Combine the rapid expansion of Cities Skylines, the construction, destruction, and pixel-block visuals of Minecraft, and Factorio’s focus on creating an efficient production line, and you’ll likely end up with a fascinating, new Steam building game, where you can choose to construct a mass manufacturing empire – or blow everything up to snub your corporate overlords and save the local environment.
We’re still waiting on a release date, but Dawn Apart, from the wonderfully named Industrial Technology and Witchcraft, already has us spellbound with its intricate voxel aesthetic and mix of building and demolition. On behalf of a gigantic megacorporation, you’re dispatched to the virginal planet of Aurora to terraform the surface and start plundering natural resources. Build factories, link up conveyor belts, and fine-tune assembly lines to automate your huge farming and mining operation.
So far, so city-building game. But if you’ve ever felt uneasy about pillaging the natural world in Satisfactory or Rimworld, Dawn Apart lets you turn the tables – you can build defences to stop the native population tearing down your factories, or you can join them, and work against your capitalist benefactors to destroy the colony and safeguard the Auroran environment.
“Everything you build and encounter can be pulverised down to the last voxel,” Industrial Technology and Witchcraft explains. “Manage a growing number of engineers, mercenaries, and civilians who have left their home behind to start over in a lush but hostile world…Or flip the script, and start a rebellion against the greedy corporation exploiting your new home.”
We’ve all done it, built a huge metropolis in SimCity or the perfect Minecraft world, just to enjoy stamping all over it like an angry child with a Lego set, only now we can do it with purpose. You can add Dawn Apart to your Steam wishlist now.
Check out some of the other best strategy games, or perhaps some great management games if you want to perfect your corporate strategy before heading into Dawn Apart. We’ve also got the rundown of the best RTS games on PC, if you prefer fast-paced battling over careful business planning.
