Tropico 6

Management are terrified of the new Linux Format workers’ council, but it’s just Phil Savage playing at communism under a hot sun.

- Phil Savage

Tropico 6 is a great game for people watching. It’s a satirical city builder in which every one of the citizens of your banana republic is simulated. You place a mine. You watch as a construction crew makes its way over to the building site. You watch as the newly constructed mine’s employees start digging for gold or coal or uranium or whatever. And you watch as teamsters come to take the raw materials to a factory for processing.

When it’s all going well, there’s a calming rhythm to the bustle of your island. When it’s not, you find yourself scouring around the map, trying to diagnose problems. The focused, individualised simulation means that small inefficiencies can balloon into big problems, and the behaviour of your citizens feeds back into wider systems in interesting ways. That’s why – while there’s a sandbox mode with plenty of different islands and options – often the Tropico series is at its best during the campaign missions, where specific requirements force you to adapt.

Curveball missions