Metropolis 1998

Welcome! Metropolis 1998 is a new city builder entrant that pushes familiar gameplay into unexplored territory. 

Despite the charming retro aesthetics, this is a modern city builder. Every single citizen is it's own entity with their own needs, job, schedule, and family. As the mayor, you will manage infrastructure, utilities, citizen needs, municipal and emergency services, zones, traffic, pollution, and more!

The game offers extensive customization tools for players who enjoy designing, creating buildings, and customizing the look of their city. 

New features Metropolis 1998 adds to the genre:

• See inside every single building and every individual floor. This includes the people living or working inside!

• Optionally design any building you want within the game world. Save it as a blueprint. Place copies or randomize the textures and colors. Share with other players.

• Citizens will demand specific businesses, not general zones. 

• Businesses are individually placed and have a supply radius for residential customers (otherwise it's global).

• True mixed use zones. You can combine any mix of building types (excluding utilities).

• Residential buildings level up as their inhabitants' needs are fulfilled. Businesses level up when their customers do, and office and industry level up as the businesses they supply level up.

Other features include:

• Performant pathfinding. The engine can handle 80,000 to 150,000 sims (depends on your CPU).

• Beautiful 90s/00s isometric pixel art enhanced with shaders (optional).

• Complex agent simulation. They will eat, sleep, work, run errands, enjoy leisure activities, and more.

• Overlays to view detailed information about your city.

• Top down camera mode.

• All the classic features of the city builder genre: utilities, roads, transportation, municipal services, emergency services, citizen happiness, schools, economy, and more!

• Day/night cycle and weather (no precipitation yet).

Early access communication

Some features will not be implemented when the game launches (but are planned):

• Transportation options. Sims can only walk or drive.

• Placing roads or buildings on elevated terrain. 

• Intricate road types, bridges.

• Functional bodies of water (i.e. no ships, ports, or water physics).

There are a lot of ideas planned for the game, which will soon be linked in the FAQ in the discussion forums. 

Hardware requirements:

As a solo developer, this is really difficult to answer for everyone. The game is generally not CPU bound, though you will hit a CPU-restricted population cap (see above) eventually.

• ARM integrated graphics will not work! (e.g. Snap Dragon)

• Intel 1st-5th gen integrated graphics will not work!

The game will be GPU bound for low powered computers. I tested the game on an eleven (11) year old laptop (Intel 6th gen i5). This necessitated implementing a low-quality graphics mode (not available in alpha demo 05/22/2026). An empty map was used for the test.

• Integrated graphics:

  • Low Quality: 30 FPS

• Same laptop using 4 GB NVIDA GPU: 

  • Low quality: 135 FPS

  • High quality: 60 FPS

• My main PC uses a GTX 3060 and is more than enough for high quality mode.