Best city builder with dynamic weather systems

Important takeaways

• City Builder offers a range of complexities for all skill levels, from basic to advanced playstyles.
• Weather effects play a crucial role in city building games, affecting production, survival and game challenges.
• Dealing with shelter, heat, and seasonal changes is important to city builders like Frostpunk, Rimworld, and Kenshi.

City builders have become an incredibly broad game genre in recent times. There's something inherently appealing about creating a settlement, a fortress, or even an entire society to sustain and shape both physically and ideologically, and so many titles have taken advantage of this idea recently. For beginners, there are plenty of games that provide the basics of city building without overwhelming players with a variety of stats to manage and metrics to track.

More experienced players may find themselves tackling more difficult city builder games, where the world often becomes more dangerous. Settlements of all kinds—from desolate wasteland bastions to sprawling trading cities—have all sprung from a single location to satisfy the basic human need for shelter. These games in particular show how important protection can be, with weather systems that change over time or change depending on the geography of the player's particular city.

8 Dystopian

A cozy city builder with atmospheric weather effects

• Platform: PC
• Released: June 21, 2024
• Developer: Voids Within

Dystopian is a small but sublime title that focuses on cities in the purest and most aesthetic sense. Players get to click and place buildings, resizing them up or down as they see fit. Smaller buildings will organically grow around these placements, and it becomes very easy to create a sprawling, wistful cyberpunk city.

The default weather setting alternates between clear, rainy and foggy. Organically switching between these three environments, it's a wonder to see what can be a fairly idyllic city in clear conditions turn into a dystopian city when it's foggy or become a neo-noir labyrinth in the rain.

7 Clan people

Seasons change the settlement's production

• Platform: PC
• Released: July 14, 2022
• Developer: MinMax Games Limited

Although there are some clear similarities with Rimworld to appear with this title, Clan people has made a name for itself as a more intimately focused city builder and colony sim that looks at the legacy of a single bloodline trying to survive in the Scottish Highlands.

Players can transform their settlement into any number of locations, attracting wanderers or traders as the colony becomes home to inns and markets. But regardless of the settlement's purpose, winter brings with it a bitter cold that players must prepare for. That is unless they want to see their home fall into disrepair.

6 Frostpunk 2

Cold weather is the main enemy

Frostpunk 2 is an incredibly compelling city builder that greatly changes the gameplay that made the first title so iconic, but it does so in such a way that it's still satisfying and distinct Frostpunk. While the first title focused more on meeting necessities and keeping individual workers safe, the second entry has broadened into a game about managing the politics and society of a frozen city.

One thing that has remained from the first title, however, is the relentless frost. Temperatures are constantly shifting and dynamic in this title, and players will need to manage their heat capacity accordingly, especially when a dreaded blizzard approaches.

5 Terraria

Weather changes threats to villages

Terraria is a game with a truly huge roster of NPCs, and most of them provide important or incredibly useful services to the player as they continue their journey through their pixel world – if there's room for them to move in, of course.

Especially on higher difficulties, players will need to watch out for changing weather, as windstorms and rain bring new enemy types, such as flying fish, raincoat zombies, and umbrella slimes. Some weather conditions even carry over multiple biomes, while other biomes have weather completely unique to them, further diversifying the average Terraria experience.

4 Rimworld

To survive means to adapt to different seasons

Rimworld does not, in any way, hold the player's hands. While the game does a good job of explaining the essentials, it then leaves the player to their own devices, an integral part of the story that the game prides itself on.

Weather effects such as intense cold, heat or rain can strike at any time, depending on where the player has created their colony. These effects greatly change how the farmers act, and players must ensure that they are well equipped and protected from the elements.

3 Rise To Ruins

Keeping an eye on the weather is important

Rise to Ruins is an exciting mix of a city builder and a tower defense title, where players manage their community as they would in other strategy games but then become fiercely defensive when hordes of enemies attack at night.

The fluctuating seasons bring with them temperatures that can greatly alter the productivity and conditions of the player's citizens. If the land becomes dangerously cold or hot, it can have dire consequences for the city.

2 Kenshi

There is a myriad of different weather conditions in the zones

Settlement management and construction is an essential part of Kenshi and the overall experience it provides. Players will use a variety of characters to defend and produce in their settlement if they want to survive in this hostile land.

Each zone across the continent comes with its own set of weather – or a single eternal weather. Players must watch out for dust storms, acid rain or fire bolts from the sky depending on where they wisely or unwisely chose to build their base.

1 Against the storm

The fury of the storm presents many challenges

Against the storm is an incredible blend of a roguelike and a city builder that has players battling an eternal storm to shape civilizations and reclaim lost artifacts for their (not so) benevolent queen.

The varying intensity of the storm and how it brings in new monsters and creatures to defend individual settlements against is an incredibly enticing part of the challenging gameplay that has come to define this title.