Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic is a rough but shining gem in the genre of city builders

In this game, you will manage every small detail in your small republic, including the first roads and houses in your first city, setting up a working infrastructure – roads, water, sewage, electricity, heating - planning vast industrial areas with huge factories while having to manage the ever growing logistics required to keep your cities alive.
You can use a wide range of historical trucks, busses, cars, trains, planes, trains and ships to accomplish this, and the choice of vehicles is important – good luck moving 1000 tons of crops through your republic with small trucks, or supplying a factory with 700 workers per shift (meaning 2100 a day) with two tiny busses.

This is a review, not a guide, and at the end of the day, you will just have to make sure that you make more money by exporting stuff than you spend on imports. There are lots of different industries available, and many of them are a viable choice when starting your republic.
Meanwhile, your workers need culture, sport, hospitals and police stations, supermarkets and bars, or they will leave your republic.
None of those mechanics are new or exotic, but their complexity, depth and the way they are implemented are unrivaled by any other city builder.

Workers and Resources is, in every sense, a hardcore-city-builder, because even tiny mistakes can and will have dire consequences for your population and economy – and trust me, you will make mistakes. I still make them after more than 500 hours in this game. There is no shame in using backups and regular auto-saves.

Like in any game, the difficulty is adjustable – you can instantly contruct buildings with money just like in your regularcity builder, you can just teleport required goods like food right into your supermarket and you can disable your vehicles needing fuel – but this makes the game easy and also, even worse, ordinary.

But Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic is not an ordinary game. There is just such a great amount of satisfaction of seeing every brick and board transported to your construction site, watching your busses drive relentlessly through the thick snow to get your workers in the factory and seeing your trains moving hundreds of tons of resources at once.
There is also a great amount of frustration involved when you realize your planned factory is not working at all because you forgot to build a sewer or that you can not move the produced goods fast enough.
If you are prone to giving up easily after one small mistake, this might not be the game for you. If you love to learn from your mistakes, come up with solutions to salvage a situation or you just like planning things and enjoy them working out – then this is the game you want.

I said earlier that Workers and Resources is a „rough“ gem. This is because there are some smaller flaws, like road placement and the fact that this game will sometimes crash (again, make sure you use the auto-save feature). Some people may also not like the graphics, although I think they are perfectly in line with the soviet aesthetics. Many mechanics are also not completely explained in the game, but there is a huge amount of tutorials online when you have questions about specific topics, and the community is very helpful.

All in all, this is easily one of the deepest, complex and most fun city builders on the market right now – don’t just give it a try, embrace it and spend your whole night planning your next district.

My favorite game of all time. Extremely detailed and immersive. If you enjoy detail and complexity in your games, this is the game you need. Also, 10/10 for comradely vibes ☭

Actually does a lot for understanding how different urban design choices effect economic efficiency, whether you agree with command economies or not.