Desktopia: A Desktop Village Simulator

Desktopia: A Desktop Village Simulator

The Evergloom Team · 2022 · Simulation, RPG, City Builder, Incremental, Strategy

PC
Mostly Positive71% · 204
Best price
$9.99
lowest tracked $2.99
Steam Buy at Steam

Compare prices in Official Stores

Steam
Steam
Standard Edition · Steam
$9.99
Buy

Screenshots

About Desktopia: A Desktop Village Simulator


At it's core, Desktopia is a city-builder game which simulates an evolving, medieval-esque village along the bottom of your desktop, allowing you to work, watch, or browse something else while you play.

Like any city-builder, you get to make the big decisions, while also being able to take control of your own axe wielding character. You can join in the battles, harvest resources, put out fires, or interact with your villagers. In Desktopia, you can be as active, or as idle, as you want!

Before you buy:


This game was not created in a studio, but by three friends looking to make something different, fun, and useful: We think we've done that and we love Desktopia.
We want anyone who plays it to love it too. With that in mind: you should be aware this is not a AAA game like the amazing ANNO series (which you should definitely check out), with thousands of hours of content, nor does it have the beautiful rendered graphics of Cities Skylines (a game we love). If you're looking for a cute, simple, pixel-art game, something fun you can play while watching a series, browsing the internet, or writing that essay, then Desktopia might be for you!
  • A completely original approach in PC gaming: designed with functionality in mind, Desktopia allows you to use your PC for multiple purposes on a single monitor.
  • Clever UI: with resizeable pop-out windows which can be arranged anywhere on your screen.
  • A playable character which levels with your village, so you can jump into the action whenever you want.
  • Detailed logs and statistics arrayed in beautiful charts and graphs.
  • Spy Mode: focus the camera on any villager, any time, and watch as they live their life.
  • Resizeable game world, with the option to have it 'always on top' of other windows.
  • From nothing: grow a series of villages along a dangerous and treacherous road: from a single house to a bustling metropolis.
  • Construct a range of facilities (inns, libraries, post offices, temples, blacksmiths etc) and watch villagers move in independently.
  • Keep your villagers happy to collect gratitude, and use it to host festivals which bedeck your village in bunting!
  • Recruit and upgrade soldiers to defend your village from undead, bandits, fairies, and demons. Join them in battle if that's your thing!
  • Hire heroes to lead the charge against your foes and destroy their strongholds.
  • Decide on building low-tech villages with few needs, or risk it big by aiming for high-tech villages with needy villagers.
  • Quirky villagers each with their own set of needs and personalities.
  • Increasingly dangerous attacks and enemies as your village grows.
  • Villager moods driven by weather, village events, and personal ones.
  • Criminal villagers, driven by low moods, that steal or commit arson.
  • Dangerous fires which kill villagers and destroy buildings: lit by enemies, criminals, or accidentally.
  • Huntable animals and monsters.
  • Bosses that stand in the way of you moving down the road, and heroes to counter them.
  • Serfs that upgrade to become nobles, or even industrialists.
You start by chopping down some bushes, earning some gold, and building a welcome sign.
Some villagers move in. It's your first village; they're serfs and they want food and protection.
After they've harvested some bushes and earned you some gold (with you helping if you want) perhaps you build them a chicken coop and some more villagers move in.
They love it, and start dropping Gratitude, which you pick up.
After some more harvesting, you build a barracks and a few soldiers appear.
They start heading off along the road to kill stuff. Maybe you join them.
More villagers move in but now they want religion, and some luxuries.
Perhaps you build a blacksmith or a... hold on, some skeletons and spiders are coming down the road from the crypt.
Phew, your soldiers kill them, but only after they kill some villagers.
Now your villagers are sad so you build them a tavern.
More villagers move in.
You have a lot of villagers now and some are getting rich and becoming noble, aww, don't they look cute in their new hats.
Wait, now they all want infrastructure.
Maybe you build a post office.
All your villagers are moaning about rain, but you've earned enough gratitude to throw a festival.
You throw a religious one, as everyone is still moaning that you haven't build a temple yet.
Everyone is so happy, but your village has expanded past an animal grove and wild boars are attacking your villagers.
You hire a hunter.
But now the skeletons are coming back, with a vampire this time and they are determined to burn down your village... if only you had enough gold to buy a hero!!

DLC & expansions

🎁 Complete the collection

Base game + 0 of 1 DLC at today's best prices (some DLC unpriced).

$9.99
to own everything

What Steam players say

Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.

Not recommended May 14, 2026
Eh, not that great, would've refunded it if I could
1 found this helpful
Not recommended Jun 16, 2026
game has fully bricked my run twice where I randomly get an error that I can't load a previous safe or restart the game to escape from. I wish I could get the error logs for you, but pressing F8 (which they tell you to do to find out what happened) closes the game anyway. I had a good run going getting to only 4 bosses left, and the game decides to pull this fun move -.-
Not recommended Jun 1, 2026
Like others have said, it's fun enough until end game where the lag slows it to a crawl. I don't know if there were any attempts at optimization.. if there were, they failed, and I think it's safe to say the dev has no interest in trying to correct this problem that seems to plague just about every single person who paid for this game. When devs take your money and leave their games in this state, they get a hard thumbs down from me, and I will not purchase any of their future products.
Not recommended Feb 5, 2026
I got the same bug I had like 4 years ago? placed a building and got stuck. Thinking restarting the game would fix it, I overwrote my save and loaded it back up... Still stuck. Checked the forums and people have been complaining about it for a long time. Abandoned game where the devs won't even bother doing the lazy fix of adding a 'unstuck' button.
Not recommended Jan 12, 2026
Achievements are broken on Linux, I guess. Just beat the first two bosses and got nothing. Maybe they've always been broken because I had played this before... might have defeated the first boss then. Last update was 2023.... =(
Recommended Oct 31, 2025
This is a pretty good game.

Community reviews

0 reviews

Sign in to write a review.

No reviews yet. Be the first to review this game.

More like Desktopia: A Desktop Village Simulator