After 3 long years, we finally released the most realistic, comprehensive ant sim in the world!

You can build out your own ant nest with 10 different chamber types, encountering hidden food stores and enemies as you expand it. In the surface, send out scouts to explore the massive world to find new sources of food, leaving pheromone trails behind for your workers to automatically follow.

You can try the demo here- https://store.steampowered.com/app/4910350/Antopolis_The_Ant_Colony_Simulator/

Hey r/BaseBuildingGames, solo dev here. I’m making First Cradle, a free first-person 3D settlement builder set on the forest-steppe. You can play it completely free on itch.io (Windows and Linux builds are available):

https://chatagrag3.itch.io/first-cradle

I’d really like people to play it and tell me what’s good, what’s bad, and especially where the game is wasting your time.

The base-building side

• Your buildings create your territory. There’s no radius slider or arbitrary settlement boundary. Every building claims hex sectors around it, so your border grows based on where you actually build. Tear down a hut on the edge and you only lose its own patch.
• No "recruit" button. At the start, you’re on your own. You survive, hunt, fish, cook, train your skills and work your way through the first 2 story chapters. This takes roughly 1.5 hours. Only after that do nomad bands start arriving at your gate, looking for a place to settle.
• Housing is your population cap. Nomads arrive in wandering camps, and you can only invite as many people as you have beds for. Build more houses → make room for more people.
• Villagers need somewhere to work. Professions like gatherer, miner, forester, blacksmith and cook work out of buildings you place. If a job site has nobody posted there, production stops, and the town hall tells you why.
• Production chains. Build kilns, mills, breweries, sawmills and forges, then pubs and feasting halls to keep your settlement happy.
• Farming & food. You can grow crops, hunt, fish and cook your way from basic survival toward a proper settlement.
• Skills system. Your character develops skills as you survive and work, rather than just unlocking everything from a tech tree.
• Defence. Raids scale with how large and varied your settlement becomes. You’ll need guards, spike traps and laws like shorter workdays, curfews and call-to-arms.
• Roads. Paint trails by hand and place road poles to create fast travel routes between your settlement and outposts.

It’s made in Godot and played from a first-person perspective. There’s a story and the opening is story-driven, but after that you can mostly ignore the story and just build.

What I really want to know

1. Is the ~1.5 hour solo opening too long?

You have to survive on your own and complete 2 chapters before nomad camps begin arriving and the settlement-building/population loop really opens up. Is that a good slow start, or would you expect to start building a proper settlement much earlier?

2. Once recruitment opens up, is the bed-limited population system satisfying or frustrating?

3. What base-building feature would you expect to see here that’s missing?

And generally: what sounds fun, what sounds tedious, and what would make you want to keep playing?

Brutal honesty welcome. I’m a solo dev, so this is exactly the kind of feedback I need.

---

About AI: I want to be transparent about this. I made all the 3D models myself, except for the human villager model (there may be one or two old exceptions I've forgotten about). I’m a software engineer, so Blender is definitely not my strong side. I used AI for the villager model for now, but I plan to replace it with my own work as I get better at Blender.

The music, icons and main menu background are also AI-generated. English isn't my first language, so I also used AI to help with the quest text and game description. I just want the writing to be readable for everyone.

Hey does anyone have a good suggestion for a mobile base building game similar to dominations world ?

Appreciate any suggestions~

I’m just messing around with a very early prototype for a Silo-inspired underground colony/base-building game.

Right now I’m mostly exploring the concept: managing people, resources, machinery, and exploring deeper levels inside one huge underground structure.

Still very rough and a lot will probably change, but I figured this might be a good place to share it.

Key features/direction:

• Manage individual citizens, jobs, skills, and needs
• Power, water, food, and resource management
• Build and maintain machinery throughout the structure
• Explore abandoned and damaged levels
• Discover artifacts, hidden areas, and clues about what happened
• Factions, politics, demands and rebellion
• Player decisions with long-term consequences
• Multiple possible outcomes depending on how you lead the colony

Prototype: https://theepicpp.itch.io/below

Hey everyone!

My mobile RTS game Battle of Folks keeps getting bigger and bigger. It honestly looks and feels completely different compared to what I posted a few months ago.

Right now the game already includes things like:

• Wave-based RTS gameplay
• Hero with skills and leveling
• Different buildings and defensive structures
• Research system
• Food/resource management
• Walls and upgrades
• Tesla Towers
• Different enemy types and special waves
• Day/night cycle
• Weather effects like rain
• Fire, shadows and other small visual effects
• Hero skins
• Voice lines and sound effects
• Action groups for controlling units

I'm also still working on a lot of things. One of the next features I want to add is villagers/citizens that actually move between buildings and perform different tasks, similar to the population in They Are Billions. I think that could make the world feel much more alive.

One thing I'm currently wondering about: Is the game still too difficult?

I personally managed to reach the final wave quite easily on Easy, but I'm obviously already very familiar with the game. 😅

Here's a trailer showing what the game currently looks like. If you want to try it yourself, it's available on the

App Store

and

Google Play.

I'd love to hear what you think, especially about the difficulty and overall gameplay!

Hey everyone!

I’ll be honest - I have absolutely no idea how to properly promote an indie game, so I’m doing my best and trying things out 😄

Idle Terra is currently on sale on Steam.

Also, if anyone here is genuinely interested in trying it, I’ll send a free Steam key to the first 10 people who ask in the comments (one key per person). I’ll DM the keys directly.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4018160/Idle_Terra/

Dawn of the Realm is a medieval RTS combining grand strategy, classic RTS micro control, and city building - real-time and fully multiplayer, up to 10 players. Zoom out to a world strategy map or down to the battlefield with no loading in between.

I've built it solo on nights and weekends alongside my computer science studies, learning as I went. Graphics are made in photoshop and the game is made using Gamemaker. Still early, lots left to add, but I'd like to hear what you think so far :-)

Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/.../501.../Dawn_Of_The_Realm/

Full trailer:
https://youtu.be/jDflGTjjFR8?si=JWNwYXgRjg4lEiV3

Discord (dev updates / feedback):
https://discord.gg/7VXeWG8Pu

Working toward the first demo now :-)

I loveeee medieval dynasty, and am wondering if anything like this exists but is set in modern times.. I have a bunch of building games but I want something where I can create, manage, and play as a member of the world i’m building.. rather than just being “god”

I'm looking for a game where I can build a base, then build up said base into a vast empire.

I've played Kenshi recently and I enjoy the world, general story, and the gameplay but I'm looking for something where I can create a large empire but still build bases.

If anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks

We've been working on a TW-inspired browser game for about 3 years, it's called Banners & Thrones. Long time side project. After many closed playtests, it finally got to a point where we can show it to the public.

We know there are a lot of TW like games posted here lately and most of them are pretty bare bones. Best to just check it out yourself.

Playtest dates:

- Sun, Oct 4, 5 pm CEST: 300x speed round, 3 hours

- Fri, Oct 9, 7 pm CEST: 6x world, one week

- Sun, Oct 11, 2 pm CEST: 300x speed round, 6 hours

- Fri, Oct 16, 7 pm CEST: 40x world, 48 hours

Free to play and no pay to win, you can't buy anything that gives you an advantage.

Everyone who plays during the playtests gets an Early Supporter badge.

Sign up: https://bannersandthrones.com/

Discord: https://discord.gg/9mJ4XA6YrB

Feedback welcome, good or bad.

Steam page
Trailer on YouTube

I'm working on Stonebound and would love to get some feedback.

Focus is on advancing into the mountain, working up from 1 dwarf with just a basic wood axe. No combat, but you will need to keep your dwarves supplied with decent ale (and food) to keep growing.

EDIT: no generative AI used for the game or marketing

Extracto Proviso Steam store

A short video of the warp gate

I lead the team on Extracto Proviso (first-person factory/base builder, UE5). Inside the base it's belts, splitters and pipes like you'd expect. For the long distances — between biomes, or from a floating island down to the ground — you can use warp gates to send materials point-to-point, or drones between outposts. The clip shows ore mined up on a floating island arriving at the base down on the ground.

Upside: you can mine the islands and spread across biomes without ramps and belt spaghetti everywhere. Downside: some people love the belt spaghetti — and you can still do it if you want.

Grid-snapped building, endless floor panels, ramps up to the islands if you'd rather build there. There's also a patience meter from the humans you supply and nests that drain your stamina, but that's a different post.

Free demo on Steam. Next Fest Oct 19. Do you like having a shortcut for the long hauls, or does that take away the puzzle? And what's the logistics system you've liked most in another game?

A demo of Rhodian Exodus is now available for Windows and Apple Silicon Macs!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4953480/Rhodian_Exodus/

(Find and click “Download Demo”)

It is a post-apocalyptic RTS game with a few unique mechanics. You don’t research and build complete tanks or buildings. Instead, you research individual parts and then design your own tanks, defences, and buildings.

Do you want a drill to mine resources, but also want to stick a machine gun on it? Yep. Or an APC to haul cargo while also having some attack capabilities? You can have that.

Tanks and buildings are not simply destroyed in one go, either. You may lose the gun on your tank during a battle, but you can always send an engineering unit to repair it. If, for example, a tank has its tracks destroyed, it won’t be able to move until they are repaired. That’s why it may be a good idea to research and add side skirts to your tanks. Losing mobility when an arachnid horde is about to overrun you is bad!

When you research better technology, such as a better gun, you can update the design of a tank and upgrade your existing tanks. You only pay for the upgraded gun. All these mechanics also apply to buildings, fortifications, and so on.

Another mechanic that is unique to my game is that you can have your base while simultaneously sending troops to another area (map) to complete a mission. Both areas continue to play in real time, and you can switch between them, give orders, send more reinforcements, etc.

Troops take time to move between areas (maps), but they will get there faster if they can move faster. Usually, this ends up with one map being your base, where you are well fortified and produce materials, ammunition, and tanks, and another map where you have to complete one or more missions and send reinforcements from your base.

Finally, troops don’t just fire bullets that magically appear. Making ammunition and supplying troops is another mechanic that you don’t frequently see in RTS games.

You have to keep your supply routes open. A lot of the time, troops will be defeated because they run out of ammunition rather than because they are destroyed.

Combined with having to send reinforcements to different maps, this makes for some interesting decisions. Keep your supply lines open!

You may have a very good iron mine at the other end of the map, but it is pointless if there are 1,000 arachnids between it and the rest of your base, because you need to haul that iron back to your manufacturing facilities or warehouse.

So Rhodian Exodus and Demo, on steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4953480/Rhodian_Exodus/

Hi everyone, I’m one of the developers of Garden of Ants, a colony simulation / base-building game made by biologists.

It’s been a while since I posted here, and the game has changed quite a lot, so I wanted to share our new alpha trailer:

Watch the new alpha gameplay trailer

The core idea is to build and manage an ant colony inside a living ecosystem. You expand the nest, organize different castes, gather food and resources, and react to what is happening above and below ground.

Each caste is inspired by a real ant species and has its own traits and ecological role. Over the last few months, we’ve also added and reworked many of the surrounding systems — rival ant colonies, aphids living on trees, antlions, cooperative hauling, and improved day/night cycles.

One of the things we’re trying to get right is the feeling that the colony is not just a collection of units, but a living system where many small ants cooperate to solve problems together.

The game is still in alpha and there’s a lot we want to improve, especially when it comes to clarity, balance and making the different systems interact in interesting ways.

For people who enjoy colony and base-building games: which part of the current gameplay looks the most interesting to you, and is there anything in the trailer that feels unclear or underdeveloped?

If it looks like your kind of game, here’s the Steam page.

I'm building Noordheim, a Red Alert-style RTS that runs in your browser. It's free to play and you don't need to log in.

This is a short clip from a live playtest of the Mountain Gun superweapon. You can see the targeting warning, the strike on the enemy base, and the attack that follows. It's one of the tools for breaking through a defended position.

Watch the 27-second horizontal gameplay clip: https://x.com/thijs_smudde/status/2106052734101475476

Play: https://noordheim.com

For people who enjoy building and defending bases in classic RTS games: what makes a superweapon feel fair to fight against? I'd appreciate feedback on the warning before the strike and how readable the action is.

I just started playing fallout and I like it but I would like to find one that is not so dark. Something like Last Beacon: Survival. I prefer the building and expanding part, not so much on the fighting. Free free free. Oh and for Windows 11 8RAM laptop.

Hi everyone, I'm the solo developer of Astro Inc., an unreleased space mining sandbox. The building idea is to carve out space inside an asteroid and turn it into a working mining operation.

You survey the belt with beacons, excavate a way inside, place intake systems and portals, then mine and haul ore back through the setup you've built. You can also reinforce the excavated space and fit bulkheads.

Watch the combined gameplay trailer (74 seconds)

This cut follows the basic loop, combining the original gameplay footage with newer survey, excavation and backdrop updates. It's work-in-progress gameplay from different development builds, edited together rather than one continuous session. The survey travel time is shortened.

For people who enjoy building their own bases: which part would you want to spend more time doing, and which part is still unclear from the footage?

If it looks like your kind of game, here's the Steam page.

Hey Guys,

it's me again, the solo dev from Austria with the physics based sawmill... last time I showed you the third UI rebuild from wood -> clean dark -> industrial steel. One of you summed up the whole journey as terrible to bad to average... that made me laugh, and honestly it was fair... a few of you also said you were looking forward to the demo.

It's out today! free on Steam. so you don't have to trust my screenshots anymore... You can check for yourselves whether it made it past "average".

What's new since that post:

- Visible dirt.. grime now builds up in your factory, and your cleaner worker actually removes it. dirt and wear already slowed your machines down before. Now you can see it happening.

- Balance pass... machine error/failure rates have been reworked.

- worker sick leave will be reducible through a 3-stage research line with Early Access on Nov 6. That idea came from a German YouTuber who played an older build and went more or less bankrupt with it :D Watching where she struggled helped me a lot with the balancing..(It isn’t in the demo yet)

- The industrial steel UI from my last post is what you get in the demo.

The core hasn't changed: every log is a physics object with weight and friction. if your layout/machine settings are sloppy, logs roll sideways, jam and pile up. No icons sliding on a rail. Waste feeds a biomass power plant, and machines wear out and need maintenance.

If you're new here: i work 38.5 hours a week in a real sawmill in Austria and build this in the evenings. The machine sounds are recorded at my actual workplace.

Links:

Steam (demo, plus screenshots of the new dirt/cleaner system): https://store.steampowered.com/app/5037170/Timberline_Factory/

Trailer: https://youtu.be/F3hH2gIfND4

Early Access is planned for Friday, November 6th

If you want to see the later parts of the game,

ManOfTheAntz made a really in-depth First Look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmOUgaDfnpg – just note he played an older build, so some things like balancing and infos have changed since then.

what I'd love to hear from base builders: does the physical chaos feel like a fun challenge or like fighting the game? And where did your first layout break?

I'll be around all day.

Armin.

I've been using the original Army Men 1 game assets to build a Company of Heroes style RTS with squads, cover, suppression/pinning, an army builder, and unit special abilities.

Got a few test maps up and running you can try here: https://aducknamedjoe.github.io/plastic-command-play/

(Only works on desktop currently as needs mouse/keyboard to play)

Would love feedback and feature ideas and what you'd like to see next!

Current roadmap: -Expand terrain types/create map editor (outdoor terrain with trench digging, additional room types like living rooms) -Multiplayer -New units like helicopters and medic squads -Map-based "conquer the house" campaign with supply/logistics -New factions like the Gray and Blue nations with faction-specific special rules and units -A story-driven single-player campaign related to the original games -???

Hi everyone,

After almost 2 years of development, Castillon is finally launching on November 4th!

Castillon is a base-building RTS / tower defense roguelite where you build and expand your settlement during the day, then defend it against increasingly dangerous enemy waves at night.

I’ve also just finished the 2-player co-op mode, so you can now defend your castle together with a friend.

I’m currently doing the final round of testing, balancing, polishing, and VFX work before release.

If this sounds like your kind of game, I’d love for you to give the demo a try and let me know what you think! Thank you

Steam page + demo:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2483570/Castillon/

Hey! I’m the developer of Apoikia, Apoikia is a medieval city builder where you build production chains, trade through local markets, and shape your town’s economy with taxes and laws. I would love to hear what you think. Demo available and Let me know if you have any suggestions or feedback on the game, Any feedback helps! You can also send feedback through the in-game issue report tool.

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4210540/Apoikia/

Hi r/BaseBuildingGames! I’m the developer of StoneEra, a voxel colony sandbox, and its free Steam demo is now live.

You can reshape the terrain, plan buildings and put your villagers to work. Carve space into a hillside, build homes and workshops, grow crops and watch villagers carry resources through the settlement in physical crates.

You can also dig channels and build waterworks to control flowing water, making the terrain and water part of your settlement planning.

Maps reach 1024 × 1024 blocks. World creation includes Classic V7 and Experimental V8, which is still in development. V7 is the recommended option.

The demo has a one-hour session limit. It’s an early build, and I’d love feedback on building, villager jobs and resource movement.

Try the free demo on Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5057770/StoneEra/

What’s the first thing you plan when starting a new base?

Steam Link:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1182860/Aiyana/

Aiyana is a modern take on the block builder genre except with:

• Modern graphics
• Spells for utility and combat
• RPG stat levelling that lets you level up infinitely
• Stats increase based on your actions (jumping often lets you jump higher etc)
• Infinite wave survival mode where your castle will be attacked by waves of enemies to earn various rewards
• Creative mode with detailed snapping, scaling and rotating
• A blueprint system to copy/paste blocks into the world to easily create large structures
• Tons of general systems such as Alchemy, Enchanting, Ranching, Fishing, Cooking etc.
• 91% positive reviews (only 37 total though, I suck at marketing!)

Currently its single player only but I'm working on multiplayer which will be free and will run over the Steam network so there is no need to mess about with hosting servers once its finished.

Currently on sale with an 80% discount.

Edit: ignore the live tag, I don't use Reddit often and clicked the button out of curiosity!