Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic

Непередаваемые ощущения, когда ты строил пять часов огромнейший завод и он не работает.

For 10 schmuckos (as of writing this) it's a steal. If you like Factorio and Cities Skylines, then this game is for you.
I was always afraid to play because realistic difficulty is talked the most about and it's this games unique selling point. Having to manage all of these systems (Electricity + Fuel, Water & Sewage, Garbage collections & disposal + demolition of construction and sorting of the waste produced by that; police stations, courthouses & prisons; global events affecting your economy or pandemics sweeping across your republic & Maintenance of your vehicles & buildings) is a lot, especially on top of having to fulfill your citizens basic needs like food, clothing, culture or sports and having to transport them to the factories makes this game really challenging.
Realistic mode on top of all of the above systems will completely change the way you build your republic. Without that mode, you can essentially plop your city in the middle of the map with no connection to a customs house and auto buy/build to your hearts content.
With realistic mode turned on you have to transport the resources to your store yourself (distribution offices help with that a lot).
With realistic mode turned on you have to build your buildings manually with construction offices, the resources are coming from your storages/factories and workers from your local population (if you have them, otherwise there will always be workers/resources at the customs house).
Realistic mode will fundamentally change the way you build your cities and factory complexes.
And the typical genres goals of becoming profitable isn't really met by just exporting a bunch, it's becoming self sufficient.
Eliminating imports is one of the best ways you can improve your profits.
Now all of these systems up there can be turned on and off mid game, so if you mess up with realistic mode turned on for example, you can just turn it off for a moment and fix whatever needs fixing, then turn it back on again.
It's a sandbox game, do whatever you want.

There's two sides to this game: Non-Realistic Mode and Realistic Mode
Non-Realistic Mode scratches the itch for those of you who frothed at the mouth when Cities Skylines: Industries rolled out. It's a really fun game of connecting industry buildings and optimizing logistics while also managing the needs of your citizens. The difficulty doesn't come from cheating the numbers or making your citizens more and more demanding of the same goods, but instead from the complexity of different systems interacting.
Realistic mode is a punishing but rewarding tier of fun where you roleplay an actual city planner with a Comissar watching over you. Your citizens will die. Your first city will burn down because your immigrants missed the bus to the fire station. People will starve because your tractors got stuck in traffic 2 months ago and the food plant had a nightly blackout. 20 hours in, you will have built up perhaps your first housing district.

> Start new republic
> Spend hours designing cities, industry, railways, ...
> Realises massive logistical mistake
> Not even fixable
> Start new republic
> Makes exact same mistake
10/10 game. Yeah, it's hard to make money, especially early on, but on the other hand the train system is very addictive.

Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic – The Five-Year Plan for My Soul
Cities: Skylines is like a gentle stroll through SimCity. Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic? It’s Cities: Skylines on COCAINE, chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes, and yelling at you in Russian while you try to figure out why your bus line won’t deliver workers to the steel mill that feeds the power plant that powers the meat factory that nobody can reach because you forgot to build sidewalks.
I started this game thinking I’d build a cozy little socialist utopia. Three hours later, I was knee-deep in concrete batching plants, my vodka exports were my only lifeline, and my brain was running a logistics spreadsheet more complicated than NASA’s Apollo program.
This game doesn’t just take your free time. It seizes it, collectivizes it, and redistributes it across a thousand tiny supply chains. Lenin would be proud. My family is not.
10/10. The most fun I’ve ever had suffering. Glory to the Republic.

Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic is a personal favorite for all time among computer games. Encompassing way beyond a city building genre, it is extremely addictive and complex as I find solutions to engineering challenges. It is a spreadsheet-driven game where data fuels the game playability and problem solving. Technical support on the game is phenomenon – you can send a copy of your game to the developers and they will respond in a few days. The community is very responsive as well when you get stuck in a situation.

Cost/Value
I bought it on December 4, 2024 for $19.99 (before tax).

Game length
I played probably around 450 hours over a 12 month period (according to Steam) – the 900 hours as published in Steam (as of December 2025) includes a lot of (non-playing) time as I kept the game going without playing as I wrote my evolving story on the game and collected statistics for my spreadsheets.

Weight/Complexity
4/5 - Medium Heavy: More complex game that are not for casual players. It involves understanding of complex mechanisms and rules overhead, requires deep strategic thinking, and hence takes longer to play. Learning all the aspects took a few multiple sessions.

Overall Rating
10/10: Personal Favourite (A game that resonates with me completely and that I constantly think about)

Gameplay mechanics
8 (Great/Very Good): Excellent mechanics, highly engaging, strong experience, minor issues.

Graphics and visuals
8: Excellent detail, great lighting/effects, strong artistic vision, generally smooth; a "B+" or "A-".

Storytelling and narrative
n/a – Open-ended game, but it has a very good tutorial which walks through a story how to play the game. There are some mods that you can play a story.

Innovation and originality
6/10 (Solidly Competent): Plays it safe but executes its familiar concepts well; offers some unique moments but little true novelty.

Replayability/longevity
9 (Excellent/Masterpiece): Huge replay potential; diverse content, high skill ceiling, or deep customization, offering endless fun.

Are you autistic and also ethically correct?

Well then there are few games more appororiate than this. Trains and Communism. It is the game we deserve. And it's a game I love.

It's the train-sim, city-sim, econ-sim that satisifes the need for 'realism', as the game can be stark and saddening (since I assume you're an adult who only plays 'ironman' modes or similar, as we adults should) as the game not only will never forgive you for your failures it will punish you, and when you go to seek remediation you'll realize there is an infinitely complex toolset at your disposal but no instruction manual. No wise elders to guide you. No tooltips. No hints. No help. Just figure it out. Which is probably a realistic reflection on what it would have been like for many party comissars being thrust into managerial roles once upon a time. Study literature at university, then win a revolution, and now figure out how to run the economy of an entire oblast.

And only cowards run to reddit for answers. If you're not a coward you too can also stare endlessly at stats and specs hoping that they magically will provide you the knowledge you seek; conjuring a sigil or understanding that will replace the mashing keys, and the desperate race to discover a solution to all your frustrations in a hotkey combo you didn't yet know.

Anyhow, I don't wanna talk to you about this game until you hit at least 500 hours.

Then we can chat.

we can't be friends until you hit 1000 minimum.