Best Simulation Games: Small Worlds, Run by You

A simulation is a quest that admits what it is: here is a small world, here are its rules, now make it thrive. This collection gathers Lootara's best-run worlds — the shop that becomes an empire, the garden that becomes an estate, the home rebuilt board by board by workers you recruited. The fantasy isn't a sword. It's competence.

We've mixed the sincere with the silly, because a shelf of nothing but spreadsheets-with-graphics would betray the genre. Start with the earnest empires at the top; descend into the sandboxes when the day has earned it. All free, all in the browser, all dangerously easy to return to tomorrow to check on things.