April is already a monster month for city builders and colony sims, and yet another city building game has just been announced, this [[link]] one with a bit of a Civilization theme. The cities you grow and manage in most city builders can last for years, sometimes decades, and occasionally hundreds of years… but what about for thousands of years?
That's your goal in Memoriapolis, a strategy city builder from French developer 5PM Studio. Beginning with a small hunting camp in ancient times you'll eventually grow the settlement into a prosperous city, then guide it through four different historical eras over a span [[link]] of 2,500 years. That's a long time for a city to exist, and as you pass from pre-Middle Ages all the way to the Age of Enlightenment, your capital can become a blend of different architectural styles, some old and some new.
To make your city last through the centuries you'll need to set up trade routes, manage the economy and your city's resources, make political decisions, and keep your citizens safe and happy. You'll also construct Wonders, which can be real historical buildings like Notre-Dame de Paris, Windsor Castle, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. These Wonders come at a great cost of resources and take a long time to build, but they'll give your city bonuses [[link]] and allow you to advance to the next historical era.
It sounds like a lot to handle, but you don't have to do everything yourself: the citizens you attract to your city will help it grow, too. There's no need to place roads in your city because they'll form organically based on your citizens' needs. "Thanks to our unique algorithm, overseen by an urban planner, you can create the most realistic-looking city you've ever seen in a video game," the devs say.
Citizens making their own roads reminds me a bit of city builders like Ostriv and Foundation, where roads are slowly created by your villagers simply walking from place to place. As someone with pretty poor planning instincts, I'm happy to leave the road logistics to the people actually using them while I focus on other things.
A release date for Memoriapolis hasn't been announced yet, but if you want to know a bit more you can hear all about it from the developers. There's one dev diary that serves as an introduction to the city builder, and another about Memoriapolis' design.