r/BaseBuildingGames

Title is self explanatory. I spent probably ten or so years trying to get my friends to play co-op RTS games with me and it literally has never gone well.

It's not that they don't like the genre, I feel like most of us RTS fans find like minded people pretty quick, but the feedback I'm getting is that most of the RTS co-op games were designed to help teach someone else the game, not to have fun together. I either see clunky shared control that feels like an afterthought for the devs, or you get something like Starcraft's Archon mode: literally the exact same game, except now two people are fighting over the same units, or one person is sitting on their hands for the first ten minutes while the other plays.

I'm currently building co-op as a core feature from the ground up in The Old War to avoid all of that, but I am also starting to realize why no other studios have done this, it is a MONSTER to figure out, oh my god. I'm here to talk through what we're actually trying to do before we get too deep into it.

The problem my team is trying to solve

Most RTS co-op, in my experience, asks: "How do we let two people play the same campaign?"

I've been asking: "How do we make it so you actually care that your friend is there?"

So for context, in The Old War, you and your friend or co-op partner or whatever share a single faction. You train, upgrade, and lose a persistent army together across a long war. Every battle will either hurt or help your shared forces. If your friend loses a veteran unit you've been upgrading since the first mission, that loss is yours too. The consequences are shared, which also means the stakes are real for both of you.

What we're still figuring out

Right now the game is in a state where two people can play together, but we're working through desync issues and trying to make shared control feel smooth instead of chaotic. UI is a big question mark, how do you communicate clearly who is doing what when you're both controlling the same faction?

So here's my question to the RTS community

What actually would make co-op cooperative in an RTS for you? Is it shared resources? Divided roles? Asymmetric information? Or is it just having someone to blame when your macro slips? Anything in between? Anything and everything you can think of would be super super helpful here.

If you want to follow what we're figuring out: Wishlist on Steam, and we're going to be opening a free playtest in a few months (hopefully!) so you can try it out yourself.

Salt and Soil starts in 1609 with one family and an almost empty patch of land.

You build shelter, store food, raise livestock and gradually turn the place into a working homestead. The unusual part is that the person you start with won’t live to see the end of the run.

They grow old and die. One of their children takes over.

The buildings stay. So do the land, livestock, debts, family relationships and any bad decisions that have since become permanent infrastructure.

The run continues this way through several generations, all the way to 1900. I’m trying to make the base feel less like a layout you perfect and more like a place that each generation inherits, lives with and changes.

For people who play long base-building runs: would losing the original founder make you more attached to the settlement, or would you just want them back?

I’m Roman, the solo developer. I’m planning to open a public Steam Playtest soon, although it isn’t enabled yet.

The game can be wishlisted here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4551060/Salt_and_Soil_A_Frontier_Family_Sim/

I’m working on Encave, a PC game that mixes first-person combat, tower defense, and underground base-building.

The basic loop is:

Explore the floor
Build and expand your base.
Create corridors, rooms, chokepoints, elevators, and defensive positions.
Then fight alongside your defenses when enemies push into the structure you designed.

The part I’m most interested in is making the base matter during combat, not just before it. I don’t want the building phase to feel like placing decorations or watching numbers go up. Ideally, every corridor shape, turret position, elevator shaft, and fallback point should change how the next attack plays out.

I’m especially looking for feedback on the pitch:

Does FPS + tower defense + underground base-building immediately make sense to you?
What would you expect to see first: building clips, enemy wave clips, exploration, or before/after base-defense examples?
And for this kind of game, would you rather have more freedom to build messy creative bases, or tighter constraints that force stronger tactical decisions?

Steam link, where allowed: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3246990/Encave/

Hey everyone,

I’m the solo dev from Austria working on Timberline Factory. About 8 days ago, I posted here and got roasted for my "90s wood style UI" and AI placeholder art. Honestly...? It was the best thing that could happen!! :)
I took your feedback to heart and spent the last week working day and night...

What changed:

• Complete UI Overhaul: I threw away the old wood textures and built a fresh "Industrial Modern" HUD from scratch.
• Maintenance System: Machines now accumulate dirt over time, which reduces production speed. you can now hire "Cleaners" to automate the maintenance!
• Visual Polish: Improved the "Golden Hour" lighting even further to make the factory feel more atmospheric.
• New Content: Added the Drying Kiln and Biomass Power Plant loop to give the tycoon gameplay more depth.

I made a short Before/After comparison video here: [short Youtube video]

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5037170/Timberline_Factory/

I’m a coder, not an artist, but I’m committed to making this game as "honest" and polished as possible. Does the new look feel like a step in the right direction?

(I'm heading to my late shift soon, so I might be slow to reply, but I'll check every comment during my breaks! thank you!)

Fellow Lords of the realm,

We’ve all been there. It’s late September, you suddenly realize your single granary worker has been slacking, and your village is about to become a ghost town. You try to look up how to make clothes, but by the time you've searched a massive wiki, Cuntz has already frozen to death.

I got tired of the alt-tab panic, so I builtManor Lords Guide— a council companion designed specifically to sit quietly on your second monitor while you rule.

Our motto: Rule well. Read fast. Alt-tab back.

What’s in the ledger:

• The "Will We Starve?" Planner: A live settlement calculator. Tell it your family count, and it spits out the exact math on how much food and fuel you need banked before the snow falls. No more guessing.
• The Craftsman’s Ledger: A production chain calculator that untangles the mess of making goods. Pick an item, and it shows you the exact chain of buildings, families, and raw inputs needed to craft it.
• 218 Field-Tested Decrees: Searchable, one-line tips organized by the actual crises you’re facing (e.g., First Winter, The Cheap Spear Army, Why won't my plots upgrade?!).
• Current for Beta 0.8.097: Fully updated. Yes, the math accounts for the new cows, cheese, oats, and the Construction Yard changes.

It’s completely free, has zero account walls, and runs purely on the desire to see fewer villages perish in the snow.

May your ale runneth over, your trade routes be lucrative, and your bandits be easily crushed. Let me know if it helps your next run!

Hey base builders,

I’m part of the team at Saigon Dragon Studios, and we wanted to share that Space Tales has just left Early Access and is now available in 1.0 on Steam.

The game is a retro-futuristic sci-fi RTS where base building is not just about creating a nice layout. Most missions push you to expand under pressure, secure energy lines, manage limited resources, and turn a fragile colony into something that can survive the next attack.

Your base grows through a HUB system. HUBs let you expand into new areas, connect key structures, extend your energy network, and create defensive positions before enemy pressure ramps up. The challenge is that you rarely get to build in peace.

The 1.0 version includes:

• A full story-driven sci-fi RTS campaign
• Modular base building through the HUB system
• Resource management and energy-line expansion
• Three enemy factions with different combat styles
• Replayable survival challenges
• Colossal boss fights
• Capturable neutral monsters that can be summoned as allies
• A tech tree for HUB and unit upgrades

The team used Early Access to improve balance, controls, unit behavior, localization, and the overall RTS feel based on player feedback.

We also released a new launch trailer for 1.0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRiMSxUlHYY

You can check out our Steam page her: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2457960/Space_Tales/

For people here who play a lot of base-building games: what makes base defense satisfying for you?

Is it optimizing layouts, managing scarce resources, surviving waves, expanding under pressure, or watching a weak outpost slowly become a fortress?

Thanks!

Just wanted to give you all some recognition. I was a bit hesitant to post my game here last week, but after I mustered up the courage I can genuinely say that this community shattered the voice in my head about people not caring about my game.

I've now got nearly 20 friends in the discord from here, which feels small but mighty! I've fixed every bug they've found and implemented nearly every QOL upgrade they've suggested.

I hope this doesn't feel like an ad - I still feel weird advertising but if anyone's interested in joining us, we'd love to have you - the game's called Post Apocalyptic Gas Station - and if the name isn't self-evident, you build your colony on the back of the fuel sales from a Gas Station. It's pretty fun!

If anyone's curious for context, here's an imgur album, and here's a few minutes of gameplay

Above all, thank you all so much, and I hope to meet more of you soon!

I’d like to tell you an interesting story about the trading system I made for my colony builder game, which players unexpectedly turned into one of the game’s main features.

It started off with an annoyance I often felt when playing strategic city/colony builder games. Have you ever played a city builder and realized you are short on some resource needed to construct that particular building? At the same time, you may have a big surplus of some basic resource that you do not really need at this stage in the game. Instead of patiently waiting for your production to catch up, which isn’t particularly fun nor ideal in a game where time itself is a precious resource, I decided to create an engaging trading system where individual resources can be bought or sold by the player through trade.

Different kingdoms offer different resources, and prices and quantities vary each day depending on the kingdom and general market conditions. Because of this, you can sell resources that you have too much of to buy other resources that you need. This trading system became a mini-game that’s part of your daily routine of otherwise building and upgrading your towns, industries, farmlands, and defenses, etc. Some players in my playtests really enjoyed this system and spent a lot of time checking the available trades every single day. They compared offers between kingdoms, looked for profitable opportunities and optimized their entire economy around the market. Many players actually spent the majority of their run trading, which surprised me. Over time, this system scales and you unlock more merchants and resources to trade with, which engaged these players even more.

While this rather simple system has a surprising amount of strategic depth as is, I decided to develop it a bit further. I coded a simple supply/demand system that dynamically adapts prices and quantities depending on world events that shift the price equilibrium. For example, a large iron mine may collapse in a kingdom, which greatly reduces the quantity available for trade and temporarily spikes the price of iron. This incentivizes you to try and increase your own iron production to take home some heavy profits that you can reinvest in your growing Kingdom. This is a feature I’m experimenting with and would love to hear your thoughts about it.

Sounds fun? You can read more about Kingdom Isles on Steam here. Demo comes out soon. Thanks for reading.

TL;DR: Kingdom Isles is a survival colony builder where trading resources with other kingdoms became an unexpectedly deep part of the game after play testers loved it. Prices and availability change daily based on the kingdom and world events, creating opportunities to trade smart, adapt your economy, and profit. This turned the trading mechanic into a game within the game. 

I've been sharing the development of my solo space game for a while without actually announcing what it's called. So, I guess it's time. The game is called Atlas Gate. 

 I've spent a lot of time building the construction systems for Atlas Gate, but this week I've started connecting the station itself to the simulation.

The modules you build are beginning to determine things like power, population, research and credits, with the station updating as it operates. There's still a ton left to build, but it's nice finally reaching the point where expanding the station is becoming more than just making it bigger.

I also started a video series titled Orbital Log showing the current build in action. I'm planning to make these regularly as development continues, with different stations, gameplay reveals, locations over Earth, and tracks from the game's soundtrack.

Here's Orbital Log #001, which features gameplay footage of a large orbital station above Earth with a track from the Atlas Gate soundtrack. 

https://youtu.be/uN2b1dPJDD4

Hello there!

Earlier this year, the company I worked at for nearly 13 years, Armature (developer of Resident Evil 4 VR) was closed down by Meta. I, and all of my coworkers lost our jobs.

Instead of joining this horrendous job market, my wife convinced me to finally follow my childhood dream of making my own indie game, and well, here we are!

Ski-E-O! is a cozy Ski Resort Tycoon game inspired by Roller Coaster Tycoon and other early tycoon titles. I wanted to strike a balance between relaxing, cozy gameplay, and deep management simulation.

You start with a few buildings and around 100 guests, and as you level up, you can build a legendary resort with hundreds of buildings and thousands of skiers.

I'd love the feedback of this community.

Demo + Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4493130/SkiEO_Ski_Resort_Tycoon/

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VVm7LKiwNE

Hope this one fits!

One important disclosure up front: I used AI tools extensively during development, especially for coding, implementation, debugging, UI work, and some of the website copy.

The underlying idea, game design, energy system model, mechanics, balancing decisions, testing, and direction of the project are mine. I have a background in energy systems, and a large part of the work has been deciding what the game should actually simulate, how those systems should interact, checking whether the results make sense, and iterating on it until it became something playable.

AI is ultimately what made it possible for me to turn an idea I had almost 10 years ago into an actual game rather than leaving it as another unfinished side project.

Back then, I had the slightly foolish idea of making a city building and management game focused almost entirely on the energy system. I posted about it on Reddit looking for people to join the project.

The idea was far too ambitious for me at the time, but the post got quite a bit of interest, and the concept never really left me.

Now, almost 10 years later, I finally have a playable version: Powerstate.

It is essentially a city builder where the "city" you manage is its energy system. You build generation, manage demand, deal with changing conditions, expand the system, and try to keep everything reliable and economically viable.

My goal is to make it easy enough to jump into, but deep enough that understanding and optimizing the system actually takes some effort.

It is definitely a niche game, but I suspect this might be one of the better places to find people who enjoy exactly that kind of niche.

Gameplay:
https://www.powerstate-game.com/gameplay/

The game is:

• Free to play
• Still rough around the edges visually and mechanically
• Occasionally unbalanced in ways that can make a run much easier or much harder than intended
• Fairly demanding in the browser, with a desktop version planned as well

I have a long list of systems and improvements I still want to add, but at this stage I am especially interested in what people who actually play city builders think.

What feels good?

What is confusing?

What would you want an energy system game like this to simulate that it currently does not?

And if something about the energy system or physics looks wrong, please tell me. That is probably the feedback I am most interested in.

I would genuinely love feedback, criticism, and ideas.

For anyone curious, here is the original Reddit thread from almost 10 years ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/5hp6sc/anybody_interested_on_working_on_a_energyeconomy/

I have also set up r/PowerState for ongoing development updates.

Hi everyone,

We’re starting a series of devlogs to take a closer look at Pale Tide’s core gameplay loop and the systems behind it.

For this first article, we wanted to focus on a simple but important moment: leaving the bunker.

In Pale Tide, every expedition begins with preparation. Before stepping outside, you decide what to bring, what to leave behind, and how much you are willing to risk for the people waiting in the bunker.

What you bring outside may keep you alive. What you bring back may keep everyone alive.

No so quiet...

Preparing your backpack

Before heading outside, you prepare your inventory. Food, water, medkits, ammunition. The more you take with you, the longer you may be able to survive outside. But every item also has weight, and every item you bring is something you could lose if the run goes wrong.

An empty backpack gives you more room to bring resources back to the bunker, but it also makes the expedition more dangerous. A full backpack gives you more comfort and more options, but it raises the stakes if you die, make too much noise, or get caught in a bad situation.

That is one of the first decisions we want players to think about before every run: Are you preparing to survive, or are you making space for what the bunker needs?

Bunker inventory

The last radio frequency

Your bunker storage will not always have everything you need. Before leaving, you may also be able to use the radio to trade for missing supplies. The radio relays warnings and trading messages from other survivors still using the national frequency.

It is a practical tool, but also part of the atmosphere we want for Pale Tide. The world outside is broken, but not completely silent. Somewhere out there, other people are still trying to survive too.

Choosing where to go

At the beginning of the game, you will only have access to the first zone. As you progress through the questline, new areas will unlock through skills, technologies, and progression. But reaching a new zone does not mean you should rush into it right away.

In Pale Tide, moving forward too quickly can be dangerous. Taking time to gear up, gather supplies, improve your bunker, and prepare properly can be the difference between a successful expedition and a backpack left behind in the wrong place.

The outside world rewards preparation and decisions.

Exploring

Noise is a risk

Good gear improves your chances, but staying alive still depends on how you move, how much noise you make, and when you choose to fight or avoid danger. If you are careless, and especially if you are noisy, the infected will notice. Noise can turn a quiet supply expedition into a fight very quickly.

Sometimes, that might be intentional. If you are confident in your weapons, drawing infected toward you can be a way to clear an area or create an opening. But every fight has a cost. You need to stay mindful of your ammo, health, time, supplies, and the attention you attract.

We do not want combat to feel like the only answer. Sometimes fighting is the right call. Sometimes sneaking through is smarter. Sometimes the best decision is to extract before the situation gets worse.

Get ready for some troubles

Supplies do not last forever

When you are outside, food and water are among the most important resources to look for.

You may eventually build up a stockpile, hopefully. But the bunker is not just a storage room. Survivors consume resources. Every person you bring back can help your community, but they also depend on the supplies you manage to recover.

This is one of the reasons every expedition matters. You are not just filling an inventory. You are trying to keep a group of people alive long enough to reach something better.

We wanted to add this extra decision-making layer to make the game more strategic and deeper.

Looting

Good boy, great backup!

Your dog is more than a companion during expeditions. Some of his features are still being refined, but the goal is for him to play an active role during expeditions. He may help you track items, point you toward survivors, or even draw infected attention so you can sneak through a dangerous area.

He also has one very important function: the safe pouch. Your dog cannot die. Anything you place in his safe pouch is protected, even if the rest of the run goes badly. That makes him a key part of how players manage risk.

If you find something too valuable to lose, the safe pouch gives you a way to protect it.

Never alone :)

Death is not the end, unless you die again

If you die during an expedition, your backpack is not immediately gone. You get one chance to retrieve it. But if you die again on the way back, that loot is lost for good.

This is a system we are designing to keep failure meaningful without making every mistake feel like the end. Death should matter. Losing supplies should hurt. But players should also have a chance to take a risk, go back out, and recover what they lost.

Of course, that creates another decision: do you risk another run to recover your backpack, or do you accept the loss and focus on keeping the bunker alive?

Stay on your toes

Knowing when to turn back

The longer you stay outside, the more dangerous things can become. You may be low on food. Low on water. Hurt. Out of ammo... Too far from safety. And still, there might be one more building to search, one more item nearby, one more reason to keep going before extracting.

That is the kind of tension we want Pale Tide to create. Our goal is not to punish you for exploring. Our goal is to make every choice feel like it has weight. Sometimes, the smartest move is not to push deeper. Sometimes, the smartest move is to slowly get out while you still can.

You'll meet survivors outside

Survival starts outside

In Pale Tide, every expedition is designed to feed back into the bunker. The resources you recover help expand it. The survivors you rescue can open new possibilities. The tools and weapons you unlock help you reach deeper, more dangerous areas. In the end, every expedition is part of a larger goal: keeping your community alive long enough to reach a safer place.

We will share more about the bunker, survivors, gear, and future expeditions in upcoming devlogs. Until then, wishlist Pale Tide on Steam.

What part of the game you would like us to cover next?