Microlandia, the brutally honest city builder, arrives on Steam.

Cute voxels, hard reality. Build a city that has to face the real challenges of a real city. Pull the strings and watch your town grow into a metropolis. Make the wrong calls and bankruptcy is on the table, just like in brutally honest reality.

Microlandia is the newest title in the city builder genre, but with a radical difference: its brutally honest social and economic simulation, which doesn’t sweep the challenges of city life under the rug: housing shortages, mobility, corporate taxes, the cost of public services, and on and on…

Microlandia is part of the Indie Arena Booth gamescom 2026 Official Selection. The game was selected for “Democracy at Play,” a showcase curated by Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) in collaboration with Indie Arena Booth that explores how games engage with democracy. Read the event details from the bpb. Play it August 26–30 at gamescom in Cologne, Hall 10.2. The connection is built into the simulation: policy choices affect citizens individually, and every five in-game years an election decides whether you stay in office.

Microlandia is also exhibiting at Tokyo Game Show 2026. Come play Microlandia in the Indie Game Area at TGS 2026, September 17–21 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan. Press, creators, and players are all warmly welcome; Steam review keys are available on request.

This game grew out of a question its director Cristián had already asked himself as a child:

“When I was a kid, I could spend the whole day playing SimCity, but when I went outside, I saw graffiti, people living on the streets, and a lot of other things that the game left out, which, in my opinion, was giving me a false understanding of how a city works.”

The logic behind Microlandia takes in the good, the bad, and the sometimes uncomfortable parts of city life through a thoroughly built socioeconomic simulation drawn from real-world datasets: the World Bank, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the OECD, and many more.

This input gives Microlandia a depth rarely seen in the city builder genre. The seriousness of the simulation, however, stands in stark contrast to a narrative layer full of humor and gimmicks. Players have to pay attention to in-game elements that help them diagnose what is happening in their town, for example by reading the sensation-hungry local press, which follows every move you make critically.

In Microlandia, democracy is not a backdrop, but the core mechanic that keeps you from losing. Every five in-game years, an election decides whether you stay in office. The outcome is shaped by six approval categories: shelter, occupation, safety, basic needs, parks, and healthcare. A live polls panel lets you track your approval in each category, while the newspaper holds you publicly accountable for every decision along the way.

Microlandia is available on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux as of December 3, 2025, and can be purchased for just $9.99 USD (€9.99). It is also available on Itch.io for the same price, with the option to receive a Steam key.

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About Information Superhighway Games

Information Superhighway Games is an indie studio in Berlin, Germany. Founded by Cristián (programming and direction) and Catalina (art and design) alongside the first Early Access builds of Microlandia, it has since grown to include more collaborators. They build games without “professional” engines (leaning on open-source tools they love) to make playful systems that explain the world. Early Microlandia builds on Itch.io already attracted press interest; PC Gamer asked: “Is this the Dark Souls of city builders?”

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