The Best Strategy/Simulation Game of 2016

Honorable Mention: Planet Coaster

It’s award season here at Twinfinite! Starting with a few runner ups, let’s look back at the best Strategy and Simulation games from this year and our 2016 winner!

You’ll find so many great strategy/simulation games this year, but if we’re going to keep this list short, we better kick it off with one of the absolute best. Planet Coaster came in like a flailing hammer ride to break all of our pre-conceived notions of theme park tycoons. Many fans of the sim management genre might have thought it was all over for the subgenre. There would never be another Rollercoaster Tycoon that mattered. But in came Planet Coaster, like Cities Skylines did for SimCity.

It’s gorgeous, it’s intuitive, it’s challenging yet easy to pick up, and it has a whole lot of heart. You have a massive amount of options, too. Not only are there plenty of developer-made items for you to place around your park, but you’re also given so many shapes for your own custom builds. There have even been exact replicas of Disney World popping up online from creative fans.

You’ll spend hours upon hours playing Planet Coaster, and that’s precisely one of the pre-requisites for landing among the greatest in this genre.

Second Runner Up: Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley spun an old formula, just like Planet Coaster did. While you may ask, “Well, is it fair to include this, then?” the reality is that Stardew Valley has made an entire name for itself, in spite of its striking similarities to the retro Harvest Moons. It scratched an itch that PC gamers hadn’t been able to even touch, providing the cute farming simulator RPG hybrid to Steam users everywhere (and later on, PS4 and Xbox One).

But let’s talk about, for a moment, how much of your life you’ll dedicate to this adorable farming sim, shall we? A lot. We’re talking 100+ hours. And it won’t get tiring. You wake up, you gather any crops, water the leftover crops, you gather your livestock’s produce, you feed your livestock, you brush your livestock, then head to the orchards you have and pick all of that produce, every single morning.

What I just described may be my character’s chores every day, but not yours, and that’s the beauty in Stardew Valley. There’s so much to do that you can find yourself playing through a completely different way than a friend is. Not to mention, your farm might look totally different, too.

It’s the heart of a personal story that gives this love letter to the genre the edge it needs to stand above the farming sims we’ve seen for years now.

First Runner Up: XCOM 2

XCOM 2 was long-awaited, as the original hadn’t received its due sequel officially (what with the failure that was The Bureau: XCOM Declassified). It holds an intensely difficult campaign that really pushes you to carefully plan your next move, especially if you chose to make your characters resemble friends and family. Maybe not so much if you shaped them after your enemies.

It’s precisely there, too, where XCOM 2 thrives. The overarching story that the developers crafted is pretty predictable and forgettable. However, the story you make with the soldiers you recruit and the way you approach missions is what really makes the game. It’s a telltale sign of a good game: how many moments you encounter that make you want to tell your friends all about them. “You got wrapped by a giant alien snake’s tongue, but Emily came in and slashed you free… but then Diana was mind-controlled and killed you both with a grenade.”

There will be plenty of challenging moments as you play through the game that will make you grit your teeth and maybe even reload a save entirely. But even so, you’ll come out feeling more fulfilled than you would with any other game this year. How many times you’ll get knocked down, but not out, by XCOM 2 is what really makes it special.

Winner: Civilization VI

Civilization VI not only continues the idea that Civilization really is the best strategy experience out there, it improves upon a series that’s been built over 25 years. How can a game release after all of that time (as well as tons of iterations), and still bring something new to the table?

This is the ultimate “one more turn” game, one that will make you stay up until four in the morning without noticing. The difficulty is ramped up, how you’ll use resources is redesigned, and the host of characters that you’ll share the world with provide a life of their own to each of your many, many playthroughs. Firaxis Games really excelled in their creation; it is the quintessential experience for any strategy fan, and one of the best games released in 2016.

It may have its issues in the online play department, and the AI difficulty might make you scratch your head at times, but there’s no doubt that Civilization VI tops every other game in the series, and every other strategy game this year.

Congratulations to Civilization VI, the winner of our Best Strategy/Simulation category for 2016! Be sure to visit back this week more award announcements including the big one, our game of the year for 2016! For the full list of award categories for 2016, visit our nomination page here.