I've been idly browsing the Steam store and instantly put the brakes on a certain game and added it to the top of my wishlist. There's something about an isometric city builder with retro pixel art that immediately draws you in. Metropolis 1998 grabbed my attention after just a few screenshots.

But the more I looked, the more excited I became. Underneath the retro exterior, there is quite a bit of sophistication going on. One of the most interesting and fascinating features of [Metropolis 1998], especially for those who like to build houses in games like "The Sims 4," is that you don't just zone residential and commercial areas and wait for buildings to be built. You can design, build, and decorate your own buildings. For example... All buildings

residential, retail, restaurant, service building, you name it. Draw the perimeter, divide each room into sections, choose flooring and wall types, connect them with doors, add staircases and upper floors, and fill them with cute pixelated furniture parts: beds, chairs, lamps, dressers, houseplants, TVs, and everything else you might find in a game like "The Sims". And you can freely design and build not only houses, but office buildings, hospitals, restaurants, libraries, even police and fire stations, and everything in between. Amazing.

You don't have to build everything yourself; "Metropolis 1998" also has existing buildings that you can simply place in your city. However, even with existing buildings, you can modify and redecorate them as you wish. You can also create blueprints from your custom buildings and use them over and over again. This is a truly extensive and impressive building system, and once you have built and placed a few houses and businesses, little citizens will start driving through your town, parking their cars, buying houses, moving in, and finding jobs.

There is another promising feature that will interest anyone who likes city builders. It seems that your big city can get really big without melting your PC or slowing down performance. This is not simply due to pixel-art graphics, but because Metropolis 1998's pathfinding algorithm is capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of agents in a single city. (Learn more in this interesting developer video.) While games like "Cities: Skylines 2" and "Cities: Cities 2" and "Farthest Frontier" often have to be abandoned when cities get too big, games like "Cities: Skylines 2" and "Farthest In games like "Frontier," cities often have to be abandoned when they grow too large. [Metropolis has been in development since 2021 and does not yet have a release date, but the free demo on Steam is worth checking out. (Note: You'll want to.) The game is still a work in progress, but it's still a lot of fun to play.