Ever wanted to explore your civil infrastructure construction career dreams in a virtual world? Well, grab your hi-vis and fire up your PC or console, we’ve dug deep yet again to find the top games to give you a taste of what it’s like to build the civil infrastructure that keeps New Zealand’s people and economy thriving.
With serious physics chops and a degree of real-world accuracy, these games let you step into the world of civil construction to get taste of what working in the industry involves (or might hold in future, in the case of Space Engineers).
A lot has changed since we last covered the most epic civil construction games out there, so read on to discover our latest top picks.
RoadCraft (2025)
If you’ve ever driven down a freshly paved stretch of highway and thought ‘how did someone build this’, then RoadCraft is ready to answer all your questions. Throwing you in the deep end of the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster, you’ll marshal your heavy machinery forces to restore roading, bridges and other civil infrastructure order to the chaos. It’s so realistic you’ll need to wear your hard hat!
Co-ordinating the recovery with up to 40 vehicles to unlock, the game lets you try your hand at a selection of real construction tasks: dumping sand, levelling with bulldozers, compacting with steamrollers and laying asphalt with pavers. To achieve all this you’ll need to clear debris, navigate treacherous ground conditions and reshape terrain to accomplish a wide range of missions as you conquer the story-driven campaign.
RoadCraft’s physics engine aims to exactly replicate the properties of materials, so sand behaves like sand and asphalt behaves like asphalt. You can interact with most parts of the map and come up with your own solutions to save the day by reconnecting communities and restoring facilities – in the same way as real road workers do.
This disaster-recovery simulation is particularly relevant to New Zealand, with the country’s infrastructure facing constant challenges from extreme weather, flooding and the occasional earthquake.
Space Engineers (2013)
An out-of-this-world game for aspiring engineers. Don’t let the space setting fool you – Space Engineers develops the exact kind of logical thinking that engineers use every day.
As an open-world sandbox game, construction and engineering supports exploration and survival. Create everything from spaceships and planetary outposts to space stations and wheeled vehicles. The game’s realism means every component can be assembled, disassembled and tested, while obeying the same laws of physics that apply on Earth – just like real-life construction.
Space Engineers’ multi-player option welcomes up to 16 players, so you can work together to co-ordinate complex projects with a team, a skill essential to succeeding in civil infrastructure roles.
With a ‘Very Positive’ rating from nearly 66,000 Steam reviews, this game has been quietly training real and potential future engineers for more than a decade.
Bridge Constructor Studio (2024)
Want to understand why the Auckland Harbour Bridge has lasted since 1959 while other structures fail over time? Bridge Constructor Studio puts you in charge of 70 challenging puzzles that teach you basic structural engineering principles without committing to in-depth university study.
The educational value is legit: work with authentic materials including wood, steel, cables and concrete – each with realistic properties and costs – and the physics-based testing is brutally honest. If your bridge can’t handle the vehicle-crossing test, it’s going down in slow motion.
Budget management adds another layer of realism. Every quantity of material costs money, and you’ll need to balance safety, cost, and materials to bridge the gap – just like real engineers do with infrastructure projects.
The VR mode takes immersion to another level, letting you walk across your creations and experience the scale of infrastructure firsthand as you place bridge pieces in place and see them react to the physics of weight and movement.
Cities: Skylines II (2023)
Think you could design a better city than New Zealand’s city planners of the past? Cities: Skylines II lets you prove it – it’s the gold standard for understanding how modern cities actually work.
Create the infrastructure foundations essential for people to live in a city, from the ground up: roads, utilities, bridges and more. Don’t neglect essential water infrastructure to supply drinking water and handle wastewater to maintain the health and happiness of your citizens, while creating and maintaining different electricity generation options – from wind turbines to nuclear plants.
Building a functioning city means mastering interconnected systems. Your industrial zones need workers from residential areas, connected by transport that flows. Power supply needs to reach every building and everything needs to work together seamlessly, just like real life.
The economic simulation teaches crucial lessons about how infrastructure investments pay off over time. That railway network might seem expensive, but watch how it transforms your city’s growth and reduces road maintenance costs.
Steam says the game is “the most realistic and detailed city builder ever”. Use your epic powers to create your own dream city just the way you like it – the sky’s the limit.
Construction Simulator (2022)
This game is one of the undisputed heavyweight kings of the genre and can boast more than 3,000 ‘Very Positive’ Steam reviews in the three years since its release in 2022. One reviewer describes Construction Simulator as “A groundbreaking, riveting simulator that completely nails it!”.
The game covers the complete construction process: site preparation, foundation work, structural assembly and finishing touches, while you tackle everything from small residential jobs to massive infrastructure projects.
With more than 80 licensed vehicles and machines to jump into you’re getting to grips with experiences that transfer directly to job sites – from precision grading with an excavator to operating a tower crane. Construction Simulator is so realistic that 25 heavy machinery companies have partnered with it to brand in-game vehicles, including Caterpillar, Liebherr, and Bobcat
The co-operative multiplayer mode lets you and up to three friends run a construction company together, teaching teamwork, communication and project coordination skills, qualities you’d need on a real construction site to get the job done safely and efficiently.
This piece of construction gaming royalty is practically online professional development. If there’s one civil construction game to play to get a taste for the wealth of opportunities in the industry this is the one. Time to get to work!
Level up from virtual to reality
These games offer career exploration as much as they do entertainment. Every bridge you build, every road you pave and every building you demolish develops skills that New Zealand’s civil infrastructure industry needs.
With a wave of work on the horizon, the industry is crying out for fresh talent. If you’re already drawn to construction challenges in the virtual world, chances are you’d thrive in the real one. Take a tiki tour around our Civil Construction Careers Roadmap to find out more.
