The 10 Best Colony Sims To Play In 2026

7 – Farthest Frontier

Farthest Frontier Screenshot of a 16th century town center, with a fountain in the middle, surrounded by gardens and several houses and shops

Farthest Frontier has become a gold standard for semi-historical colony sims thanks to its incredible detail, graphics, and depth. Developed by the veterans at Crate Entertainment (previously worked on Grim Dawn), this colony sim manages to be both visually stunning and mechanically deep, and still offer plenty of customization into how players want to tackle the challenge of creating a new town from scratch on the untamed wilderness- these options can make the game a walk in the park, or turn it into a brutal diceased-ridden survival affair, with the first being perfect for those still learning the ropes of the genre. The game came out of Early Access in October 2025, and currently sits at an enviable 86% Steam Very Positive rating with over 20.000 reviews.

6 – Songs of Syx

Songs of Syx Screenshot of a massive town surrounded by walls, with a lot of buildings around a major town center

Songs of Syx is quickly rising through the ranks of colony sims as one of the best fantasy-set games of this genre of strategy. A marvel of technical optimization, the game allows players to grow a colony from a dozen refugees to a sprawling metropolis of over a dozen thousand citizens. Not even Dwarf Fortress or Infection Free Zone allows for this kind of scale. And yet, it’s expected of the player to take care of every small detail of their ever-growing metropolis, and a poorly made decision can quickly spiral supply chains out of control, dooming the entire city to chaos and oblivion. While most colony sims do feature some kind of combat, no other game allows you to have battles of up to 50.000 individual units. Just for comparison, that’s way bigger than an average Total War battle, which might feature between 3.000 to 5.000 soldiers. There’s a very good demo available if you want to give it a go.

5 – Timberborn

I was surprised to learn that Timberborn came out in Early Access in 2021. Time does fly when you’re having fun. With its official Version 1.0 release in March 2026, it has firmly established itself as an absolute fan-favorite amongst those who love complex sims. The game’s premise is simple: players lead a colony of industrious beavers to survive in a world plagued by cycles of devastating droughts and toxic “badtides.” The game has a unique focus on vertical architecture and forces players to master water physics and terraforming to bend the environment to their will, and allow for the colony to thrive even when things have gone sour. As beavers do. What beavers don’t do is develop fully automated societies with beaver bots. Just a couple more days and you’ll be able to. When the 1.0 version of Timberborn goes live, it will become, by bar, one of the best colony sims of all time.