Check out our top picks for the best Simulation and Strategy games on the Steam Summer Sale 2024.
Description: Explore a galaxy full of wonders in this sci-fi grand strategy game from Paradox Development Studios. Interact with diverse alien races, discover strange new worlds with unexpected events, and expand the reach of your empire. Each new adventure holds almost limitless possibilities.
Get ready to explore, discover and interact with a multitude of species as you journey among the stars. Forge a galactic empire by sending out science ships to survey and explore, while construction ships build stations around newly discovered planets. Discover buried treasures and galactic wonders as you spin a direction for your society, creating limitations and evolutions for your explorers. Alliances will form and wars will be declared.
Every game begins with a civilization that has just discovered the means to travel between stars and is ready to explore the galaxy. Have your science ships survey and explore anomalies, leading you into a myriad of quests, introducing strange worlds with even stranger stories and discoveries that may completely change your outcome.
Description: Manor Lords is a medieval strategy game featuring in-depth city building, large-scale tactical battles, and complex economic and social simulations. Rule your lands as a medieval lord – the seasons pass, the weather changes, and cities rise and fall.
Inspired by the art and architecture of late 14th century Franconia, Manor Lords prioritizes historical accuracy wherever possible, using it to inform gameplay mechanics and visuals alike. Common medieval tropes are avoided in favor of historical accuracy in order to make the world feel more authentic, colorful, and believable.
Manor Lords provides a gridless city-building experience with full freedom of placement and rotation. Building mechanics are inspired by the growth of real medieval towns and villages, where major trade routes and the landscape influenced how settlements formed and developed.
Sid Meier’s Civilization® VI – 95% off
Description: Civilization VI is the newest installment in the award-winning Civilization Franchise. Expand your empire, advance your culture, and go head-to-head against history’s greatest leaders. Will your civilization stand the test of time?
Civilization VI offers new ways to engage with your world: cities now physically expand across the map, active research in technology and culture unlocks new potential, and competing leaders will pursue their own agendas based on their historical traits as you race for one of five ways to achieve victory in the game.
Description: Raise a city from the ground up and transform it into a thriving metropolis with the most realistic city builder ever. Push your creativity and problem-solving to build on a scale you've never experienced. With deep simulation and a living economy, this is world-building without limits.
How your city grows is your call too, but plan strategically. Every decision has an impact. Can you energize local industries while also using trade to boost the economy? What will make residential districts flourish without killing the buzz downtown? How will you meet the needs and desires of citizens while balancing the city's budget?
Your city never rests. Like any living, breathing world, it changes over time. Some changes will be slow and gradual, while others will be sudden and unexpected. So while seasons turn and night follows day, be ready to act when life doesn't go to plan.
The most realistic and detailed city builder ever, Cities: Skylines II pushes your creativity and problem-solving to another level. With beautifully rendered high-resolution graphics, it also inspires you to build the city of your dreams.
Description: Build the university of your dreams with Two Point Campus, the sim with a twist from the makers of Two Point Hospital. Build, hire staff and run an academic institution packed with wild courses.
It’s time to spin academia on its head! Got a yearning for learning? Or just keen to build an educational masterpiece? Campus is jam-packed with new creative tools to help you build the university of your dreams.
For the first time, build in the great outdoors as you develop your own delightfully educational campus environment, housing the top teaching facilities in the land. Whether you prefer building on simple foundations, or placing every tree, you can build the university you want.
Lay down pathways with new easy-to-use tools. Plant glorious collections of outdoor flora. Place benches, fountains, sculptures, hedgerows – even picket fences. The only limit is your imagination (and your in-game bank balance).
Description: A sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Generates stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.
RimWorld is a story generator. It’s designed to co-author tragic, twisted, and triumphant stories about imprisoned pirates, desperate colonists, starvation and survival. It works by controlling the “random” events that the world throws at you. Every thunderstorm, pirate raid, and traveling salesman is a card dealt into your story by the AI Storyteller. There are several storytellers to choose from. Randy Random does crazy stuff, Cassandra Classic goes for rising tension, and Phoebe Chillax likes to relax.
Total War: WARHAMMER III – 50% off
Description: The cataclysmic conclusion to the Total War: WARHAMMER trilogy is here. Rally your forces and step into the Realm of Chaos, a dimension of mind-bending horror where the very fate of the world will be decided. Will you conquer your Daemons… or command them?
The last roar of a dying god ruptures the boundary between worlds, opening a portal to the Realm of Chaos. From this maelstrom, the four Ruinous Powers – Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch and Slaanesh – emerge, spreading darkness and despair.
The stern warriors of Kislev and the vast empire of Grand Cathay stand at the threshold, as a vengeful Daemon Prince vows to destroy those who corrupted him. The coming conflict will engulf all. Will you conquer your daemons? Or command them?
Jurassic World Evolution 2 – 90% off
Description: Jurassic World Evolution 2 is the much-anticipated sequel to Frontier’s highly successful Jurassic World Evolution. This bold new era in the Jurassic World Evolution game franchise builds upon the ground-breaking and immersive 2018 management simulation.
Learn what it takes to be a park management master in Campaign mode, a compelling, original narrative that puts you at the heart of the action following the earth-shattering events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Work alongside iconic characters from the films, including Dr. Ian Malcolm (voiced by Jeff Goldblum) and Claire Dearing (voiced by Bryce Dallas Howard), and lead the efforts to control, conserve, and contain wild dinosaurs now rampaging across the USA.
Description: Love, fight, scheme, and claim greatness. Determine your noble house’s legacy in the sprawling grand strategy of Crusader Kings III. Death is only the beginning as you guide your dynasty’s bloodline in the rich and larger-than-life simulation of the Middle Ages.
Your legacy awaits. Choose your noble house and lead your dynasty to greatness in a Middle Ages epic that spans generations. War is but one of many tools to establish your reign, as real strategy requires expert diplomatic skill, mastery of your realm, and true cunning. Crusader Kings III continues the popular series made by Paradox Development Studio, featuring the widely acclaimed marriage of immersive grand strategy and deep, dramatic medieval roleplaying.
Description: Build a world for wildlife in Planet Zoo. From the developers of Planet Coaster and Zoo Tycoon comes the ultimate zoo sim. Construct detailed habitats, manage your zoo, and meet authentic living animals who think, feel, and explore the world you create around them.
Meet a world of incredible animals. From playful lion cubs to mighty elephants, every animal in Planet Zoo is a thinking, feeling individual with a distinctive look and personality of their own. Craft detailed habitats to bring your animals’ natural environments home, research and manage each species to allow them to thrive, and help your animals raise families to pass their genes onto future generations.