Vibe City

Boot up a city on a grid.

Vibe City is an isometric city. Amber warnings, a monospace HUD, and a simulation underneath that actually pushes back. Zone residential, commercial, and industrial land, thread power lines out from your plant, keep the water pumps fed, and watch the RCI demand meters tell you what your city actually wants next.

Power has to physically propagate down the grid. Water coverage depends on road access. Fires happen. Land value responds to what you build near it. 

Scenario / Free to Play

In scenario mode it gets harder to build a population above 15k. So you are nudged into a contract to overcome that hurdle. Contracts roll in for AI data centres, shipping hubs, and wildlife reserves each with its own multi-stage buildout and its own consequences if you tear one down early. I wonder if there is a price to pay in the long term...

Free to Play mode is easier.

Terrain is procedurally generated per city, with hills, wetlands, and coastline that actually shapes where you can build and how. 

!!This is early access!! Vibe City is a rough prototype — expect edges, missing polish, and features still being tuned. Exports work, Imports are not working accross all browsers on itch. Save format may change between versions (see Known Issues below for how to protect your saves).

Features

• Isometric rendering with 4-direction rotation and smooth zoom
• RCI demand simulation (Residential / Commercial / Industrial) with a tax rate you control
• Power grid propagation from plant to power line to zone — no power line, no power
• Water pump coverage gated on road access
• Procedural terrain per city — elevation, moisture, wetlands, coasts, hills
• Bridges with proper ramp/span geometry over water
• Scenario contracts: AI Data Centre, Shipping Centre, Wildlife Reserve — each with staged buildouts and real consequences for bulldozing early
• Fire disaster tool, population milestones, land value & pollution modeling
• Minimap with power / water / land value / fire overlay modes
• Autosave plus 6 manual save slots, with Export/Import City to back up a save as a portable file

Controls

Input	Action
Left-click / drag	Place selected tile
Right-click / drag	Bulldoze
Scroll wheel	Zoom in/out
Q / E	Rotate view
P	Pause / resume
Space (hold) + drag	Pan camera
Fullscreen icon (top-right)	Toggle fullscreen

System requirements

• Windows — Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
• macOS — macOS 12 (Monterey) or later. Universal binary, runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel.
• Linux — .deb or .AppImage; requires webkit2gtk (already present on most desktop distros)

Known issues / disclaimers

Saves are local and may not survive version updates. Vibe City stores saves on your machine. Because this is an early-access build with the save format still evolving, use the in-game Export City button periodically to back up a save as a portable file, and Import City seems not supported on itch. Grab a copy on https://github.com/philipp-lehmann/Vibe-City if you grew fond of your city.

They game is probably badly balanced. Feedback and ideas are welcome.

Credits

Built by Philipp / Redefine Studio. Claude Code "assisted" with implementation — simulation logic, the procedural building/asset generators, and the desktop packaging.