Review: Airborne Kingdom takes the city-builder genre to new heights

This new sim brings charm and innovation to a mostly stagnant genre.

City-building games have been around for decades, and they're one of the best types of games if you're looking for something relaxing. That being said, the gameplay of the genre has largely remained identical — increase your city's population, collect and manage resources, place new buildings, research technologies that improve efficiency, and repeat until you either get bored of expanding your utopia or you achieve the win condition. For some, the uniformity of this formula may be enjoyable. For me, though, it just makes every city-builder feel (presentation differences aside) the same. It is for this reason that I've struggled to really get into the genre, though on occasion, games such as Frostpunk release that stand out.

Airborne Kingdom, a brand new PC city-builder from developer The Wandering Band, is the latest title in the genre to impress me in this way. Between its unique flying city concept, creative ...