2020 was a pretty good year for management games, but nothing released in the past 12 months has impressed us enough to squeeze its way into our best management games list. Don’t worry, though – it’s only because there are already so many classics to choose from. If you’re looking for something to sink into over the holidays, check out our picks below.

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It seems a developer has managed to leverage two bits of my Ancient Egypt-related childhood nostalgia in one go today. Triskell Interactive and publisher Dotemu used an animated trailer that reminds me of famous Val Kilmer musical Prince Of Egypt to announced a 2021 remake of absolute stone cold classic citybuilder Pharaoh. Well played.

Pharaoh: A New Era was revealed as part of Gamescom this year, in the wake of the Gamescom Opening Night Live show (and we have rounded up every trailer from that for you already). The trailer is almost entirely just nice scenes of life in Ancient Egypt that bare no relation to the game, but we did get, conservatively, about five seconds of the game in action, which is enough to get me very excited.

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Management games have been enjoying a bit of a renaissance in recent years, meaning there are now even better, more efficient ways to direct trains, corral visitors, lay down conveyor belts and profit, profit, profit than ever before. To that end, we’ve put on our builder hats and constructed a list of the best management games you can play on PC in 2020. Whether you want to be a budding city planner, wannabe farm herd or survive against the elements, there’s a game for you below.

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I’m shocked that this one hasn’t already been covered in Have You Played, given that it appears on our Best Management Games Ever list, but this does mean that I get to be the one writing it now. Zeus: Master of Olympus (frequently now bundled as Acropolis with its expansion Poseidon: Master of Atlantis) is, and will probably forever remain, one of my most treasured games, let alone the specifics of genre. It carries the perfect balance of beauty, difficulty, detail, and puns. They’re Ancient Greek puns, too.

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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…)