# Voxel City

> Voxel City is a cosy voxel city builder made in Unreal Engine 5 by Wayne Fellows, its sole developer. Lay a road, zone a few homes and watch the Voxies move in, each with their own home, job and day. Voxel City is coming soon. The release date and platforms are to be announced, and there are no public builds yet.

"A cosy little city, one street at a time." There's no game over. If money runs low, the town tells you, services wind down gently, and you can take out a loan and pay it back. Storms, floods and heatwaves are off unless you switch them on. It plays with a mouse and keyboard or with an Xbox or PlayStation controller, in English and 25 more languages.

Working in the current build today (each one is a feature card on the home page, shown in a real screenshot).

- Roads and bridges. Drag a road and it joins itself up. The avenues out of town cross the water on bridges.
- Dual roads and one-ways. Dual roads, one-way and buses-only streets, and zebra crossings.
- Set every junction. Share the green, favour the busy road or take the lights away.
- Homes, shops and industry. Zone the land and Voxies move in. Nice streets grow taller.
- What a home needs. Click a house and it says what it needs to grow, with a fix button beside each missing thing.
- Fences, flowers and fountains. Decor that makes the land around worth more and cheers the Voxies nearby.
- Watch it go up. The builders' lorry brings materials and scaffolding goes up as a building gains a level.
- Building materials. Quarries, pits, lumber yards, sawmills, brickworks, concrete and steel works.
- What the ground gives. The Resources view shows where the stone, clay, sand and timber lie.
- Rich ground and poor. Deposits lie in patches with a rich middle and a poor rim. Each quarter of a map is rich in something different.
- Surveyors, claims and a capital. Survey each quarter, stake mining claims, and make your city the regional capital.
- Landmarks and a wonder. Eleven landmarks earned by how you play, then the Voxel Spire in three stages.
- From market town to the 2040s. Five eras, each one a step in the Town Plans tree.
- One tree of Town Plans. Seventy plans in seven branches, paid for in Ideas, in place of research.
- Gondolas and flood parks. Gondola cabins over roads, water and hills. Flood parks that fill in a storm.
- Docks and barges. A cargo dock's barges carry materials between your towns on the same map.
- Freight trains. A freight yard sends the nearby works' loads by train, not lorry.
- More homes, shops and works. Five designs for every plot, from thatched cottages to a car plant.
- The year turns. Blossom in spring, golden fields in autumn and snow in winter.
- Festivals and requests. A festival each season, and Voxies who ask for a park or a clinic nearby.
- Postcards and achievements. Photo mode postcards and forty achievements kept as stamps in the Mayor's Album.
- The Floating Town. The title screen is a whole town cut out like a toy, with 83 of the game's service buildings in it.
- Fire, police and care. From a fire post or a watch hut to a headquarters, a water-bomber airship, hospices and memorial woods.
- Where the rubbish goes. Landfills fill up and can be capped as a hill park. Recycling earns money and materials.
- Round the corner. A little library, a repair café, a playground and allotments. Homes at levels 4 and 5 want places nearby.
- Trains that wait their turn. Every train holds the track ahead. Real sidings, passing loops, a Double Track tool and Freight Tubes under the streets.
- Airships, drones and a lifeboat. The water-bomber airship and fire drones fight fires from the air, and the coastguard's lifeboat patrols the water.
- Nothing stands idle. Robot crews, helper robots, rockets that launch, post vans, bike riders and the sawmill's saw, all visibly at work.
- Did you know. The title screen shows forty true tips, the ones about things you haven't tried yet first.
- Tunnels and a metro. Two layers under the streets for roads, rail and a metro.
- Four joined-up maps. Each map is one landscape in four quarters, and your roads can join the next one.
- Buses, trains and a metro. Name and colour every line, choose its buses, see who rode it this month.
- Helicopters and drones. Helicopters for far calls, and drones that fly parcels to the shops.
- A grass airfield. Prop planes bring visitors who spend in your shops.
- Draw where they patrol. Drag boxes over the map to set where a police station, clinic or bus depot works.
- Eleven scenarios. Goals to meet, a bonus star, a par date to beat and a new town of the week every Monday. There is no losing.
- Learn as you go, undo a slip. Six short tutorial chapters, Ctrl+Z to take back what you just built, and a Sandbox mode.
- Controllers and 26 languages. Build the whole city on an Xbox or PlayStation controller, in English or 25 more languages.

## The game

- [Home page](https://voxelcity.games/). The pitch, every feature card, how a town grows, the gallery, the trailer, who makes it, the FAQ and the waitlist
- [Showcase](https://voxelcity.games/showcase). Every voxel model from the game (Voxies, cars, planes, houses, works and service buildings, from a little library to a plasma recovery plant), each one viewable in 3D
- [Trailer](https://voxelcity.games/#trailer). "A day in town", 1 minute 12 seconds, all captured in the game
- [FAQ](https://voxelcity.games/#faq). What makes it cosy, release date, platforms, languages, accessibility and the waitlist
- [Press kit](https://voxelcity.games/press). Fact sheet, short and long descriptions, key art, logos, screenshots and the trailer to download
- [A cosy city builder](https://voxelcity.games/cosy-city-builder). What makes Voxel City gentle to play, with screenshots
- [A voxel city builder](https://voxelcity.games/voxel-city-builder). The game's voxel look, its models and the ground they stand on
- [Playing on a controller](https://voxelcity.games/city-builder-with-controller). Every controller button, and how menus and windows work on a pad
- [Full facts](https://voxelcity.games/llms-full.txt). Everything on this page in more detail, with the FAQ answers, in plain text

## Devlog

Notes from making the game, by its developer ([all posts](https://voxelcity.games/news), [Atom feed](https://voxelcity.games/news/feed.xml)).

- [Nothing stands idle](https://voxelcity.games/news/nothing-stands-idle). A lot of buildings promised something and then just sat there. Now robot crews roll down a ramp to the fire, helper robots walk to building sites, the home printer has its gantry, rockets launch, and the post office, the bike docks and the sawmill all get on with it where you can see.
- [Everything that should fly flies](https://voxelcity.games/news/everything-that-should-fly-flies). The water-bomber airship used to stay on its mast and the fire drones never left their tower. Now helicopters and drones share one way of flying, over hills and round tall towers, the airship casts off to fight fires, and the coastguard's lifeboat goes out on the water.
- [Did you know](https://voxelcity.games/news/did-you-know). The title screen has a little card in its top corner now, with forty true tips about the game. It shows you the things you haven't tried yet first, and you can turn it off in Settings.
- [Trains that wait their turn](https://voxelcity.games/news/trains-that-wait-their-turn). I watched two trains drive straight through each other, so the railway has been rebuilt. Trains now hold the track ahead before they move, freight pulls into real sidings, stations get passing loops, and there's a Double Track tool, a Lines window and Freight Tubes under the streets.
- [Town Plans, one tree instead of six ladders](https://voxelcity.games/news/town-plans-one-tree). Research and the graduate programmes are gone. In their place is Town Plans, one tree of 70 plans in seven branches, paid for in Ideas that your schools, landmarks and milestones earn. It opens with F2.
- [The rubbish finally goes somewhere](https://voxelcity.games/news/where-the-rubbish-goes). Bin lorries used to collect the rubbish and then it vanished. Now landfills fill up, a full one can be capped and turned into a hill park, recycling earns real money and materials, and there are five new depots for what's left.
- [Round the corner](https://voxelcity.games/news/round-the-corner). Voxel City had hospitals, a university and a launch pad, but not the small stuff a real street has. Now there's a Local tab with a little library, a repair café, a night market and more, and homes at levels 4 and 5 like a mix of places within a short walk.
- [Surveyors, mining claims and a regional capital](https://voxelcity.games/news/surveyors-claims-and-a-capital). The Region branch of Town Plans is live. Every quarter of a map now has a nickname and says what it's rich in. Surveyors map its best ground, Mining Claims let you dig a quarter nobody lives in yet, and a Regional Capital ties all your towns together.
- [Fire, police, farewells and the post](https://voxelcity.games/news/fire-police-and-farewells). The Fire, Police, Deathcare and Logistics tabs each had one or two buildings. Now they have six or more, from a watch hut with flasks of tea to a water-bomber airship, a memorial woodland and parcels by tunnel.
- [From a village school to a space academy](https://voxelcity.games/news/schools-labs-and-a-space-academy). The Education tab goes from 3 buildings to 12, and Tech from 3 to 9. There's a village school, a forest school and a science centre, a thinking lab that makes Ideas, a weather station, and a space academy that stands by the rocket pad.
- [Goodbye to the pill buttons](https://voxelcity.games/news/goodbye-pill-buttons). The game's buttons, tabs and chips all had round ends like little pills. I'd grown to dislike them, so every one has gone, and there's now a check that counts any that sneak back.
- [The title screen is now an island](https://voxelcity.games/news/the-title-screen-is-an-island). The old title screen had empty fields behind the logo. Now it's a whole town cut out of the ground like a toy, with every service building in the game standing in it. It also crashed my graphics card for a day.
- [Scaffolding that grew five times too tall](https://voxelcity.games/news/scaffolding-that-grew-too-tall). When a building goes up a level in Voxel City, a lorry brings the materials and scaffolding goes up round it. Here's how that works, and the bug where the scaffolding kept growing with the building.
- [Why the clay sits by the water](https://voxelcity.games/news/why-the-clay-sits-by-the-water). Stone, clay, sand and timber used to be dug at the same rate everywhere, and you could make more by moving the ground about. Now every map has rich patches and poor ones that stay put, and each quarter of a map is good at different things.
- [Click a house, see what it needs](https://voxelcity.games/news/click-a-house-see-what-it-needs). The building inspector has been redrawn so it says what a home needs to grow in one line, shows every need as one bar, and puts the button to fix each one right next to it.
- [What I'm building next](https://voxelcity.games/news/what-im-building-next). Two big pieces of work are planned for the next few weeks. One is Town Plans, a single tree of upgrades in place of research. The other is a layer of small neighbourhood services, including somewhere for the rubbish to actually go. None of it is built yet.

## Waitlist and contact

- [Join the waitlist](https://voxelcity.games/#join). One email to confirm it's you, news only when there's real news (like a release date), never passed on, leave in one click
- [Privacy notice](https://voxelcity.games/privacy). What the waitlist collects, why, how long it is kept and how to have it deleted
- [Email hello@voxelcity.games](mailto:hello@voxelcity.games). Contact Wayne Fellows, the sole developer

## Follow

- [X @voxelcitygame](https://x.com/voxelcitygame). Voxel City on X
- [YouTube @VoxelCityGame](https://www.youtube.com/@VoxelCityGame). Voxel City on YouTube