Cliff Empire

After 5 years and 500 hours, I finally feel compelled to review this game.
Excellent.
Cliff Empire is a unique and compelling mix of resource management, logistics, and base building. It is not perfectly balanced in every aspect, and success often depends on specific build sequences, but the experience is consistently rewarding.
The visual styling, soundtrack, and overall artistic composition are stunning. It feels like retro-futurism imagined from a future years past, and I love it.
If you enjoy city-builders and resource management, this game deserves a place in your collection.

Really enjoyable city builder, I like the futuristic setting, and the way the map design makes you rethink how you are going to plan out your cities. Bought this ages ago when it was still in beta/early access. The game has come along way since then , and if time permits, it's well worth playing. :)

It absolutely ravages through your pc with performance issues at times but beside that and some balance issues, it's a good game. It's not breaking any new grounds with gameplay mechanics. It's a city builder in its core with a pretty cool world built around it. You're limited to building on cliffs and the more time goes by the more you unlock. Things like building on the side of the cliffs or below it. Really makes you plan ahead on how your cliff will look like as you can't really pick up a building to place it somewhere else.
Now I do agree it's somewhat soulless when there aren't people exactly moving about since bulding streets are shockingly expensive and take up valuable space. Still do recomend it mostly for the fact the game is dirt cheap for the content and the developer(s) have been updating this game every once in a while with cool new content or bug fixes.

Very good indie game. Almost no bugs. Takes 25 - 40 hours to build a fully developed city

Pro:
- fun gameplay, cool thematic buildings
- survial elements are not too harsh.
- fast paced but not hectic (if compared games like Manor Lords)
- unique experience as the cliff setting offers innovative solutions to typical city builder (survival) challenges such as certain kinds of buidlings can also built on the side of the cliffs and below them on the uninhabitable ground to safe space on top. A core part of the game is to be economical with the limited building space
- nice progression as the game is not limited to only the cliffs. You basically try to reestablish the humanity on planet earth and the game guides with you with little quests through it and step by step unlocks new areas and building types. You can argue though that more quests would have improved the experience as there is the danger that you rush through them very fast if you know what you are doing
- game is actually difficult and you can end up in virtually unwinnable situations. The game is never unfair though
- runs at 40 fps in a fully developed city with max drones and 12000 inhabitants on 7x Speed on an 13500 CPU
- nice selection of cliffs for different gameplay challenges
- tutorial is seamlessly integrated into the main quest and actually manages to explain you the basics of the game without being a nuisance

Con:
- drone task prioritization is sometimes just stupid and you have to use the underground tunnel delivery system from a certain size on and plan ahead with your building placement to make the drone logistics work. The problem is that you can't make buildings produce a certain amount of resources before it can get picked up but the drones will rush there immiediately once a resource has been produced
- cliff generation should be more user-friendly. Hiding soil fertility, uranium and matter deposit efficiency behing a tech makes you quit the game if you get the wrong values
- no overall production stats, only per cliff
- production stats not always reliable

Always love coming back to this game to replay - Would recommend to anyone that enjoys city builders.

I really enjoyed the game. Getting to prestige 30 was fun to do. In the beginning it was challenging but at the end it turned more to a waiting grind. Putting it to x7 speed helped to keep it fun.
The achievements were not so fun.

I’ve put ~15 hours into Cliff Empire so far and I’m happy with the purchase (got it on sale).
If you enjoy games like the Anno series or Banished, this one will feel familiar. The concept of building on isolated cliffs after humanity’s fall is unique and well executed — it turns every city into a logistics puzzle where trade, power, and resources have to be carefully balanced, at least in the early stages.
Instead of sprawling endlessly, you manage compact, vertical cities that force you to think about specialization and trade.
The art style is clean, the soundtrack fits the vibe, and the pace is fairly decent (though a bit on the slow side).
Cliff Empire deserves a look if you can catch it on sale.
It's a fun distraction that I imagine will easily grant 50-100 hours of play time. (basically a few cents per hour of entertainment, not bad at all).
It’s a thoughtful, creative spin on the genre that city-builder fans may enjoy.