URBAN OUTFITTER

Anno 1800 belongs to a select group of games that I like to refer to as “blink and it’s 2am” games. For example, you might sit down in an evening with the plan of setting up your first steel mill. Then you blink and it’s 2am and you’ve somehow founded a colony in the New World. Alternatively, perhaps you set the goal of reaching the next population milestone to unlock a new building. Then you do that, and the building you unlock is a zoo for which you can build individual enclosures to fill with several dozen type of animals. Blink.

This is comfortably the most engrossing city-builder I’ve played since Cities: Skylines, one that combines an intriguing theme with some enjoyably complex production chains and trading mechanics. It also has a wealth of buildings to construct and resources to produce, letting you construct some truly impressive and enormous urban sprawls.

You’ll need acres of potato fields that can