Imagine Earth

Imagine Earth is a PC sci-fi city builder and real-time planetary management game from Serious Bros. You establish global colonies on distant worlds, connect production to population needs, trade resources across space, and decide whether economic growth is worth the environmental cost. Its defining pressure is a living climate system that can turn careless expansion into rising seas, disasters, and collapsing quality of life.

Build colonies across living planets

Imagine Earth uses a top-down perspective over continuous planetary surfaces rather than small, isolated square maps. You begin by selecting useful ground, placing a city district, and building the infrastructure needed to supply colonists with food, energy, and consumer goods.

The basic economy revolves around money, food, energy, and goods. Money pays for construction, upgrades, and running costs, while food keeps the population alive. Energy powers cities and production buildings, and goods influence the mood and growth of your settlements.

Placement matters because buildings interact with their surroundings. Fertile ground improves farms, deserts favor solar parks, coast fields help wind farms, fossil deposits increase the output of certain power plants, and fishing grounds support stronger fisheries. A productive layout is therefore about more than filling available land.

As colonies expand, you balance population growth, production chains, maintenance, research, and quality of life. Prosperity is not simply a matter of constructing more buildings. Every new district adds demand, emissions, transport needs, and potential exposure to environmental problems.

Climate is a strategic system

The climate model is the game’s main differentiator. Local pollution and worldwide emissions influence global temperatures, which can melt polar caps and cause rising sea levels. Fires, tornadoes, volcanoes, chemical spills, oil slicks, radioactive contamination, dying forests, and expanding deserts can damage the systems your colony depends on.

Cleaner development is not treated as a decorative bonus. Renewable energy, environmental research, careful industrial placement, and sustainable production can protect the living conditions that support your economy. Choosing fossil-fuel infrastructure may accelerate early expansion, but it also increases the environmental debt that later colonies must manage.

The game also allows terraforming and weather manipulation. These tools can improve a planet, respond to ecological damage, or be used in economic competition against rival corporations. That creates an unusual overlap between city planning, climate management, and corporate strategy.

Players who enjoy hostile-world settlement games may recognize the survival pressure found in environmental colony builders like Surviving Mars Relaunched, but Imagine Earth places more emphasis on global economics, share trading, and the consequences of industrial pollution.

Trade, research, and corporate competition

Production is only one route to stability. Space traders, local colonies, alien groups, and technology traders create opportunities to buy missing materials, sell surplus resources, and obtain useful technologies. Trade can keep a young settlement alive while you build the infrastructure needed to become self-sufficient.

Research unlocks new constructs, capacity improvements, efficiency advances, and sustainable technologies. The game lists more than 50 constructs and over 80 upgrades, giving long-term colonies several ways to specialize and improve their output.

Competition mode introduces rival AI corporations with individual agendas. You can pursue economic dominance, form alliances, negotiate with other factions, manipulate the climate, or attack opponents through the share market. Selling shares can provide funding, while buying enough of a rival’s stock can lead to a hostile takeover.

Diplomacy is tied directly to material conditions. Resource exhaustion, land claims, environmental damage, and economic pressure can all shape relationships with other colonies. The result is a strategy game where negotiation and production are often more efficient than simply expanding everywhere at once.

Campaign, competition, and endless play

The base game includes a story-driven campaign across nine planets and missions. It introduces the central systems gradually while presenting different environmental conditions, economic problems, and political situations. The campaign is a useful entry point, but it is not the only way to experience the game.

Competition mode places you against up to five AI factions. Each planet becomes an economic contest involving expansion, trade, technology, diplomacy, and corporate ownership. This mode suits players who want clearer objectives and more pressure from rival decision-makers.

Freeplay mode uses procedural planet generation to create open-ended worlds and challenges. You can determine the pace, experiment with layouts, and focus on building a functioning civilization without following a fixed campaign structure.

The included Planet Editor adds another creative layer. It supports terraforming, construction, and customization of individual planets, which can then be saved and shared through the PC ecosystem. This gives the game value beyond its authored missions and standard procedural maps.

The paid Galaxies expansion extends the structure from individual planets to entire galaxies. It adds a central space station, interplanetary research and licensing, orbital resource transport, city-center extensions, and galaxy-wide competition. It also includes a four-planet story campaign centered on the Genesis Seed Initiative.

Who should play Imagine Earth?

Imagine Earth is a strong fit for players who want a real-time colony sim with economic systems, environmental consequences, and a manageable level of complexity. It rewards people who enjoy improving layouts, comparing production options, and solving shortages before they become disasters.

It is especially appealing if you prefer strategy games where sustainability is part of the mechanics rather than an optional theme. The climate crisis affects expansion, infrastructure, population mood, and long-term survival, so ecological decisions remain relevant throughout a colony’s development.

Players looking for direct character control, combat-focused strategy, or online cooperative play should adjust their expectations. The storefront lists the PC version as single-player; defensive tower systems exist, but this is primarily a management and economic strategy game rather than a traditional real-time combat title.

For a gentler settlement-building comparison, resource-chain colony games such as The Colonists share the pleasure of watching an expanding settlement become more efficient, although Imagine Earth is more concerned with climate policy, corporate rivalry, and planetary risk.

PC features and storefront details

The official PC name remains Imagine Earth; no verified Steam, Epic, or GOG rebrand has replaced it with a new edition name. The main game is sold as a premium purchase, with the optional Galaxies expansion and soundtrack listed separately. The Green Planet Bundle combines the base game, Galaxies, and the soundtrack.

On Steam, the game supports full controller support, Steam Cloud, achievements, leaderboards, trading cards, Remote Play on TV, Family Sharing, and a built-in level editor. Steam Workshop support is also listed, making community-created planets and scenarios an important part of the PC ecosystem.

Imagine Earth is available for PC through Steam, GOG, and Epic Games Store. The GOG version is identified as DRM-free and can be installed and played without GOG Galaxy. The game also has official support for macOS and SteamOS/Linux through its PC storefront listings.

English includes full audio, interface, and subtitles. The interface and subtitle options also include German, Italian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, Polish, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Czech.

Players comparing other alien city builders can also look at sci-fi settlement management games like Aven Colony, but Imagine Earth stands apart through its global map scale, stock-market mechanics, and explicit climate simulation.

Imagine Earth FAQ

What is Imagine Earth on PC?

Imagine Earth is a real-time sci-fi city builder and planetary management game. You create colonies, manage food, energy, goods, and money, research new technologies, trade with other factions, and respond to climate change and natural disasters.

Has Imagine Earth been renamed or rebranded?

No verified storefront rebrand has replaced the name Imagine Earth. Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, and the developer’s official site continue to identify the main game as Imagine Earth. Galaxies is an expansion, not a replacement title.

What is included in the base game?

The base game includes the nine-planet story campaign, competition against AI corporations, procedural freeplay, the Planet Editor, research, diplomacy, trade, share-market mechanics, environmental simulation, and defensive encounters with threats such as raiders and alien invaders.

What does the Galaxies expansion add?

Galaxies adds multi-planet progression coordinated through a space station. It includes interplanetary research, technology licensing, an orbital lift for moving resources, city-center extensions, galaxy-wide competition, endless galaxy play, and a four-planet Genesis Seed Initiative story campaign.

Does Imagine Earth support multiplayer or co-op?

No. The PC storefront features identify Imagine Earth as a single-player game. Competition mode is played against AI factions rather than human opponents, and the listed Remote Play feature is Remote Play on TV rather than online co-op.

Does the PC version support controllers and mods?

Yes. The PC version lists full controller support, and Steam provides Workshop integration, Steam Cloud, a level editor, achievements, leaderboards, and Remote Play on TV. Controller play is therefore an official platform feature rather than an unofficial workaround.