u/Polycrase_Tulip

So I've been going on an internet expedition looking for a specific type of city-building game, but I just couldn't find it. A bit of background for starters, I've purchased Cities: Skylines and went past the hour limit for refund waiting for the game itself to load. And so now I've been searching for months for city-building games that have these attributes (not all, but the first 2 are definitely the most important ones):

• Simple Google Maps style top-down 2D (not 2.5) view: Something that would not put as much strain on trying to load a lot of 3D graphics into the mix, while you could argue some of the attributes in the bottom equate to 3D, it should put less strain on a lot of hardware. I already see games with this map's aesthetic, but they're not actual citybuilders and just puzzle games
• Much of the CS capabilities: the most important here are the freedom of shapes we can have in stuff like roads and rails, we can make it curved, circular, twisty, and not limited to a blocky pixelated aesthetic most 2.5D citybuilders have. To make it clear here, I did not have any hate towards 2.5D pixel style citybuilder, it certainly is a good aesthetic choice, and I still love games like that, but sometimes there are places where curved roads are still needed to represent a city. A good one to have is also the option to route public transport and assign routes and specific vehicles to routes, and watch them go around the city (tbh most citybuilders already have this)
• Optional (cause if such game didn't exist, I genuinely would probably try to learn coding to make it or not depending if next semester will give me more time for myself), a simple asset maker: Make your own asset of buildings with specific shapes and connection (where parking lot is, did it have train tracks that can go through it), think of it as easy as an MS paint (modern one with layering) where we can make layer 1 (or even -1 to -2) have specific shape and layer above it to have different shape, so we can pass a road under a building second layer overhang. Also, because buildings sometimes conform to the shape of the land they inhabit, it would open up a lot more building variety

Now I know some might say something like "Just use MS Paint at that point" and while it's true that it's so simple we could do it in MS Paint, it is a lot more enjoyable to watch those public transport moves in our google map-esque cities than just building the roads, and under the same argument games like "Rule The Waves" can be substituted for spreadsheet and drawing tools

So yeah, I am pretty much looking for this kind of game; the musts are just the first 2 specifications, and I would definitely consider a game if one did exist. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I wish you all well