Games Like The Crust

Build the most efficient intergalactic factory in space simulation strategy game Dyson Sphere Program! Harness the power of stars, collect resources, plan and design production lines and develop your interstellar factory from a small space workshop to a galaxy-wide industrial empire.

Why similar: Automation 23.7%, Base Building 16.2%, Space 13.1%, Resource Management 9.5%, Building 7.8%

Why You'll Like It: It excels in space-based automation and large-scale logistics, mirroring the industrial growth found in The Crust.

IXION is an unrelenting, city-building odyssey across the stars. As Administrator of the Tiqqun, DOLOS’ prototype space station, you are tasked with balancing preservation and exploration as you manage infrastructure, resources and crew. Can you keep the flame of humanity alight in the cold dark?

Why similar: Colony Sim 18.8% ★, City Builder 16.5%, Space 14.4%, Base Building 10.9%, Resource Management 10.6%

Why You'll Like It: It combines space-based city building with a strong narrative and survival elements, capturing the high-stakes management feel of The Crust.

Build an industrial empire on a remote island. Mine resources, reshape terrain with excavators, grow food, construct factories, lay train tracks, and trade with the outside world. Research 100+ technologies to advance from basic metal smelting all the way to nuclear power and space flight.

Why similar: Automation 27.4%, Base Building 18.2%, Resource Management 15.1%, Colony Sim 11.5% ★, City Builder 7.8%

Why You'll Like It: This title features highly detailed logistics and resource processing systems that will appeal to fans of complex automation.

Oxygen Not Included is a space-colony simulation game. Deep inside an alien space rock your industrious crew will need to master science, overcome strange new lifeforms, and harness incredible space tech to survive, and possibly, thrive.

Why similar: Colony Sim 31.4% ★, Base Building 19.4%, Resource Management 11.3%, Survival 7.3%, Building 7.2%

Why You'll Like It: This game offers deep colony simulation and complex resource management, requiring players to solve intricate survival problems in a sci-fi setting.

Guide a group of space settlers trying to establish a base on a remote planet. Grow food, collect energy, mine resources, survive disasters and build a self-sufficient colony in a harsh and unforgiving environment.

Why similar: Colony Sim 25.9% ★, City Builder 16.3%, Base Building 15.1%, Space 11.6%, Resource Management 5.7%

Why You'll Like It: A classic space colony simulation that focuses on managing the needs of settlers while expanding your base on various planets.

Embark on a space voyage with your ragtag crew of civilians in search of a new home. Build spaceships tile by tile, create optimal gas conditions, manage the needs and moods of their crew, encounter other space-faring groups, and explore the universe in this spaceship colony simulation.

Why similar: Colony Sim 18.4% ★, Base Building 11.8%, City Builder 10.4%, Space 8.7%, Resource Management 7.9%

Why You'll Like It: This game focuses on ship-based colony management and survival, sharing the sci-fi aesthetic and resource-constrained gameplay.

Factorio is a game about building and creating automated factories to produce items of increasing complexity, within an infinite 2D world. Use your imagination to design your factory, combine simple elements into ingenious structures, and finally protect it from the creatures who don't really like you.

Why similar: Automation 31.3%, Base Building 20.9%, Resource Management 13.9%, Sandbox 9.2%, City Builder 5.7%

Why You'll Like It: As the gold standard for automation games, it provides the deep logistical and production chain mechanics that drive the core gameplay loop.

Desynced is a sci-fi strategy game with fully customizable units and behaviors. Gather, build, research, and explore the unknown. Alone or with friends, unveil the mystery of an AI on the edge of self-awareness and uncover the hidden truth in this blend of strategy, automation, and exploration.

Why similar: Automation 18.2%, Base Building 13.2%, City Builder 12.5%, Resource Management 8.5%, Sandbox 8.1%

Why You'll Like It: This game blends base-building with unit programming and automation, offering a unique strategic layer to the standard factory-builder.

Satisfactory is a first-person open-world factory building game with a dash of exploration and combat. Play alone or with friends, explore an alien planet, create multi-story factories, and enter conveyor belt heaven!

Why similar: Automation 30.8%, Base Building 24.5%, Resource Management 12.4%, Building 10%, Sandbox 9.2%

Why You'll Like It: It brings the automation genre into a 3D space, focusing on building massive, efficient factories on an alien planet.

Techtonica is a first-person factory automation game with a gripping mystery about mining your way out from the depths of an alien planet. Explore bioluminescent caves, mold destructible terrain, construct a massive subterranean factory. Dig your way toward answers & discover the secrets of Calyx.

Why similar: Automation 23.7%, Base Building 15.3%, City Builder 12.5%, Resource Management 10.4%, Building 9.6%

Why You'll Like It: A first-person subterranean automation game that focuses on mining and base expansion in an alien world.

Explore endless Universe and create the most efficient constellation of colonies. Build conveyor systems to automate production. Take care of Astronauts and their needs! Establish new colonies as part of intergalactic simulation.

Why similar: Automation 19.8%, Colony Sim 19.7% ★, Base Building 16.7%, Space 11.4%, Resource Management 10.5%

Why You'll Like It: It features modular base-building and automation in space, allowing players to explore and expand across a procedurally generated universe.

Humans are long gone. In a world struck by droughts and toxic waste, will your lumberpunk beavers do any better? A sandbox city-building game featuring ingenious animals, vertical architecture, water physics, and terraforming. Contains high amounts of wood.

Why similar: Colony Sim 19.9% ★, Automation 16.2%, City Builder 16%, Base Building 11.3%, Sandbox 7.5%

Why You'll Like It: While not space-themed, its unique water management and vertical city-building mechanics provide a similar satisfying puzzle of expansion.

Build a sophisticated robot factory optimized to perfection in an infinite voxel world. Mine and harvest resources, automate your production lines and manage complex systems while researching your way to become the galaxy’s leading robotics megacorp.

Why similar: Automation 25.3%, Base Building 18.5%, Resource Management 13.8%, Sandbox 11.2%, Building 11%

Why You'll Like It: A voxel-based automation game that allows for massive, sprawling factories in a sci-fi environment.

Make Mars your own! Take control of the world’s most sophisticated AI (AMI) and terraform the surface of the Red Planet for a city-building experience on a planetary scale. Transform this barren world into a lush paradise and explore the surface for any ancient secrets that may be waiting.

Why similar: Colony Sim 16.3% ★, Automation 15%, Base Building 10.9%, City Builder 10.8%, Resource Management 8.1%

Why You'll Like It: It tasks players with terraforming Mars, combining planetary-scale strategy with base-building and resource logistics.

Build a soviet republic from an impoverished country into a rich industrial superpower in a city builder with intricate production chains and a fully simulated global economy. Manage the lives of your citizens from education to work and party loyalty to criminal activity.

Why similar: Colony Sim 21.5% ★, City Builder 16.2%, Base Building 14.6%, Sandbox 8.9%, Building 8.9%

Why You'll Like It: It offers the most complex logistics and economic simulation in the genre, perfect for players who enjoy deep resource management.

Build a new home for your team of robots as they begin a new life for themselves on a distant planet where they can fulfil their ultimate dream: to be human.

Why similar: Colony Sim 20.7% ★, Automation 18.3%, City Builder 13.9%, Base Building 10.7%, Building 8.1%

Why You'll Like It: A charming city-builder that incorporates automation and logistics, focusing on building a self-sustaining robot colony.

Stationeers puts you in control of the construction and management of a space station to run by yourself or online with your friends. Complex atmospheric, electrical, manufacturing, agriculture, and gravitational systems require your thought and management at all times!

Why similar: Colony Sim 19.1% ★, Automation 17.5%, Base Building 12.9%, Space 9.6%, Resource Management 9.4%

Why You'll Like It: A hardcore space base-building game that emphasizes physics, atmospheric management, and complex electrical systems.

Final Factory blends factory building, spaceship design, and a rich universe to explore. Build a mega factory and command a massive fleet against the hostile local aliens. Discover new technologies and unlock the secrets of an ancient civilization as you explore an infinite cosmos.

Why similar: Automation 23.8%, Base Building 16.4%, Resource Management 12.1%, Space 10.2%, Sandbox 8.9%

Why You'll Like It: This game focuses on space-based factory automation and fleet management, scaling up from a single station to a galactic empire.

After a nuclear war life on the surface became impossible. A 300m thick radioactive fog covered the Earth. We are looking for bold active people to manage the process of restoring life on Earth. Join!

Why similar: Colony Sim 20.1% ★, City Builder 16.2%, Base Building 10.6%, Resource Management 10.2%, Building 7.4%

Why You'll Like It: A futuristic city-builder that forces players to manage resources across multiple isolated cliff-top settlements.

Dive into a factory-building game with the focus on just that – building huge space factories! Design sprawling multi-level factories and satisfying production lines without limits. Tackle progressively challenging automation goals at your own pace, without the threat of enemies.

Why similar: Automation 28.2%, Base Building 15.3%, Management 11.7%, Resource Management 10%, Building 10%

Why You'll Like It: A pure automation experience that strips away survival elements to focus entirely on factory optimization and logistical flow.

Build and manage a massive industrial network of factories, mines, and farms. Employ a fleet of trains, trucks, and robotic drones. In the age of automation, efficiency is survival!

Why similar: Automation 26.3%, Base Building 17.4%, Resource Management 10.4%, Sandbox 9.2%, Building 8.4%

Why You'll Like It: A sandbox game centered on building massive, interconnected factory networks using various transportation methods.

Create an extrasolar efficiency utopia from scratch! In this sci-fi city builder you need to start mining operations, plan production, and lay down transportation routes to ensure a smooth supply chain.

Why similar: Automation 19.6%, City Builder 14.9%, Space 11.2%, Base Building 10.8%, Resource Management 10.5%

Why You'll Like It: A city-builder that emphasizes traffic management and logistics, requiring efficient infrastructure to keep the colony running.

Survive and thrive in a post-apocalyptic future — resources are scarce, but opportunity calls! Build the ultimate disaster proof colony, protect your colonists, and restore civilization to a devastated world.

Why similar: Colony Sim 23.4% ★, City Builder 20.7%, Base Building 12.8%, Post-apocalyptic 11.5%, Survival 7.5%

Why You'll Like It: This game focuses on colony management and survival in a post-apocalyptic setting, emphasizing resource gathering and base defense.

Stardeus is a deep colony sim set on a broken starship manned by drones and hibernating human survivors. As the AI, have your drones repair your ship, save your crew and travel the stars in this beautiful simulation.

Why similar: Colony Sim 23.9% ★, Base Building 15.2%, Space 12%, Resource Management 11%, Sandbox 8.5%

Why You'll Like It: A deep space station colony sim that includes automation, exploration, and complex survival mechanics.

Embark on a journey of survival, crafting, and automation in Eden Crafters, a solo and co-op open-world game that challenges you to turn a hostile planet into a habitable haven for humanity. Temper the climate, create a breathable atmosphere, and turn toxic lakes into water: shape a new world!

Why similar: Automation 23%, Base Building 16%, Colony Sim 13.4% ★, Sandbox 9.1%, Space 9%

Why You'll Like It: An open-world automation game focused on terraforming a planet through large-scale resource extraction and crafting.

New Cycle is a city building game with focus on survival. After an apocalyptic series of solar flares, human society has been thrown into disarray. Establish a settlement and develop it all the way from humble beginnings to industrial metropolis.

Why similar: Colony Sim 20.6% ★, City Builder 14.8%, Base Building 12.8%, Resource Management 9.3%, Building 8.5%

Why You'll Like It: A survival-focused city builder that requires careful resource management to rebuild society after a global catastrophe.

Build and manage mankind’s first mission across the universe! Create a sprawling facility underground, recruit a diverse group of specialists from around the globe and explore mysterious new worlds through the Exogate.

Why similar: Colony Sim 16.5% ★, Base Building 12.4%, City Builder 11.9%, Resource Management 9.3%, Space 7.8%

Why You'll Like It: A base-management game where you oversee a facility researching alien technology, balancing research, resources, and personnel.

Frostpunk is the first society survival game. As the ruler of the last city on Earth, it is your duty to manage both its citizens and infrastructure. What decisions will you make to ensure your society's survival? What will you do when pushed to breaking point? Who will you become in the process?

Why similar: Colony Sim 22% ★, City Builder 20.6%, Resource Management 13.7%, Post-apocalyptic 8.4%, Survival 8.1%

Why You'll Like It: While more survival-focused, it shares the intense pressure of managing a colony in an extremely hostile environment.

The Last Starship is a 2D space construction game where you design and upgrade your starship. Choose your path: pirate hunter, miner, engineer, spacebus driver, and more, whilst exploring vibrant star systems. Enjoy a growing sandbox world, with regular free updates. Your cosmic adventure awaits!

Why similar: Colony Sim 18.9% ★, Base Building 14.4%, Automation 14.2%, Space 11.9%, Sandbox 9.4%

Become the hive mind of a robot ant colony in Microtopia! Use pheromone trails to create, automate and optimize supply chains for your ants to follow. Collect resources, produce goods, feed your queen, grow your colony and fly out to expand the species!

Why similar: Colony Sim 19.4% ★, Automation 17.2%, Base Building 11.6%, City Builder 11.5%, Resource Management 9.5%

Take the helm as a new Station Commander and exploit an alien star system in this stunning space-station factory automation game. Amass resources and construct starships using increasingly advanced manufacturing and expand your station in a hostile universe.

Why similar: Automation 24.3%, Base Building 17%, Space 13.9%, Sandbox 9%, Resource Management 8.4%

Help humanity to spread throughout the cosmos by exploring new worlds, building space factories and setting up trade routes. Research advanced technologies to increase efficiency and unlock new paths of development. Fight off other artificial intelligences in your goal to reach the Final Upgrade!

Why similar: Automation 22.8%, Base Building 15.5%, Space 12.8%, Resource Management 10.9%, Building 9.4%

Design your dream space station in Space Architect! Master the power of automation or 'hire' an army of crewmates to handle your ever-growing production. Mine asteroids, fabricate goods, and engage in interstellar trade to pay off the menacing Big Evil Corp. Will you thrive in the vastness of space?

Why similar: Colony Sim 19.8% ★, Automation 16.1%, Base Building 12.7%, Resource Management 7.8%, Management 6.9%

Take Command of a Space Corporation in the Sci-Fi Simulator Solargene! Manage personnel, design and develop colonies and orbital stations across the solar system! Mine resources, establish logistics, research cutting-edge technologies, trade, and complete missions

Why similar: Colony Sim 22.9% ★, Base Building 14.6%, City Builder 13.7%, Resource Management 10.3%, Space 8.5%

Manage your own medieval smithy in Blacksmith Master and supervise the entire process from mining ores and gems to designing and selling finished products. Forge everything from weapons and armor to tools and cooking utensils to fund your craft and become the Blacksmith Master.

Why similar: Colony Sim 21.7% ★, Base Building 14.4%, City Builder 14.3%, Resource Management 10.8%, Building 8.6%

Maia is a colony building game set in the not-so-distant future. Your colonists make planetfall on a hostile world and you must ensure their survival and their safety, constructing their off-world habitat from almost nothing and sheltering them from a dangerous, often deadly environment.

Why similar: Colony Sim 33.3% ★, Base Building 11.6%, Space 9.2%, Management 8.3%, Survival 6.9%

Why You'll Like It: A hard sci-fi colony simulation that focuses on the challenges of surviving on a dangerous, isolated planet.

Endzone 2 is a post-apocalyptic survival colony builder, where you embark to secure humanity's survival after a cataclysmic disaster. Discover and repopulate the last habitable grounds, while the survival of your people hinges on your wits, foresight, and resilience in a harsh and unforgiving world.

Why similar: Colony Sim 23.4% ★, City Builder 14.7%, Base Building 11.7%, Sandbox 8.7%, Resource Management 8.4%

Corporate greed meets strategic planet-mining in Drill Core! Drill to the heart of planets while managing workers, researching cutting-edge tech, and fortifying against alien attacks. Will you prioritize efficiency and risk your workers' safety, or focus on defense for survival?

Why similar: Colony Sim 27.1% ★, City Builder 15.1%, Base Building 14.5%, Space 7.1%, Sandbox 6.8%

「Reshaping Mars」is a colony simulation game on Mars, you will start by gathering resources, storing food, accepting immigrants, and building a better colony together. Develop powerful technologies for Mars Reshaping, make Mars great agai..sorry, just great. Don't forget to make the residents happy.

Why similar: Colony Sim 20% ★, Base Building 15.7%, Space 10%, RTS 9.8%, Building 9%

Build, automate, and optimize a giant factory on 3D terrain using conveyor belts, trains, chutes, pipes, and airships. Sell your goods to nearby villages to expand their borders, increase happiness, and unlock even better technology!

Why similar: Automation 19.9%, Colony Sim 17.3% ★, Base Building 14%, City Builder 11.9%, Resource Management 10.5%

Oxygen is a survival city builder. Build your city around the Oxygen Center and ensure your people's survival in a post-apocalyptic future, threatened by crack explosions, deadly winds, droughts and frosts. Lead your people and more importantly keep the Oxygen Center running!

Why similar: Colony Sim 20.6% ★, Base Building 14.7%, City Builder 14.7%, Resource Management 10.6%, Sandbox 8.3%

Stellar Settlers is a chill space base/city builder and colony sim game. With unique vertical and horizontal base-building gameplay, settle on 10 hostile alien planets and build your own thriving colony. Get enough materials to build a physics-based Spaceship and try to escape from disasters.

Why similar: Colony Sim 20% ★, Base Building 13%, City Builder 13%, Automation 11.1%, Resource Management 9.7%

Choose any real region from the world. Choose your base of operations, then rebuild and readapt the buildings around you to create a self-sustaining settlement. Take charge of a group of survivors from your city. And when the night falls - Defend the zone from the infected!

Why similar: Base Building 20.2%, Colony Sim 17.3% ★, City Builder 17.1%, Post-apocalyptic 10.3%, RTS 7.6%

Build a new home for humanity in Aven Colony. Discover Aven Prime - an alien planet of deserts, tundras, and wetlands light years from earth. Build your colonies into massive, sprawling cities whilst dealing with the challenges faced when settling on a new world.

Why similar: Colony Sim 34.8% ★, City Builder 21.6%, Base Building 12%, Space 6.5%, Sci-fi 5.6%

Explore a drowned Earth, restore lost systems, and raise the last human seeds in this first-person survival-crafting adventure. Build, scavenge, defend, and launch humanity back to the stars.

Why similar: Automation 27.8%, Base Building 21.3%, Sandbox 13%, Management 10.5%, Survival 9.1%

Dawn Apart is a space colony and factory sim with fully destructible environments. Mine, automate, and defend your settlers, or lead a rebellion against the very corporation pulling your strings…

Why similar: Colony Sim 29.4% ★, Automation 25.3%, Base Building 18.6%, Space 10%, Resource Management 4.7%

Jump straight into managing your own planets as you guide a civilization through the ages. Build the ultimate empire in The Universim, a new breed of God Game in development by Crytivo.

Why similar: Colony Sim 26% ★, City Builder 17%, Sandbox 9.7%, Building 9.2%, Space 9.1%

Earth, 1976. You have been tasked with managing a deep-sea science facility working to perfect cloning. Explore the darkness and keep your crew alive in this hardcore survival colony builder. And beware. The darkness hides untold horrors.

Why similar: Colony Sim 23.7% ★, City Builder 15.7%, Base Building 13.8%, Building 9%, RTS 8.1%

The world after a nuclear war. Manage the settlement, learn technology, make decisions, produce weapons, ammunition, organize defense, raid for supplies on other areas, do not let residents die, survive the nuclear winter.

Why similar: Base Building 23.2%, City Builder 11.6%, Post-apocalyptic 11%, Strategy 8.5%, Colony Sim 8.3% ★

Sail, scavenge, and rescue survivors in a vibrant floating city-builder. Captain your drifters across the endless garbage sea to uncover soaked ruins, rusting factories, and stories from the old world.

Why similar: Colony Sim 19% ★, Automation 16.2%, Base Building 12.8%, City Builder 12.1%, Resource Management 9.5%

The Final Earth 2 is a vertical sci-fi city builder. Earth is unlivable, so you decide to create a space colony. Gather resources, then build and research your way to a better future! Grow your city from an exploration ship to a huge metropolis, full of advanced technology. What will you build?

Why similar: Colony Sim 23.6% ★, Base Building 12.5%, Space 11.3%, City Builder 9%, Building 8.2%

Foundation is a grid-less, laidback medieval city-building game with a focus on organic development, monument construction and resource management.

Why similar: City Builder 28.6%, Colony Sim 12.5% ★, Resource Management 9.9%, Base Building 8.3%, Sandbox 8.3%

ATC is a base building game set in a post-apocalyptic world featuring urban environments. Build a base across several layers with dozens of survivors. Fight other factions for the control of the remaining production centers and explore the world to find long forgotten resources and technologies.

Why similar: Colony Sim 24.7% ★, Base Building 15.6%, City Builder 12.9%, Sandbox 8.3%, Management 8%

Aquatico is a classic city builder set within the depths of the sea. Strategically build an underwater colony atop the ocean floor and face the challenges that accompany oceanic life.

Why similar: Colony Sim 24.7% ★, City Builder 17.9%, Base Building 12.3%, Building 8.3%, Resource Management 7%

Design and build a factory deep underground in this physics-based automation sandbox. Mine resources, buy machines and master the chaos as you become the ultimate Mine Mogul!

Why similar: Automation 29.9%, Base Building 16.6%, Resource Management 12.1%, Building 12.1%, Sandbox 9.9%

Build, optimize, and explore at your own pace in Scorchlands, a cozy yet strategic colony builder. Manage resources, shape the environment, and expand your network across a volcanic moon. No rush, no pressure, just satisfying logistics and endless possibilities.

Why similar: Colony Sim 18.9% ★, Automation 16.5%, City Builder 12.3%, Base Building 12.2%, Resource Management 12.1%

Dark Moon is a survival strategy game where in order to survive you must avoid the Sun’s scorching rays and embrace the darkness. Gather resources, upgrade your mobile base, make tough moral decisions, but most importantly - don’t go into the light!

Why similar: Colony Sim 23.2% ★, Base Building 15.7%, Resource Management 11.1%, Management 9.1%, Space 9.1%

Terraform a lifeless rock into a lush and habitable world. Build trucks, trains, and sprawling factories on an enormous hexagonal planet. Grow its population to millions. Enjoy a dynamic simulation of atmosphere, temperature, water, and forests.

Why similar: Automation 21.8%, Colony Sim 21.2% ★, Base Building 12.9%, Resource Management 11.9%, Sandbox 8.7%

A space survival open world terraforming crafting game, designed for 1 to 10 players. Alter the ecosystem of an inhospitable planet to render it habitable for humanity. Survive, gather resources, and build your base. Then, generate oxygen, warmth, and pressure to create a brand new biosphere.

Why similar: Automation 20.1%, Base Building 19.5%, Space 12.9%, Resource Management 10.8%, Building 10.6%