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513 Crafting & Building games reviewed and scored, best first.
513 reviews
A decade in Early Access ends with Drilling Thunder, a genuinely substantial 1.0 update that finally gives Scrap Mechanic's celebrated building physics a full story campaign — while leaving the host-dependent multiplayer that has bugged players since 2016 exactly as it was.
8 / 10
Asymmetric's prohibition-era, Lovecraft-flavoured follow-up to the award-winning West of Loathing -- Overwhelmingly Positive on its own considerable merits, with a review sample so consistently framed against its beloved predecessor that "not quite West of Loathing" is practically this game's second title.
8 / 10
A pure factory-automation puzzle stripped of combat, scarcity and even failure, where the only opponent is a shape's own geometry. The tightest version of this genre's core loop yet built, and a useful test of what's left once every source of friction is removed.
8 / 10
The definitive modern Civilization for most players, thanks to two expansions that meaningfully deepened its district-and-diplomacy foundation — carrying an old, now-dated controversy over a data-collection policy update, and a genre-standard but real DLC bill for anyone chasing the complete roster.
8 / 10
A lovingly built retro CRPG that fuses Ultima-era pixel art with genuine Lovecraftian horror and tabletop-inspired tactical combat, beloved for a first half that critics call nearly flawless, held to a lower score mostly by a well-documented back-half quality drop and controller support that stayed broken after a real fix attempt.
8 / 10
One of the most-loved games on Steam at 98% across 155,976 reviews — and the two loudest criticisms on its store page are complaints about an Early Access build it left behind nine years ago.
8 / 10
A tile-by-tile spaceship colony sim where you build the hull, route the gas pipes, and keep a crew of civilians fed, breathing, and sane while you search a procedural galaxy for a new home. Reached 1.0 in May 2026 after six years in Early Access.
8 / 10
A cozy management game about dying, and one of the few games that earns the crying its reviews describe. The management half is fetch quests and minigames — which is the honest thing to tell you, because the store page sells it the other way round.
8 / 10
A grid-tactics deckbuilder that fuses Into the Breach-style positioning with a real card engine and a Space Invaders-flavoured alien assault, backed by a Metacritic 85 and an Overwhelmingly Positive Steam score — with real, specific complaints about UI clarity and balance outliers sitting underneath the acclaim.
8 / 10
A build-crafting incremental about small creatures smashing a rock for wealth, where the usual "number always goes up" comfort is replaced by permanent choices that can genuinely sabotage a run.
8 / 10
A terraforming survival-crafting game that turns a barren world into a breathable one in front of your eyes — beloved for exactly that transformation, and honestly criticized by a consistent minority for being addictive without offering much real friction or danger.
8 / 10
A city builder where the antagonist isn't a raid or a monster roster but a drought timer, and every dam, canal and reservoir you build is really an answer to a scheduling problem. Beavers are the theme; water is the game.
8 / 10
A solo developer's follow-up to Magic Archery swaps archery for architecture, building an incremental around growing a single wizard's tower toward a definite, well-earned ending rather than an infinite number-go-up treadmill.
8 / 10
The spiritual successor to Theme Hospital that launched rough — pathing bugs, a missing copy-paste room button, repetitive late-game hospitals — and, unusually for this library, has visibly improved rather than declined as measured by its own negative-review volume over time.
8 / 10
A tactical fantasy RPG where you never actually give a combat order — you write a standing set of instructions for each unit and then watch your army carry them out, which makes it one of the closest things a big-budget console release has come to an automation game.
8 / 10
A solo developer's sci-fi idle game with over ten interlocking systems and players who have logged thousands of hours apiece. The reception is Very Positive, and the one recurring complaint is that late-game progress stops rewarding curiosity and starts demanding one correct answer.
8 / 10
The deckbuilder that removed the luck. You see every reward in advance and rebuild your deck between every fight — which makes it the most controllable game in its genre, and is exactly why some players bounce off it. Six dollars, 251 achievements, and criminally under-noticed.
8 / 10
A survival-crafting game with action-RPG combat and a boss list instead of a tech tree, built around a PvP fantasy that most of its players quietly opt out of. Two years past 1.0, with the studio now calling it content-complete, it's worth being precise about which version of this game you're actually signing up for.
8 / 10
A free-to-play space-ninja shooter that has been adding systems since 2013 without ever taking one away. Genuinely one of the most generous live-service games on the market, and one of the hardest to explain to a friend. Reviewed with Jade Shadows: Constellations current.
8 / 10
Shiro Games' open-world mercenary RPG treats a company of sellswords as a small business — wages, food, gear repair and prisoners are the real spreadsheet, and combat is what happens when that spreadsheet goes wrong.
8 / 10
A god-game sandbox where civilizations of humans, orcs, elves and dwarves grow, fight and collapse almost entirely on their own while you throw lightning, plagues and dragons at them. Nearly five years into Steam Early Access, it's still one of the most purely enjoyable toyboxes in PC gaming — as long as you never expected it to have an ending.
8 / 10
A NZ$4.99 sandbox life-sim RPG about being a cow — juice anything, weave anything into a basket, burn everything, and grind 13-odd skills across a warm, sincerely queer world. Small review sample, but a startlingly consistent one.
7.8 / 10
Unfrozen's tactical roguelike hands you the dungeon instead of the raiding party — you're the necromancer stitching an undead army out of whatever your enemies leave behind.
7.8 / 10
Orangepixel's turn-based space roguelike gets a time-loop makeover, and the smartest decision it makes is turning "you died" into "you left something behind" instead of "start over."
7.8 / 10
