This underwater city builder had me more emotionally invested in my corals than SimCity does in my human citizens, and you can try it at the next Steam Next Fest

I love metropolitan city builders, but once I'm done turning fertile riverside plains into a mess of eight-lane highways and coal plants, I can't help but wonder if I've maybe been a net negative for the world around me. When I saw Life Below on Steam—a city builder all about constructing reefs that opens its Steam description with "the ocean is dying"—I was flooded with the exact blend of guilt and intrigue I look for in my entertainment.

After trying a demo build, I walked away pretty taken with its marine premise. The basics are similar to something like SimCity; you walk that line of territory expansion and resource management, mitigating random disasters while making sure your populous has a stable income of food, energy, and housing. Instead of electricity and traffic stops, though, you're working with fish, the algae they eat, the anemones that shelter them, and various resource-rich corals.

The science isn't one-to-one with reality: resources are distributed by magic water spirits cultivated from stray souls, and you play as a tentacled ocean guardian called Thalassa. But it's just rooted in reality enough that when a heatwave hit my reef, I was scrambling to cool it down so my clownfish population weren't all rendered homeless. As you monitor pH levels, expand to new zones, and watch as new schools of fish dance around your base, it feels grounded enough to make sense of while retaining a sort of magical sensibility befitting the briny deep.

In a press release Q&A, game director Lise Hagen Lie said it's all meant to foster a nurturing sensibility rather than an exploitative, imperial one: "We want to show the spectacle of underwater life on nature's own basis, subverting the materialistic and human centred focus of traditional city builders … We had, for instance, workshops with marine biologists, who helped us make sure we had a certain amount of 'reality' in the game."

The full game promises a narrative focus that, despite all the magic and spirits, is ultimately about the fragility of underwater ecosystems. Hagen Lie gave an example in the Q&A: "The player might, for instance, experience lionfish infestations, where the here-invasive species infests a zone, causing devastating wildlife death. The fish living in that area will be eaten by the lionfish as it spreads, taking over neighboring areas until dealt with by the player. The loss of wildlife is devastating to the area, the coral structures and the reef itself—slowly killing the Reef Heart and the foothold the player has made."

That might sound sort of intense, but the demo I played had a mostly languid pace and a pause button. It's hard to tell without a full gamut of zones how deep the city simulation goes, but the foundations are there for a robust, quirky take on the genre.

If Life Below has piqued your interest, you won't have to wait long to give it a spin. It'll be at the upcoming Steam Next Fest running from June 9 to 16, which perhaps unfortunately leads right into the Steam Fishing Fest the following week. Better save those minnows while you can.