Title: Dystopika
Developer: Voids Within
Publisher: Voids Within, UNIKAT Label
Release Date: June 21, 2024
Platforms: Windows (Steam)
Reviewed on: Windows (Steam)
Price: $6.99 USD

Most games in the city building genre go for either a realism aesthetic, as Cities: Skylines does, or for a colorful, idyllic style as Townscaper and Islanders do. Fun though these games are, they miss out on what the cities of the future may well look like. Where are the cities with dark, looming, hundred story pyramids where corporations make frightening advancements in robotics? Show me the city builder that lets me make gloomy, grimy human ant farms.

Synopsis

Dystopika is a sandbox city builder for creating urban landscapes like those seen in Bladerunner. In the game, players freely place massive, dark skyscrapers of several different styles ranging from industrial, corporate, and concrete-heavy buildings.

Building the City

The core of Dystopika is placing large skyscrapers that dwarf anything in the real world across a dimly lit city. Some of these buildings resemble the pyramids from Bladerunner. Others resemble the mobile home stacks from Ready Player One. All of them look incredible from the bird’s eye camera provided in the game. Even better, I can imagine just how awful it would be to live or work in one of them.

After placing a sufficient amount of foreboding concrete, you can decorate the sides of buildings with holographic and neon lights, signs, posters, communication antennas, and other greebles. You can even import pictures from your files and make a pet or enemy of yours into the dictator of your evil society by placing them on a sign. Roads and blimps can also be placed, and the paths they take can be easily adjusted.

Dystopika still falls short on one expectation of mine as far as sandbox citybuilders go: variety. Of the eight different styles of buildings provided, three of them only feature a single building. The other five have some variety and distinction from one another in visual style, but it doesn’t feel sufficient to make many different kinds of cities. This is somewhat aleviated, however, by great Steam Workshop integration which I have not seen anywhere else in the genre. Even if the game’s vanilla content is a little lacking, there’s enough quality mods to help with that.

Style & Atmosphere

Dystopika’s extensive weather and camera system also stand out. Unlike most city builders, the goal is not to make the city look pretty, but atmospheric instead, in a way that you can imagine a little Ryan Gosling or Harrison Ford is brooding somewhere in your creation. Dystopika succeeds handily at this, with a large array of camera settings, filters, and weather conditions that can be applied for the ultimate brooding environment.

Final Score (4 out of 5 stars)

Dystopika is a good city builder. Its price, gameplay, and utility features are mostly in line with other indie titles on the market. Its unique style, focusing on finding the beauty in a jungle of twisting, concrete skyscrapers, helps it to stand out. Even so, the game could use more variety in the building sets that it currently has.

Does a dystopian city builder fulfill your aesthetic needs, or do you prefer a more pastoral cityscape? Is Ryan Gosling literally you? Let us know on our Boss Rush Facebook Group or our Boss Rush Discord.

Featured Image: Voids Within

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