Have you ever spent hours building something in a game, only to realize that one tiny mistake could ruin the entire design?
That's basically the experience I'm trying to create with MineEngineer.

For the past 4 years, I've been developing this game completely alone. It's a 2D space engineering survival game that combines the freedom of Terraria, the engineering complexity of Space Engineers, and the automation possibilities of Factorio.

But instead of simply placing blocks to make a spaceship look cool, I wanted every single block to have an actual purpose.

Imagine building a massive mining ship. You install drills, connect them to conveyors, add refineries to process the ore, assemblers to manufacture components, batteries to power everything, and thrusters to move the whole thing around.

After hours of work, your ship is finally ready.
You fly toward an asteroid, activate your mining systems, and everything works perfectly.
Until you accidentally crash into the asteroid.
One of your conveyors breaks, the refinery stops receiving ore, your power system gets damaged, and suddenly your beautiful automated mining ship is just a very expensive piece of space junk.
And that's exactly what I love about this kind of game.

There are already more than 200 interconnected systems in MineEngineer, including electricity, fuel, oxygen, conveyors, automation, programmable blocks, and much more. You can build anything from tiny survival pods to enormous battleships, automated factories, drones, and even walking mechas.

Everything is destructible, ships can split into separate pieces, and every creation interacts with the game's physics.

I've also been building a huge procedurally generated universe with planets, asteroids, gravity, enemies, and different environments. Flying across the entire world at maximum speed would take around 7 hours.

I'm now working on expanding progression, survival challenges, enemy encounters, bosses, and multiplayer to give players more reasons to keep building and improving their creations.

The thing that excites me most isn't what I've already built. It's imagining what players might create with all these systems once the game is released.

Someone might build a fully automated mining empire. Someone else might create a giant flying fortress. And I'm pretty sure someone will figure out how to build a machine that completely breaks my game.

MineEngineer already has a free demo on Steam, and you can wishlist it if you're interested. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4059710/MineEngineer/

After 4 years of working on this project, I'd really appreciate hearing what you think.
Would you enjoy a building game where designing something is relatively easy, but making it reliable and efficient is the real challenge?

Hey! Super excited to announce that my game's (Epoch Forge) demo is on track to launch in the next 2-3 days.

Just to go over some of the mechanics:

• You can say anything you want to NPCs, they remember you, and every interaction. This is the most unique part of the game - I've spent months defining personality types and making sure it actually works.
  • The game runs with a tiny local language model that runs on just about anything, and is grounded by tons of hand-written lore and world facts (example of the inner workings here - definitely not an Oblivion reference)
  • The things you say actually change the world around you - NPCs have a predefined list of actions they're allowed to take, and they can choose to trigger one of them based on your inputs.
    • Merchants can give you better prices, worse prices, or refuse to serve you altogether
    • NPCs remember everything, and will bring it up every time you speak to them, especially if they're angry about it
    • Political figures in settlements can decide to welcome you into their government or shun you
    • NPCs are aware of rumors, and they spread fast
    • They can live generate quests - for now these are mostly simple ones, and this can be done through clickable dialogue too
    • Currently implementing - ability for an NPC to become hostile, ability for guards to kick you out of an area, persuading NPCs to follow you as a companion, and more dynamic quests e.g. you ask an enchanter if he needs any Elven artifacts, he sends you to the Elven capital, and a vendor there has the artifact available
• Every random event is determined by a deity of your choice (the "Storyteller"), and you can bargain with them, ask for favors, and even see everything they know about you
  • 3 profiles - one protects your habits, one incentivizes switching them up, the last punishes you for doing them.
• Every settlement lives and grows on its own, with real needs, construction, and even political dynamics depending on the culture and race
  • CK3-inspired mechanics granting strong and weak hooks, territory expansion and dispute, demand letters, and extortion
  • Settlements you own might be forced to pay protection money by bandits, goblins, or the local faction. Consequences may include: kidnapping, robbery, fire, death, and so on.
  • A "tithe" system - a local township, a faction in a nearby cell, or bad actors can demand a weekly payment of money or goods - right now, it automatically comes out of your bank, and if you can't pay, you run into some issues.
• A full suite of industrial stuff - automated machinery, a visual storage terminal, realistic circuits (I made pong and snake ingame!) Heavily inspired by Minecraft Technic and Factorio.
• Crafting that takes place in a 3D viewport - combine potions, ingredients, etc. into a cauldron and see what happens!
  • You can combine literally anything - you can drop a mining helmet, a leaf and a stone block into a cauldron and you'll get a real potion out of it.
• Worksites like mines and farms actually work - miners go deeper and deeper into the ground, hauling their findings to the clerk, and caravans come buy things from them, or they build stuff. Every building requires certain materials which they can either buy or harvest.
• Six races, and every one changes how NPCs look at you (for better or worse) and talk to you.
  • All six will have a capital - I build these entire by hand, nothing is procedural, so I only have one done so far - the Dwarven capital, Khaldurim, which the demo takes place in
• You can have automatons and golems. Automatons can mine an area you designate, automatically hauling to chests, and they even speak in their own language, which can be decoded! Golems can haul things, throw rocks, and of course, speak with the great prose you'd expect.
• Five deities representing different domains (life, void, etc.) that you can appease, anger or ignore. There are dozens of abilities, such as:
  • Some prayers grant you a few seconds of immunity to death
  • Some let you move through solid mass
  • Some give you an aura that damages those around you, and heals you as much

If this sounds interesting, I'm genuinely looking for feedback and questions, and I'd be very excited for you to try out the full demo release on the 18th! Thank you!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5062230/Epoch_Forge/

Hey there!

I'm the solo indie dev behind CAPITAL CITY, a game about managing and expanding a single central city in an infinite world.

One of the core aspects of the game is resource management. You expand your Capital City with different types of districts (like housing, research, market etc.), each with its own resource demands. You need to meet those demands to keep your citizens happy and your districts working!

To get those resources, you'll have to venture out into the infinite world, extract raw materials and craft new goods.

Logistics is a huge part of all of this. Roads and railways have limited throughput, so they can only transport a certain amount of resources at a time.

So... to meet the demand of, lets say clothing, you build factories to produce clothing out of cotton. Those factories need a steady supply of cotton, and the finished clothes then need to be transported back to Capital City (and all of that within the throughput of your transport networks!).

With this dev update I put together a short video to demonstrate the shortage of cloth and it's fixing in the gameplay. It's just a little gameplay showcase. :)

View on economy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HKw8UXVOJM

First off, we see a residential district reporting that it's not getting enough supplies. We dig into the games statistics and production dashboards to figure out the issue, then take a closer look at our clothing factories.

Turns out, the factories themselves have a shortage of cotton, so we build some new cotton plantations to fix the shortage.

If this sounds like your kind of game, I'd really appreciate it if you checked out my Steam page! :)

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5067050/Capital_City/

General Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQFCWAR4EII

I’m working on Sovereign, a fantasy world-sim, and wanted to share an early gameplay look.

The clip moves from raising land and painting terrain to growing a settlement, walking through its streets, and dealing with raiders and a few stranger things outside town.

Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/J6h3sj8aliM

This is footage from a development build. Some art and character models are placeholders, and some sequences are sped up. The town-building footage uses an accelerated simulation.

Which part would you like a slower, closer look at?

#Sovereign #IndieGame #ShowcaseThursday

Brewhaven is a game I've been working on for years that I plan to release soon. It's a bit of a genre mashup of something like valheim, rimworld, and schedule I. You start with nothing and gradually unlock new building types, as you grow your village you recruit villagers to live in your town, but the problem is, they are very very thirsty. So you obviously have to brew a lot of drinks and open a tavern too so they can stay happy! A magic turtle lives on your head who is really good at brewing though, and enchants the beers with magic powers, so drinking a beer for you or your villagers gives a charge of whatever magic effect the beer has, so next time you're in a fight you can use that power. It's pretty cool and a bit wacky.

I hope you will check it out and wishlist it here.

Brewhaven!!!

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Hey everyone 👋

I'm the Community Manager for Kardaviik, an upcoming 3D factory automation and base-building game set in a voxel asteroid belt.

We're currently running a free, open playtest on Steam, and I'd love to invite the r/basebuildinggames community to check it out!

You can build your factory in all directions, explore procedurally generated asteroids, gather resources and gradually expand your base into something much bigger. You can also play solo or team up with friends!

We're actively looking for player feedback, so whether you've got suggestions, run into bugs, or just want to show off something you've built, we'd really appreciate you getting involved!

👉 Join the Steam Playtest: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2385970/Kardaviik/
🎥 Watch the Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEKiMgGg5kQ
💬 Discord: https://discord.gg/qDVSEYFuvj

Thanks for checking it out, and feel free to ask me anything about the game! 😊

Hey everyone, hope this is ok to post - just posting this the once

I just released a hospital builder called Bedside Manner.
I grew up LOVING classic theme hospital and wanted something with that same chaotic, quirky vibe that actually plays well on a phone or iPad.

You build out clinics, hire staff, and try to keep patient queues from spiralling out of control. Also some nods towards the classic gameplay

There are no adds or subscriptions like lots of others

Most of the game free to try out:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bedside-manor-hospital-tycoon/id6818650368

If you end up liking it, I set up a $0.99 sale link you can claim here 20K codes available:
https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6818650368&code=99SALE

Let me know what you think if you give it a spin :)

Environment demo

https://youtu.be/nlFixaHWujQ?si=14nNfCDZK9V87gnG

First person dwarf colony sim with light RPG elements, tied into a deep historical/politcal simulator.

That's the crazy part out of the way.

Honestly though, I'm after feedback and thought's/feature discussion etc.

The obvious influences are minecraft and dwarf fortress.

Why Minecraft? Because the use of voxels for creative design and building is simple and can be relatively cheap concerning pc resources. And I feel like a first person dwarf colony sim needs to feel like you are also a dwarf, in their world, mining alongside them.

Why dwarf fortress? Mainly due to the emergent story telling that comes about from the simulation of the game. Something i hope i can emulate.

So that said, I've been working away on an early tech demo. What is mostly in game is world generation with several biomes, dynamic weather and volumetric clouds, dynamic lighting, night/day system and some basic early gameplay elements (mining, inventory, light crafting).

I'm also working on a dwarven language that will hopefully have some functional use, I certainly am no linguist however.

I'm not great at trailer making so tear it apart. Let me know your honest impressions and let me know what features you would like to see implemented. Happy to share more of a roadmap also if anyone is interested.

Karr Stavrum! (Stone holds!)

The latest Humble Bundle, called The Factory Must Grow, includes some games that would also qualify as base building such as Eden Crafters and Blossom.

Hi everyone—I'm Justin, a space enthusiast working on my first solo game, StellarForge. I've shared earlier builds here, so I wanted to give a clear update on where it stands.

The goal is a settlement you engineer: modular habitats, useful industry, and infrastructure that supports the people living there. Longer term, construction extends into orbital stations and spacecraft.

The October 13 project review records working slices around storage reporting, room/furniture controls, grow-bed resource gates and harvesting, hospital travel/reservations/treatment, and physical walls and gates. The important work now is connecting these into reliable player journeys. A passing isolated test doesn't mean a whole colony runs smoothly: continuous hospital scenarios, the complete farmer journey, save/offscreen behavior and large vehicle/ship workflows still have open issues.

I'm also building out the industrial art and a modular spacecraft-core kit. Those renders are development assets, not proof of operational ships. This isn't an announcement of a finished beta or a release date.

I'm looking for players who enjoy colony builders and can explain where a game confuses them—not just people who will say it looks nice. If you'd like to follow progress, help discuss priorities and hear when test builds are available, join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/K3MUpZjD4

Build availability and access instructions will be announced there; joining doesn't guarantee immediate access.

For your kind of base builder, what would you want a small test to prove first: clear construction/UI, reliable production, or colonists handling their daily needs? I'd rather get one loop right than call everything complete.

Hi everyone!

I'm working on The Citadel Must Hold, a pausable fantasy base-building RTS where you build an economy, fortify your city, and defend it against escalating Monster Tides. Think They Are Billions meets Warcraft, with hero-led exploration inspired by HoMM.

I just released 0.4.0, and the biggest change is the new Imp. They're individually weak, but arrive in much larger numbers, with tougher monsters mixed into the swarm. You'll also find them guarding Places of Power out in the world.

This clip shows them attacking a fortified chokepoint, along with the improved defense towers and combat effects. I've also been updating building models and making the city's visual style more consistent.

The update adds more beyond what's shown here, including new monster abilities, a Farm rework, and uncleared Places of Power sending reinforcements into future Tides.

The playtest is open on Steam. I'd love to hear how the larger swarms feel, and whether you can follow what's happening once all the towers start firing!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4891190/The_Citadel_Must_Hold/

Hi,
I've had an idea long time ago for a game inspired by WoW's Garrison and Travian, where you would have a idle city builder but not as grindy.

I tried developing it few times before using different stacks, but it never took off the structure stage. So I recently tried AI and it was big help, for getting ideas of the ground, with coding and image generation.

So, about the game:

Garrison is a slower-paced idle game. You upgrade buildings and send heroes on quests. Timers go from minutes early on to hours later, and everything progresses while you're offline. A full playthrough is meant to take several weeks.
Player can hire heroes that go on quests and gain experience and loot if successful.
Build and upgrade building, research additional benefits, craft and modify items.

https://nanthei.itch.io/garrison

Suggestions are welcome. I'm interested in feedback and what could be improved.
I'd especially like feedback on pacing. Are there dead stretches? Does it ever feel too grindy or too fast? Is it clear what to do next?

This suppose to be mobile first game, but can also be played on browser ( though the display is big ).

Hi everyone! I posted my game MESHFALL here a few weeks ago. It's an RTS where the base you build is a radio network.

You place relays to carry your signal out, extractors to mine ore, and turrets to hold the ground. Your units only take orders inside the network, so when the enemy kills a relay, everyone past it stops listening until you rebuild it.

With the latest update, the enemy has small outposts (pickets) guarding the bridges, and you have to kill one before you can build across.

I'd especially like feedback on:

- Is building out the network fun, or does it get in the way?

Good or bad is welcome.

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5415540/MESHFALL/

Free demo in the browser: https://applechr.itch.io/meshfall

Thanks!

Hi everyone! I’m the solo developer of StoneEra, a medieval voxel colony sim where you guide villagers, build a settlement, reshape the terrain and work with flowing water.

0.9.15.1 — Flow & Foundations is now available for the free Windows and macOS demo.

Waterwheels, medium and large norias, and wooden/stone channels are now available through Waterworks research (W1). In Creative mode, you can use them immediately.

This update also improves everyday colony work:

• Water-lifting wheels pump three times faster, and built channels receive water more reliably while large rivers update.
• Lift operators approach the crank from the front and handle consecutive trips better.
• Haulers use reachable positions when collecting or delivering elevated cargo.
• Wall ladders and temporary rescue access help residents reach and leave higher floors.
• Active research protects its required samples while builders can use surplus materials.
• Merchant routes, the Build menu and colony notifications have also been improved.

The demo remains untimed, with 12 research technologies and 8 interface languages.

It’s still early alpha. Building plans and the Building Editor are particularly early, so feedback and bug reports are welcome. If something goes wrong, a screenshot or save file helps me track it down.

Try the free demo on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5057770/StoneEra/

Full patch notes:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/5057770/view/711163593016475701

Thanks for taking a look!

I'm a solo developer working on Iron Expedition, a game that combines twin-stick mech combat with base building and army management.

You control a powerful mech directly on the battlefield, fighting alongside the army you build. You can expand your base, capture new resource deposits, and develop your economy to produce more units and unlock new technologies.

As you progress, you can upgrade your mech with more powerful weapons and better armor, as well as experiment with different weapons and abilities to find a playstyle that suits you.

Steam Page (demo is now live): https://store.steampowered.com/app/4446330/Iron_Expedition/

Hi all, im working on Portscape, a port building and management game. I shared a container following clip here last week, this time I wanted to show more of the building and manual controls side of it.

Full gameplay trailer

You lay out the roads, railways, quays and container yards, and connect the different parts of the port so the cargo can get from the ships to trucks and trains. You can start small and expand with more equipment and space as the port grows.

Also you can actually use the machines yourself. Take over a crane, lift a container onto a waiting tractor, or drive through the port you built. You can leave the work automated and manage from above too.

Would you take over the machines sometimes, or mostly build and manage from above?

Its still in development. You can find the steam page here if you're interested:

Portscape - Steam Page, wishlists, trailer, screenshots

As a dev I am glad to inform that Feudal Craft is released and live. We've tried really hard to make a deep enough but simple game.

Adding a Tech Tree is a big one and also a proper peasants management with their talents giving an actual bonuses that are worth to try to get.

Now it's not only bandits and animals but actual fight against other feudals that more of a look on classic RTS like Age of Empires.

Check it out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3480890/Feudal_Craft/

We're a small indie team making Expansion Protocol, a turn-based roguelite base builder on a hex map.

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

Every run gives you a quota and a deadline. Miss it and the run is over. Buildings can be rebuilt. The deadline can't be moved.

Disasters never surprise you. Solar storms, fault lines and asteroid rain are announced turns before they land, and you see exactly where. You can shield buildings and shoot asteroids down. But defense costs the same matter the quota needs, so you can't save everything. Sometimes you even let a building burn on purpose, because it pays out more on the way down.

And when you're behind on the last turns, you can overload your own buildings: double output, then they explode.

When a storm is coming and you can't shield everything, what do you save first: the buildings you love, or the ones the deadline needs?

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5171440/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=page_launch&utm_content=basebuilding

Hi goobers, it's me the guy again and I'm bored and in need of a good game to play.

It's apparently Rougelikefest on Steam and I was curious on if any of the Rogues were actually good at the base building side or of it was mostly lackluster nonsense.

Hi,

I've taken over moderation of the previously abandoned r/ManagementGames/ sub. The genre had no home and while it overlaps some other categories, it now has a designated sub again if anyone is interested in that type of game.

At a hump yard, nobody drives cars to their tracks. The train is shoved over a small hill, the conductor uncouples cars at the crest, and each cut rolls down by gravity onto its own track.

I did this job for 4 years at Kokand station in Uzbekistan. Now I'm a frontend dev, so I rebuilt the yard in 3D and turned it into a game: walk along the train, uncouple where the car colour changes, radio the driver to slow down before single cars.

Free, runs in the browser on desktop and mobile, no sign-up:

https://kokand-station-gorka.vercel.app/?lang=en

Would love feedback — especially if anything is confusing in the first minute.

Hey everyone! Here are the main changes in StoneEra Demo 0.9.15 — Life in the Colony.
This update focuses on everyday colony life: seeing the world through a resident’s eyes, keeping work moving and giving your settlement more ways to build and grow food.
Control a Resident
Take direct control with WASD and run with Shift, after a safe handoff of their work and cargo.
Through Eyes lets you follow a resident while they continue their autonomous life. Use R for free look, H to hide the HUD, Esc to return to the colony camera and F12 for clean screenshots.
Colony Work and Building
Residents arrange missing tools, materials, storage and permitted access before returning to their original task.
Task List explains blocked work. Allow Access lets residents prepare routes within a marked area, with permissions preserved across saves.
Urgent Area prioritizes ready work. Clear Area cancels orders and removes placed objects, returning recoverable resources.
Build wooden passenger lifts spanning 3–18 blocks. One worker operates the winch while another rides with a crate.
Tall building orders can add temporary lifts and scaffolds, then dismantle them and recover the planks after workers descend.
Builders reuse whole material crates for nearby blocks, and farmers plant matching plots from a single seed delivery.
Basic gathering, construction, planting and carpentry can continue by hand at half speed. Ore mining still requires a pickaxe. Early wooden construction and planting are faster.
Choose from three starter houses or your saved plans. Open Building Editor during gameplay and return to the same world.
Copy Area keeps your selection after release. Adjust its height with Y/H, copy with Enter or save it as a reusable building plan.
Food and Farming
Added blueberries, woodland mushrooms, porridge, berry pie, mushroom soup, meat stew and fish stew.
Mushroom plots mature in six game hours without irrigation. One mushroom yields 1–5 on dry soil or 1–10 with irrigation.
Fried mushrooms provide twice the food value. Small crates hold 64 raw or fried mushrooms.
One log cooks up to eight servings of mushrooms, fish, meat or porridge. Four units of flour and one log bake eight loaves. Smaller batches can start with fewer ingredients.
Ready food gathering, harvesting, hunting, fishing and cooking take priority over other permitted work.
World and Wildlife
Springs vary with the seasons and respond to water flowing through connected channels.
Waterfalls resume feeding lower river sections when their water level drops.
Mature trees attempt to spread saplings every 3–5 game days.
Wild animals breed and mature more slowly, with local population limits.
Interface and Languages
Added Japanese, bringing interface support to eight languages.
Refreshed menus organize Build, Orders, People, Stock, Craft and Research into six HUD buttons.
Menu backgrounds cycle through eleven gameplay screenshots.
Build panels leave more room for placement, and the Work table has clearer skill labels and pagination.
Improved camera rotation on ultrawide screens, mining labels and opening instructions.
Fixes and Improvements
Improved detours around blocked passages, crowded waypoints and stepped shores.
Fixed scaffold queues and dismantling situations that could strand workers.
Fixed residents getting stuck upright when going to sleep, and improved merchant approaches.
Reduced repeated movement, planning and closed-panel work.
Corrected hoe animations and builders’ workstation positioning.
Fixed a terrain texture issue that could cause horizontal stripes on Windows.
Campfires and lamps retain their physical models during daylight while their flames and embers turn off.
Building plans and Building Editor are still very early alpha, so bugs and rough edges are expected.
The Demo has unlimited play time and 12 early technologies through ore smelting, in both Normal and Creative worlds.
Full announcement on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/5057770/view/683015755528143173
Thanks for playing! If something goes wrong, your game version, OS, reproduction steps and a screenshot or short clip really help.

Hey everyone!

I'm a solo developer, and I've recently released a tiny roguelite strategy game called Shell Shower Defence.

The idea started with a simple question: what if building a military base felt more like playing Tetris?

You get a 10×10 grid, but every building comes in a randomly generated shape. You can rotate them, try to squeeze them into the remaining space, or demolish something you built half a minute ago because apparently your brilliant master plan didn't account for a power plant shaped like a potato.

Meanwhile, waves of robots keep attacking your base. Your buildings fight back automatically, so you're constantly juggling limited space, new construction, and the increasingly unpleasant consequences of your earlier architectural decisions.

There are upgrades between runs, a bit of silly military humor, and plenty of opportunities to regret your layout choices.

It's a small solo project, and my friends and playtesters (same people) have been enjoying it, so I thought it might appeal to some fellow base-building enthusiasts too!

If you're curious, here's the game ($3 on itch.io):

https://chertovskee.itch.io/shell-shower-defence

Thanks for checking it out!