Before pursuing architecture, I had a passion for gaming. Often both do overlap; games that allows you to create your own inspired worlds for you and the artificial intelligence to live in and some games that will challenge your skills in their own digital landscapes and narratives.
Rather than a list of games with amazing architecture for architects (which would be it’s own category and too vast to list here), I’ve decided to list games that anyone with keen interest in architecture in general could enjoy - sorted info the following categories:
Sandbox / World Builders
Minecraft
Minecraft is the game equivalent to Lego to simply create anything your brain can muster in their own cubic universe but with an added element of survival from dangerous creatures and resource gathering from mining to agriculture.
Survival Home by u/Arkaih.
Minecraft has several modes for you to venture in: Survival mode where you are placed in the wilderness to create tools, gather resources to survive/create, tame animals, and explore dungeons until you face the Ender Dragon. Creative mode where nothing is restricted with all the materials provided for you to freely conjure anything you can think of. From making your own little mud hut to a glass watchtower overlooking the metropolis that you built,; the potential of building in Minecraft is truly limitless.
Astroneer
Astroneer is as beautiful to watch as it is therapeutic to play as you terraform and explore vividly colourful planets, mine resources, and create structures to colonize other planets.
Unlike the previous two, there are no monsters [that I know of], only you, the planet you stand on, and the infinite void of space that surrounds you that will you leave you breathless - literally, if you’re not careful. There is a sense of peace that I felt playing this game unlike any other, perhaps the minimal sounds or the simple gameplay mechanics that just places you in a state of trance to just build and explore.
City Builders / Construct & Manage
Cities : SkylinEs
Growing up with SimCity, no game comes close to rekindling memories of my first experience with urban planning until I played Cities : Skyline.
Manage zoning types, extensive road traffic systems, and public services, all while trying to maintain your budget and citizens’ welfare. Cities : Skylines robust gameplay will keep you busy for endless hours as you attempt to build your own utopian city.
Two point hospital
Two Point Hospital is a challenging hospital management game that allows you to design the interior layout for specific medical needs, manage hospital finances, and cure hilariously unique patients’ conditions - all wrapped in a delightfully charming package.
Don’t let the cute Wallace & Gromit aesthetics fool you, this game gets increasingly difficult to master as you progress. Maximizing layout to allow efficient pedestrian traffic, managing patients’ wait times, firing doctors too expensive to keep, this game will test you - in a good way.
Frostpunk
From the charms of Two Point Hospital to the harsh grittiness of Frostpunk. Set in the dystopian aftermath of Global Cooling, Frostpunk - a survival city-building game - puts you in the role of a colony leader with the sole purpose of keeping your people alive through the harshest winter known to mankind.
Bracing temperatures as low as -100° Celsius, this game will challenge your skills of managing resources, responding to sudden environmental dangers, and question your moralities. Will you force your people to non-stop labour to gather enough coal? Will you sacrifice a child to keep your generator running? Will you rule as a tyrant and silence those who oppose you? All for the sake of survival.
A game with an astonishing narrative and technological depth wrapped in a city-building game.
Life Simulations
The Sims
Now in its 4th iteration, The Sims places you as the invisible force of will behind the creation and actions of its people - also known as Sims. Influence their decisions, encourage their motivations, and manage their welfare to live their best simulated lives.
Not to be missed and why I listed this game is the robust and highly customisable building tool. The original game, The Sims, was possibly my first interaction with a scaled design software. While it is not an actual professional CAD software, it taught me a sense of scale and importance of furniture/room layouts and ultimately, how my Sims occupies and interacted with my design.
Animal Crossing : New Horizons
The newest game in my list, Animal Crossing : New Horizons is an adorably heart-warming game that allows you to create and design your surroundings to a tremendous degree of detail - from terraforming your whole island to designing your own textures pixel-by-pixel, it is mind-blowing.
Much of the charm, however, are the inhabitants. The animal beings that you share the island with will often influence the design of your island by giving you crafting recipes, buy/sell you materials, and interact with the surroundings that you built.
Puzzles
monument valley I & II
Monument Valley is a MC Escher-esque puzzle game set in a beautiful colourful isometric world. Each level feels like its own piece of interactive illusory artwork with its minimal aesthetics and sounds that simultaneously relaxes you and gives a form of clarity to assist in solving the puzzle.
While you don’t have to play the game in their respective order to enjoy, the level of puzzle sophistication and design is noticeable when you jump from Monument Valley I to II - not to mention the underlying narrative you uncover as you progress.
what the golf?
What The Golf? is a Danish comedic physic-based game with a simplistic aesthetic that parodies the typical mini golf games.
The game reminds you that you don’t have to take everything too seriously and just have fun - unlike most of the time I play golf. The puzzles are quirky and often surprisingly hilarious where I’d find myself asking “What The [Golf]?” and no other game in the list gives me a nice chuckle between stressful moment than this does.
There you have it! Again these are just games that anyone with an interest in architecture / design / management could enjoy. Games with great architecture that architects would enjoy deserves its own list - maybe in the future.
Let me know in the comments if I missed any games that you enjoyed and would fit in the list!