Our favorite city builders are super cheap in the Steam Base Builder Fest

The Steam Base Builder Fest is underway, and it's already proving to be an excellent occasion for us to indulge our mayoral dreams in some dirt-cheap city builders.

As the name suggests, the Base Builder Fest encompasses an array of genres, including excellent survival games like Subnautica and Valheim or great factory-builders like Satisfactory and Dyson Sphere Program. But SimCity's long absence means that I'm always hungry for urban planning and macroeconomics, so here are a few of the best city-building games, colony sims, and management games you can get as part of the sale.

• Cities: Skylines ($8.99 at 70% off) is the city builder of record in this post-SimCity world, and it's not the most strategically deep management game on the market, it still provides some incredible tools for building the city of your dreams.
• Frostpunk ($7.49 at 75% off) is for those of you who've always wondered what city-building games would be like if you could freeze to death in the middle of a bad winter - the answer is in this fantastic, intensely challenging strategy game.
• Dorfromantik ($9.79 at 30% off) exists on the complete opposite side of the spectrum from Frostpunk, letting you zen out by simply placing landscaping tiles how you want.
• Townscaper ($3.89 at 35% off) completely pulls the stress out of city building, giving you something more akin to a toy than a game - but it's a wonderfully chill, relaxing toy nonetheless.
• Surviving Mars ($7.49 at 75% off) takes the city-building concept to Mars, where you've got to serve the needs of colonists attempting to make their way on the red planet.
• Two Point Hospital ($8.74 at 75% off) is smaller in scope than the other selections here, but a robust simulation and charmingly goofball sensibilities make it one of the most memorable management games out there right now.
• Dwarf Fortress ($26.99 at 10% off) is not just a city-building game, it's a history-building game, and perhaps the most robust simulation ever to exist in the world of video games.
• RimWorld ($27.99 at 20% off) might be best described as the friendlier version of Dwarf Fortress, and it remains one of the best colony-building games out there.

Check out our guide to the best city building games for more you might be interested in.