Prospera announced – a victorian-era city-building simulator

Prospera made its debut at the Future Games Show, bringing an unusual take on the city-building genre by letting players experience it through the eyes of an ordinary worker. The debut trailer runs just 30 seconds, but that's enough time to convey the core concept: an economic sim set in the industrial era, viewed entirely from a first-person perspective.

The footage opens with two characters working together to chop down a tree in the middle of a forest. The camera then shifts as steam machinery whistles in the background, revealing the rest of the crew processing the harvested wood for construction. The trailer closes with a shot of a city stretching out beyond the hills, hinting at a setting rooted in the golden age of steam power and rapid urbanization.

The defining feature of Prospera lies in its flexible approach to gameplay. Developers built in the option to switch between first- and third-person views, letting players choose whichever mode feels more comfortable for managing their settlement's growth. Anyone who's wanted to experience Anno from the perspective of a regular worker instead of a detached overhead observer now has that chance.

The core gameplay of Prospera revolves around growing a city from scratch. Players walk through the settlement districts themselves, checking which areas need expansion first. Beyond that, the game includes:

• building and customizing factories to process resources;

• automating production chains;

• expanding and improving city districts;

• turning a small settlement into a full-fledged metropolis.

The end goal, as the title suggests, is turning a modest settlement into a thriving industrial hub. First-person city builders are rare, since the genre typically sticks to top-down views and remote management, which makes the approach behind Prospera stand out from competitors like Anno or Cities: Skylines.

The game is still in early development, so there's no release date yet. What's confirmed is that Prospera will launch on PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store.