Highrise City

Highrise City is a PC economic city builder that combines large-scale urban planning with detailed resource management. The game remains listed under the same name on Steam and GOG, with no verified storefront rebrand or replacement edition. Developed by Fourexo Entertainment and published by Deck13, it is aimed at players who want production chains, logistics, trade, and population growth to matter as much as road layouts and skyline design.

Build a metropolis around supply and demand

Highrise City uses a three-dimensional, bird's-eye construction view built for reading a growing metropolis from above while still allowing close inspection of streets, buildings, and transport networks. Its central loop begins with laying out roads, establishing districts, placing essential services, and attracting residents.

The important difference is what happens after construction. Population growth creates demand for goods and services, while new buildings consume materials and require functioning supply chains. Farms, extraction sites, factories, warehouses, commercial buildings, and residential districts must work together rather than existing as isolated zones.

Production chains are the game's defining system. Raw materials are processed into increasingly advanced products, and shortages can interrupt construction, reduce economic stability, or prevent population groups from developing. This makes expansion an exercise in planning capacity before placing the next district.

Highrise City also tracks transport and distribution as part of the wider economy. Roads connect production to consumption, while traffic and delivery routes influence how reliably resources reach the places that need them. Players who enjoy large-scale city planning games such as Cities: Skylines will recognize the urban sandbox structure, but Highrise City puts more pressure on industrial organization and material flow.

Economic systems that shape every expansion

The simulation includes more than 60 resources, making the economy broader than a simple tax-and-zoning model. Construction materials, consumer goods, energy-related products, and other resources feed into the development of a city with multiple population levels.

Population progression is not just a visual upgrade path. The game features five population levels, each creating different expectations and economic requirements. A city that grows too quickly can expose weaknesses in production, storage, transport, or service coverage.

Players can stabilize the economy through resource trading rather than attempting total self-sufficiency from the beginning. Trading provides flexibility, but it also means that financial planning and supply decisions remain connected. Importing a missing resource may solve an immediate bottleneck while creating a longer-term operating cost.

Other management tools include laws, technology research, recycling, and difficulty settings. Recycling turns trash into usable resources, giving waste management an economic role instead of treating it as a purely negative city service.

Campaign missions, sandbox growth, and New Game Plus

Highrise City is not limited to an endless sandbox. The base game includes a storyline with missions that introduce objectives around city development and provide a more structured route through its systems.

Sandbox play is the better fit for players who want to experiment with layouts, economies, and large population targets without following a prescribed sequence. Maps are inspired by real geographic regions including New York, Vancouver, and Rio, giving different starting environments a recognizable identity.

After completing the main story, New Game Plus adds new challenges and a blueprint-focused construction mode. The mode is designed for players who already understand the economic foundation and want a stricter test involving additional planning and management demands.

The scale is deliberately ambitious. The official feature set advertises cities of up to 40 million inhabitants, more than 310 base buildings, and cities containing more than 30,000 buildings. These figures describe the intended simulation scale rather than a requirement to pursue maximum population in every playthrough.

PC features, mods, and storefront options

The Steam version includes Steam Workshop integration, Steam achievements, Family Sharing, and a building editor. The editor supports custom buildings, skyscrapers, streets, visual styles, and balance changes, while Workshop sharing gives those creations a route to the wider player community.

The official Steam feature list identifies Highrise City as single-player. It does not advertise online multiplayer, cooperative play, split-screen, or a dedicated server mode, so this is a solo management game rather than a shared city-building experience.

Steam is the conventional launcher-based PC version, while the GOG edition is listed as DRM-free and supports offline installation without requiring GOG Galaxy. The Steam storefront does not list native controller support among its official features, so keyboard-and-mouse play is the safer expectation for PC players.

Localization covers 14 languages for interface and subtitles. The storefront also lists full audio for English, German, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese, with the remaining supported languages providing text localization.

Base game and paid content

Highrise City is sold as a paid base game rather than a free-to-play city builder. The current Steam catalog lists two gameplay add-ons: Metro & Planes and Vacation Season. The soundtrack is sold separately and is not a gameplay expansion.

Metro & Planes expands public transport and trading capacity, adding tools for players who want to improve movement through the city and increase the reach of their economy. It is most relevant once a city has developed enough traffic and distribution complexity to justify broader transport planning.

Vacation Season introduces demanding tourists as a new population group, alongside a separate tourism economy branch. Its content includes tourist attractions, hotels, sightseeing systems, seven new resources, and 17 new buildings. The base game also received free additions connected to the broader update, but the tourist-focused economy remains part of the paid expansion.

The Steam catalog also offers a Complete Edition bundle containing the base game and both gameplay DLC products. That bundle should not be confused with a renamed definitive edition: the standalone product continues to be listed simply as Highrise City.

Who should play Highrise City?

Highrise City is a strong fit for players who enjoy economic city builders, production planning, transport bottlenecks, and long optimization loops. It rewards people who like tracing a problem through several systems, such as discovering that slow population growth is actually caused by missing materials several steps earlier in the supply chain.

It is less suitable for players who mainly want relaxed decoration, instant visual growth, or a city builder where zoning alone creates a functioning metropolis. Highrise City expects the player to monitor resources, plan industrial capacity, and understand why a city is failing before expanding again.

The learning curve is part of the appeal. The game offers adjustable difficulty, but its identity comes from interconnected systems rather than from a purely creative building experience.

Similar PC games and genre alternatives

For a more traffic-centered urban sandbox with extensive zoning and public-service management, compare it with modern city simulations like Cities: Skylines II. Highrise City is more focused on resource chains, while Cities: Skylines-style play places greater emphasis on road networks, services, and city form.

Players seeking a smaller vertical-management concept can also look at Project Highrise, although that page already links to Highrise City and is therefore excluded from this article's internal linking. The distinction is useful: Project Highrise concentrates on individual towers, while Highrise City manages an entire metropolitan economy.

Highrise City FAQ

Is Highrise City still called Highrise City?

Yes. Current Steam and GOG listings use the name Highrise City. No verified rebrand, replacement title, or renamed definitive edition was found.

Is Highrise City multiplayer?

No. The official storefront feature list identifies the game as single-player and does not advertise co-op, competitive multiplayer, or split-screen modes.

What is the main gameplay focus?

The main focus is managing resource production chains, transport, trade, population needs, construction, laws, and research while expanding a modern metropolis.

Does Highrise City support mods?

Yes. The PC version includes a building editor and Steam Workshop integration for sharing custom buildings, streets, visual changes, and balance modifications.

What DLC is available for Highrise City?

The current gameplay DLC lineup consists of Metro & Planes and Vacation Season. A separate soundtrack product is also listed, while the Complete Edition bundle combines the base game with both gameplay expansions.

Is Highrise City DRM-free on PC?

The GOG edition is listed as DRM-free and can be installed and played offline without GOG Galaxy. The Steam version uses the Steam storefront and launcher ecosystem.