virtual town where AI characters live, chat and socialize. Inspired by great work from the Stanford Generative Agent paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03442). A few features: - Includes a convex.dev backed server-side game engine that handles global state - Multiplayer ready. Deployment ready - 100% Typescript - Easily customizable. You can fork it, change character memories, add new sprites/tiles and you have a custom AI simulation…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
Free Real-World Intelligence: Give Your AI Real-Time Access to the Physical World. Grassland lets developers give their software an API for accessing real life environments regardless of economic, geographic or political barriers.
2019 · grassland.network · its alternatives →
- 13
San Fran Sim▲300An isometric startup-tycoon game. Ship features, squash bugs, survive the burn rate — and keep the kombucha stocked. Play free in your browser.
Jul 2026 · sanfransim.com · its alternatives →
- 14
- 15
A modern take on the classic city builder
2015 · store.steampowered.com · its alternatives →
- 16CF
2024 · city-finding-game.com · its alternatives →
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- 19IM
I've posted this game here before, hopefully a repost is fine as the game has changed quite a bit (improved AI, improved mapeditor, much quicker gameplay, etc). Game is based on JavaScript/Canvas and WebSockets. On the browser side the map is pre-rendered (as a background image), just the mobile units/buildings and animations are dynamically rendered. The lobby server is made in node.js, but the game server is C++ for performance reasons (mainly the pathfinding). I found the C++ WebSocket libraries out there to be too difficult to use so I made my own based on the rfc. Overall I…
2022 · battle-of-flags.com · its alternatives →
- 20
Construí una ciudad romana. Un juego de estrategia con población, economía y catástrofes, diseñado para el navegador y el móvil.
7d ago · tiberava.pages.dev · its alternatives →
- 21
Exists▲132Generate your own 3D worlds and team-deathmatch in minutes
2025 · exists.ai · its alternatives →
- 22
Build the metropolis of your dreams (iOS and Android)
2014 · ea.com · its alternatives →
- 23
Mojang made a free casual strategy game
2016 · store.steampowered.com · its alternatives →
- 24
A town generator that is suitable for out of the box play in any fantasy TTRPG setting. - ryceg/Eigengrau-s-Essential-Establishment-Generator
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →