A genre (mainly) of Video Games. This type of game focuses on elements like gathering and management of resources, construction, expansion, research and exploration. Combat may exist, but isn't the point of pure Construction and Management Games. If there is a goal, it usually is to reach a certain settlement size, to gather a certain amount of units of a resource, to construct/research certain objects.
Most Space Management Games and many Real-Time Strategy games overlap with this, as do many cases of An Entrepreneur Is You and Renovating the Player Headquarters. Depending on how detailed the interactions are, many can also be considered Simulation Games. Most of these take the form of (isometric or 3D) Real-Time Strategy with a Non-Entity General, but many take the perspective of individuals in a third-, first-person or side view as well. Factory Building Games are a sub-genre.
Tropes typically encountered in this genre of games:
- Command & Conquer Economy
- Construct Additional Pylons
- Non-Entity General
- Tech Tree
- You Require More Vespene Gas
Examples:
Board Games- Citadels
- Settlers of Catan
- Suburbia
- Ticket to Ride
- 7 Days to Die
- 8Realms
- A-Train
- Alien Legacy
- Anno Domini
- Aven Colony
- Banished
- Battleship Craft
- Biing! Sex, Intrigen und Skalpelle
- Build-a-Lot series of Casual Video Games
- Caesar series.
- Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile
- Chipper & Sons Lumber Co.
- The Chocolatier series of games from PlayFirst has the player help to rebuild a family chocolate empire after the family has some kind of problem. The first one had a feud between two sisters, the second one had an outsider ingratiate himself with the patriarch and expect to marry the boss's daughter (you help said daughter behind her father's back), and the third one is set in the aftermath of WWII. You must buy and upgrade factories, source ingredients, find or discover or invent recipes, manage your money, and so on.
- Cities In Motion
- Cities: Skylines
- Cities XL
- City-Building Series
- The Civilization series
- Clonk
- Colonization
- Constructor
- Corneroids
- Dawn Of Crafting
- Deep Town: Mining Factory
- Diggles: The Myth of Fenris
- Dragon Quest Builders
- Dragon Quest Builders 2
- Dungeon Keeper
- Dwarf Fortress
- Dyson Sphere Program
- Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom
- Empire Builder
- Eurorails
- Evil Genius
- Evony
- Factorio
- Factory idle
- Fairy Godmother Tycoon
- Fallout Shelter
- Flotsam
- Fortune Builder
- Freeciv
- From the Depths
- Frostpunk
- Globulation
- Honey, I Joined a Cult
- Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?!, and subsequent games in the series.
- Hospital Tycoon
- Hotel Giant
- Impire
- Kaiju A Gogo
- Kerbal Space Program
- Kerbal Space Program 2
- Kingdoms And Castles
- Kingdom Conquest
- KZ Manager
- LEGOLAND
- Lethis Path Of Progress
- Locomotion
- Majesty
- Medieval Dynasty - progress from impoverished peasant to lord of a personally-built woodland settlement
- Micropolis
- Minecraft
- Minotaur Hotel - Actually primarily a Visual Novel, however, the management mechanics are made apparent later on in the game where you have to manage the hotel and its workers.
- Mobility (obscure German game about researching the effects of various futuristic proposals on street traffic and pollution)
- Nelke and the Legendary Alchemists: Ateliers of the New World
- Northgard
- Outpost 2
- The Palace Builder - build and landscape for ancient regime nobles.
- Parkasaurus
- Parkitect
- Patrician (crosses this with merchant/trading game)
- Pharaoh (like Caesar but in Egypt)
- Planet Coaster
- Project Highrise
- Punch Club
- Railroad
- Railroad Tycoon
- Rebuild
- Rock Star Ate My Hamster
- Restaurant Empire
- The Riftbreaker
- Rock Raiders
- RollerCoaster Tycoon
- Royal Envoy - direct rebuilding of communities after a major storm.
- Satisfactory
- Scrap Mechanic
- Sid Meier's SimGolf
- SimCity
- SimSafari
- The Sims franchise can be played as this.
- SimTower
- Simutrans
- Space Engineers
- Space Run
- Spiritfarer
- Starmancer
- Startopia
- Stonehearth
- Stranded
- Stronghold
- Stronghold Kingdoms
- Surviving Mars
- Timberborn
- The Eldritch Zookeeper
- Theme Hospital
- Theme Park
- This War of Mine
- Townsmen
- Transport Tycoon
- Tropico
- Tunnel Town, an Animal Jam Spin-Off Mobile Phone Game, in which the player manages an Underground City populated with rabbits
- Two Point Hospital
- Urban Empire
- War for the Overworld
- Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic
- We Happy Restaurant
- Westward series of Casual Video Games—borderline combat-heavy
- Wettlauf Ins All
- Winemaker - Inherit grandfather's vineyard, gather pieces of a family blend recipe, buy supplies, grow and harvest grapes, make wine, fill orders, reassemble estranged members of an international winemakers' guild.
- Zeus: Master of Olympus (like Caesar but in Greece)
- Zoo Tycoon