Pile Up!

Today, strategic building titles are all the rage. Games that ask you to think steps ahead can be quite rewarding, but most of the time they become exercises in random luck and general frustration. However, recent release from Remoob, Pile Up!, might have some pretty interesting solutions to what is a common industry problem.

Released in June 2023, the game has drawn a small but impressed audience. The title itself is all about helping you to build properties and to develop your structure upwards. Imagine Jenga with a touch of city building and people management, and you have Pile Up!

Addictive city building with enough strategic depth

The premise here is quite simple: you need to build a town, but everything is going to be built atop each other. You have a very small piece of land to start with, and you need to start building everything atop one another like a massive apartment building. As this happens, your people fill out the buildings and come to you with requests: you need to juggle your desire to build upwards (safely) with fulfilling their requests.

That creates challenges where you often need to decide between pressing on and building or taking the time to handle a request. Requests can sometimes cause you to have to make tough choices on what to build, and what to destroy. Over time, though, you usually find that you need to make brutal decisions by removing certain parts of the town so that you can fix what was broken.

Add in a very chilled environment and some stunningly cute visuals, and it is easy to see why so many people are falling in love with Pile Up! It would be hard to find a direct comparison, but imagine you could combine the board game Jenga with Frostpunk. You essentially have that, minus the depressing atmosphere that Frostpunk relies upon.

Challenging city building with plenty to offer (8.5/10)

It would be hard to not recommend Pile Up! – it is one of the most enjoyable city builders we have played in years. It requires a lot of work, though, and you often need to be ready to ditch your attachment to structures and even to citizens. You have to be pretty ruthless in your decision making, as sentiment can bring the whole thing tumbling down.

Currently still in Early Access, the game is making rapid improvements and we are beginning to see a lot more features being added. With so many interesting functions and features, though, there is so much strategy to be found here. Yes, you will often find yourself having to restart. But just like good colony builders should, you do not feel like you have wasted your time: every session is a learning experience, right up until everything comes toppling down!

Pros

• Stunning visuals and design that makes this game very easy to look at
• Excellent interface and strategic building makes city building actually fun
• Citizen requests create challenges that will force you to think outside the box

Cons

• Perhaps a touch too challenging for those who are new to the genre

Become a dream-fulfiller for homeless people in Pile Up! The do-gooders bring money to the player-builder to create a home for them.

Gameplay:

• The player is given a small square of land. Furnish to your liking and still please the customer!
• The developers have given thousands of possible options for furnishing. Choose from a beautiful array of facades, balconies and decorative items
• The player will see that he has created an entire city - hundreds of houses located nearby. He will build factories and plants to keep the neighborhoods functioning