A lot of genres have had a resurgence over the past five years, but none more successfully than management games. There are now more ways to direct trains, lay conveyor belts, coral visitors and profit, profit, profit than you could play in a lifetime. The question is: which of these famous timesinks is worth your time, and which of the whipsmart new hires can compete against the hagard, seen-it-all old dogs?

That’s what this list is for. These are 20 best management games you can play right now on PC, in no particular order, and updated for 2019.

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Sure, sure, Tropico games are about as indistinguishable from each other as the founding staff of a PC games website circa 2007, but I can forgive that. There’s just something about their sun-kissed, low-stakes, silly-but-not-too-silly take on city-building. Every couple of years I really feel the itch to comfort-blanket myself with one, and lo and behold, every couple of years there’s a new one. That itch? I feel it RIGHT NOW.

Alas, alack, woe is me, Tropico 6, originally billed for 2018, won’t be out this year after all. I shall have to console myself with this eerily familiar trailer instead.

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Base-building is de rigueur these days, what with all those survival games, Minecraft, Fallout 4 and now Fortnite, but before all that we had tiny top-down or isometric worlds in which we diligently built cities and dungeons and theme parks and rail networks. The central appeal of management games was and is that they give us an idealised sense of what it is like to create a game – to weave new worlds upon our screens, guided only by our imaginations, ingenuity and the limitations of the in-game taxation system. Magic, right there: the birth of your own universe.

For a while there, it looked as though the management flame was fading, choked by the low-grade tycoon games that littered supermarkets’ dusty games shelves. But this is The New Age Of PC Games, which means every near-abandoned idea of yesteryear has been revisited in thoughtful and ambitious new ways. Town sims and theme sims are now healthier and more vibrant than they’ve ever been, expanding. This round-up comprises the very best of the past and the very best of today: the twenty management games which are, by 2018 standards, most guaranteed to to consume your every waking thought.

These aren’t in any particular order, by-the-by: they are, simply, the 20 best management games. (more…)

If I were going to steal the Eiffel Tower, I’d definitely strap a giant rocket to it and launch it into the sky. Once it was airborne, I’d remotely pilot it back to my volcano lair and then park it in the Monument Chamber next to the Statue of Liberty (also rocket-propelled) and the Great Sphinx of Giza (trundles around on little wheels).

It’s not clear how El Presidente nicks the various monuments scattered around his archipelago nation in Tropico 6, but a new video shows the Eiffel Tower standing in tropical climes, as clear as can be. You’ll be able to organise raids to steal them, we’re told, but the biggest change is in the lay of the land. Rather than managing a single island, you’ll be connecting several islands together, which means you’ll need new tech and transport infrastructure to keep everything running smoothly.

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Not to let itself be out-done by Humble’s very many bundles packed with games, Bundle Stars has put together the ‘Nemesis Bundle 3‘. Unsurprisingly, this is the third iteration of the ‘Nemesis’ bundle, which collects a whole batch of games with a penchant for a little bit of the old ultra-violence. Similarly to Humble, this one is structured in a ‘pay more, get more’ format, starting from 89p / $1.

To get the whole lot you’ll have to throw down 8.89 / $9.99. That’s fifteen games total, including entries from the Tropico, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Shadowrun franchises and more. You can also get the extra bizarre FaceRig tech in the mid-tier of the bundle if you like pretending you’re a raccoon on camera among other things.

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El Presidente will return to rule an island could-be paradise with Tropico 6 [Steam page]. Publishers Kalypso Media today announced the latest in the city-building manage-o-strategy series, which is due in 2018. A new developer is taking over from Haemimont Games, who had made Tropicos 3-5, bringing new ideas including expanding across archipelagos and, er, sending agents to steal monuments like the Statue of Liberty. Well, if you’re going to run a wacky dictatorship, you may as well dream big. Here, have a cinematic announcement trailer: … [visit site to read more]