The devs are still working on this game into 2022, bless them, but the game itself launched missing basic mechanics found in a game like this. Why wait for them to play catch up when you can play Emperors Rise of the Middle Kingdom or Zeus or Caesar right now?
An interesting city-builder with an attention to historical detail. Unfortunately, little about it truly stands out, and the supply chains are hard to keep track of with its messy UI. Would only recommend if you're tired of all the great city builders out there.
This game is currently in the Humble Choice for March 2022. If you are interested in the game and it's before April 5th, 2022, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.
A challenging resource manager.
There are a lot of games where players take control of a city and have to build it up, generate resources and there are few wrong moves. You just keep following the whims of the people and avoid making obvious mistakes. Nebuchadnezzar isn’t that. While a lot of the game is resource management, this game feels more challenging and often feels like it’s on the edge of a knife. A wrong move may have a cascading effect destroying your entire city, rather than just being inefficient.
Players will learn how to avoid these wrong moves over time, but a large amount of it is micromanagement of your resources. If you have too much of A or Not enough of B, suddenly some buildings might regress, but then that will also cause you to have fewer workers, which means even fewer resources, and before long everything is at a standstill. It’s an interesting but challenging proposition.
Pick this up if you’re interested in a more challenging city-builder. If you played Pharaoh or Caesar this is very similar to that, and the graphics are good, but those are also twenty-year-old titles so I’m not sure how many people there are that are familiar with those titles. God, I’m dating myself on those references.
If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/5Z3fRqxBP64
A challenging resource manager.
There are a lot of games where players take control of a city and have to build it up, generate resources and there are few wrong moves. You just keep following the whims of the people and avoid making obvious mistakes. Nebuchadnezzar isn’t that. While a lot of the game is resource management, this game feels more challenging and often feels like it’s on the edge of a knife. A wrong move may have a cascading effect destroying your entire city, rather than just being inefficient.
Players will learn how to avoid these wrong moves over time, but a large amount of it is micromanagement of your resources. If you have too much of A or Not enough of B, suddenly some buildings might regress, but then that will also cause you to have fewer workers, which means even fewer resources, and before long everything is at a standstill. It’s an interesting but challenging proposition.
Pick this up if you’re interested in a more challenging city-builder. If you played Pharaoh or Caesar this is very similar to that, and the graphics are good, but those are also twenty-year-old titles so I’m not sure how many people there are that are familiar with those titles. God, I’m dating myself on those references.
If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/5Z3fRqxBP64
Nebuchadnezzar is a fantastic 'classic' city-builder that does everything its inspirations (Pharaoh, Caesar) did while adding plenty of modern flourishes to make it more enjoyable. There's not a ton to say about it, it doesn't reinvent much of anything. But it's damn fun, very competent and runs supremely well with pleasingly high population numbers and hurried little peeps. The biggest single innovation of Nebuchadnezzar over Caesar and the like are the pathings and automatics of haulers which makes things easier to understand when moving goods. There's little bits like more gods interactions and some combat. But none of that will be enough for you to like it if you weren't already fond of Caesar-style city-builders.
The big downside is no true generated sandbox map or variety in creating sandbox scenarios. Instead you have to choose from existing maps. Which is obviously fine, but you can build a successful city fairly quickly on each one. It would be nice to see more varied environments or interesting map seeds with fun ideas.
It's worth a couple bucks, and if you catch it on a steep enough discount it's worth a couple hours of your time.
The big downside is no true generated sandbox map or variety in creating sandbox scenarios. Instead you have to choose from existing maps. Which is obviously fine, but you can build a successful city fairly quickly on each one. It would be nice to see more varied environments or interesting map seeds with fun ideas.
It's worth a couple bucks, and if you catch it on a steep enough discount it's worth a couple hours of your time.