Ubisoft is currently running a publisher-wide sale on Steam, offering some pretty nifty discounts like half-price on Star Wars: Outlaws and 75% off The Division 2. But the best deal is a whopping 90% off one of the best modern city builders you can play, Blue Byte’s Anno 1800.
Anno 1800 whisks players back to the dawn of the industrial revolution, starting you off founding a little farming village. But it isn’t long before you’re building smog-billowing steelworks, laying down the tracks of your first railway, and dispatching expeditions to establish colonies in the new world.
It combines the infrastructural management of Cities: Skylines with the production chains of Blue Byte’s other notable series, The Settlers. And that combination is utterly absorbing, one you can easily lose hours to without noticing.
When I originally reviewed Anno 1800 back in 2019, I described it as “the most engrossing city builder I’ve played since Cities: Skylines”. While that still sounds right to me, it’s a claim that requires revisiting now, simply because the competition has heated up so much in the last few years.
Games like city building roguelike Against the Storm, the bustling beaver sim Timberborn, and the unfinished phenomenon Manor Lords have brought their own exciting and distinctive flavours to the act of settlement construction. Even factoring in the disastrous launch of Cities: Skylines 2, the city building genre is far fuller and healthier than it was five years ago.
Nonetheless, while all the aforementioned games are fantastic (except perhaps Skylines 2) I think Anno 1800 remains the most comprehensive example of the traditional city-builder. It simply has an incredibly pleasing arc that’s granular without being fussy, and the way your cities don’t just grow but evolve architecturally and technologically is hugely gratifying.
Either way, Anno 1800 is undoubtedly worth the £5/$6 Ubisoft is currently asking for it. The offer remains available until Thursday March 13, when Ubisoft’s publisher sale ends.
