claim.town / ABOUT & HOW TO PLAY ▶ PLAY NOW

A free city-building game,
played right in your browser

claim.town is a fan-made city builder in the spirit of SimCity 4 — zoning, power grids, taxes, traffic and the occasional disaster. No download, no install, no account. Open the page, found a city, start zoning.

What is claim.town?

claim.town is a free online city-building simulation game. You play the mayor of a 96×96-tile patch of procedurally generated terrain: lay roads, zone residential, commercial and industrial districts, wire up a power grid, and watch an isometric city grow building by building. Houses become apartment blocks, corner stores become glass towers — or everything spirals into crime, pollution and abandonment if you govern badly.

It's built as an homage to the classic SimCity 4 era of city builders: an RCI demand gauge, data-view overlays, a municipal budget that can quietly bankrupt you, and a news ticker that complains about your choices. The entire game is hand-written JavaScript on a single canvas — every building, tree and smoke plume is procedurally drawn in code, with no art assets at all.

claim.town gameplay: an isometric city with a glass-tower downtown, suburbs, smokestack industry, a minimap, RCI demand bars and a municipal budget readout in the HUD
A grown city: downtown commercial towers, suburbs to the north, heavy industry keeping its distance.

Features

RCI zoning & demandSix zone types across three densities. A live demand gauge tells you what the city wants next.
Power gridCoal, wind and solar plants. Power conducts through zoned land and buildings — overload it and brownouts roll.
City servicesPolice, fire, schools, clinics and water towers with real coverage radii that unlock denser, wealthier growth.
Taxes & budgetSet the tax rate, fund upkeep, chase milestones with grants — run the treasury dry and services shut down.
A living mapLand value, pollution, crime and traffic all simulate and diffuse across the map, with overlay views for each.
Day & nightLit windows, streetlights and headlights as the cycle turns. Cars commute on the roads you build.
DisastersFires spread where stations don't reach. And yes, there's a meteor button. No refunds.
Saves in your browserAutosaves locally as you play — close the tab and pick the same city up later.
Procedural artEvery house, tower and tree is drawn by code at runtime. The whole game is a few hundred kilobytes.

How to play — your first city

  1. Found your city. Name it, pick a terrain seed (or roll the dice), and hit FOUND CITY. You start with §50,000.
  2. Drag a road. Select the road tool (R) and drag a street across buildable land. Zones only develop within 3 tiles of a road.
  3. Zone residential and industrial. Drag green residential and yellow industrial rectangles along the road. Early on, industry brings the jobs that attract residents.
  4. Add power. Place a wind turbine (clean, small) or coal plant (big, dirty), then drag a power line (L) to your zones — zoned land conducts electricity onward, so one connection lights a district.
  5. Watch the RCI gauge. Buildings sprout where demand, power and road access meet. When the blue C bar rises, zone commercial — shops need customers before they'll open.
  6. Unlock density. Water towers, police, fire, schools and parks raise land value and coverage. High-density zones need water and decent land value before towers appear.
  7. Mind the budget. Open the budget panel (F) to set taxes and watch monthly income vs. upkeep. A treasury below zero suspends every city service.
  8. Cause problems on purpose. The MAYHEM section has a fire starter and a meteor. The fire department's coverage map suddenly becomes very interesting.
Mayor's tip: keep industry downwind of your homes — its pollution tanks residential land value. A row of trees or a park between them buys a lot of goodwill.

Controls

Left mouseuse tool · drag roads, power lines and zone rectangles
Right / middle mousepan the map
Scroll wheelzoom in and out
Q · B · R · Lquery · bulldoze · road · power line
SPACE · 1 · 2 · 3pause · simulation speeds
N · Mday/night lighting · sound on/off
F · S · Hbudget · save city · help manual
ESCcancel tool, close panels
claim.town running in a desktop web browser tab, showing the full game interface with toolbar, inspector panel and a large isometric city
The whole game runs in a single browser tab — nothing to install.

Frequently asked questions

Is claim.town free?

Yes — claim.town is free to play in your browser. There is no download, no install and no account.

Does claim.town work on phones or tablets?

claim.town is designed for desktop browsers with a mouse and keyboard. Touch devices are not supported yet.

Where are my cities saved?

Cities are saved locally in your browser (localStorage). The game autosaves regularly and when you close the tab. Saves stay on the device and browser you played in — clearing site data deletes them.

Can I play claim.town offline?

You need an internet connection to load the page; after that the simulation runs entirely on your machine. There is no offline/PWA mode yet, so reloading requires a connection.

How big is the map?

Each city is a 96×96-tile isometric map with procedurally generated terrain — type a seed on the start screen to get the same map again, or roll a random one.

Is claim.town affiliated with EA or Maxis?

No. claim.town is a fan-made homage to SimCity 4. Every building is procedurally drawn in code — it uses no art, code or assets from the original game.

Ready to govern?

§50,000 in the treasury. 96×96 tiles of land. One chance at greatness.

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