The 'world's smallest city builder' just had a teeny tiny launch on Steam

When it comes to city builders, bigger is usually better. Just look at Cities: Skylines, which lets you construct massive, sprawling, skyscraper-filled cities—which somehow still weren't big enough for players, who were thrilled to find a mod that allowed them unlock every last square of land on the map.

But sometimes you might be looking for something a bit smaller. In the case of The Block, a city builder that launched on Steam today, much smaller. In fact, developer Paul Schnepf calls it "the world's smaller city builder" and after checking out the trailer above, I have no reason to doubt that claim.

In The Block, you begin with a small square of land with a single structure already placed right in the middle. At your mouse pointer is the next structure ready to be placed, provided it's adjacent to that first structure in the middle. You can rotate each object before placing it, and the next object must also be touching something that's already on the grid. You build from the middle outwards, in other words. And no worries, you can skip any of the randomly chosen blocks that you don't want to place in favor of something else.

The objects to build and decorate your city with range from houses to towers to trees of different varieties, and there's some lovely little detail in the very tiny towns you build, like benches, parks, and lampposts. There are several different map sizes to play with in The Block, from an extremely tiny square to a relatively big one (though still quite small compared to other city builders). It looks like fun, a soothing zen experience, and it only costs $2.99/£2.09 on Steam, with a 20% discount for its first week.

Schnepf describes it as "a little digital toy" with "no goals or challenges to complete," and something to help you "escape the rush of everyday life for a couple of minutes." That definitely sounds like something a lot of us could use. Below you'll find another suitably small video that will tell you more about The Block and how it works:

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

Read more
Tiny Garden - A digital spherical capsule toy with a crank that has a small garden inside
Tiny Garden is an adorable Polly Pocket-sized farm sim where you crank a handle to grow crops
A flying city fighting off small airplanes
High-flying RPG city builder Airborne Empire has launched on Steam, and it's testing my balancing skills in more ways than one
A city near a waterfall
I played a whopping 23 city builders in 2024, and here are my 5 favorites
Screenshot from tile-based city building game Dawnfolk
Dawnfolk is a satisfying city builder puzzle game that works great on Steam Deck
doctors treat plague-stricken peasants in the medieval-ish city-builder Nested Lands
Nested Lands is a 'brutal' survival city-builder about guiding villagers through a plague-infested world, and you can play its open alpha right now
A Roman city seen from above
For all you mayors managing your budgets, here are 5 city builders from 2024 with great discounts in the Steam Winter Sale
Latest in Sim
PowerWash Simulator 2 screenshots
'More evolution than revolution': PowerWash Simulator 2 is coming late 2025, and it's bringing online multiplayer and split-screen co-op with it
A child stands on top of a dinosaur exhibit, hugging the nose of a dinosaur skull.
As a real life museum employee, I'm a bit confused by the amount of pirate ghosts in Two Point Museum—but it's not going to stop me trying to make the most realistic exhibits I can
A citizen of a city
A lot is going on for Cities: Skylines' 10th anniversary—from freebies to new creator packs—but there's still a big ol' elephant in the room
Staring eyes in a face covered in oil
Death Stranding 2's PS5 release date is in June, let's hope it doesn't take 8 months to hit PC this time
Cities: Skylines 2 screenshot - street level at night
Cities: Skylines 2's asset editor remains a distant dream: Colossal Order is still working on it but says it's 'proven more technically challenging than initially anticipated'
Town in Tales of Seikyu with two townsfolk sat on the stairs
Tales of Seikyu is just your regular farming simulator, apart from the fact I've got shapeshifting abilities and I'm engaged to a pretty persistent kappa
Latest in News
A goblin with sharp teeth, wearing goggles, lets out a mischievous cackle in WoW's latest patch: Undermine(d).
The hooligan hacker guild that tore up WoW's newest raid (twice) just posted video evidence of the whole thing, and it's got me feeling weirdly nostalgic
A pasta "display" on a table showing the word "keep" surrounded by fruit. Obviously.
Penne for your thoughts: This pasta display can show three individual frames and it's trying its best, okay
Intel engineers inspect a lithography machine
Finally some good vibes from Intel as stock jumps 15% on new CEO hire and Arizona fab celebrates 'Eagle has landed' moment for its 18A node
Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 3.
Mass Effect's Jennifer Hale, who played femshep, 'saw no line' before she recorded them for Bioware's flagship trilogy: 'It was all cold reading on the spot'
A side by side comparison of two Asus Q-Release systems, with the original design on the top and the bottom showing the apparently new design.
Asus appears to have quietly changed the design of its Q-Release PCIe slot after claims of potential GPU pin damage
Microsoft's Task Manager in Windows 11
After years of complaints about Windows Task Manager displaying CPU utilization incorrectly, a fix is finally on its way