Cliff Empire

About

Cliff Empire is a single player economy city builder game with economy, post-apocalyptic and science fiction themes. It was developed by Lion's Shade and was released on August 6, 2019. It received positive reviews from players.

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85%

Audience ScoreBased on 1,744 reviews

graphics227 positive mentions

grinding25 negative mentions

Unique and refreshing city builder with a post-apocalyptic cliff-side setting, combining resource management, logistics, and survival elements.
Beautiful futuristic art style, clean graphics, relaxing music, and an immersive atmosphere with detailed animations and first-person mode.
Challenging but rewarding gameplay that opens new mechanics and features progressively, encouraging thoughtful planning and strategy across multiple interconnected cities.

Steep learning curve and lack of detailed tutorials or in-game information causing player confusion and frequent trial-and-error.
Game pacing can be slow, especially in the mid-to-late game with long research times and resource waiting periods, leading to some grind and repetitive play.
Economic and trading systems between cities are sometimes unbalanced or frustrating, with independent city budgets causing complex money management and occasional soft-locking issues.

graphics
388 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
59%
39%
2%
Cliff Empire features a distinctive, clean, and futuristic art style blending neo-classical, retro-futuristic, and dieselpunk elements, creating stunning and immersive visuals praised for their aesthetic appeal and detailed city environments. The graphics, while sometimes considered simple or minimalistic, are well-executed with beautiful lighting effects, smooth animations, and a relaxing atmosphere supported by a fitting soundtrack. Overall, users appreciate the game’s unique and polished visuals, despite occasional critiques about UI clunkiness, optimization, or monotony in the aesthetic over time.
- “Cliff Empire boasts a distinctive art style that merges futuristic aesthetics with retro-futuristic, almost dieselpunk elements.”
- “The graphics and attention to detail are outstanding, with amazing animations and the ability to zoom in to see actual sims and products in detail rather than just pixels.”
- “Beautiful graphics with a day/night cycle, parks, futuristic drones, and atmospheric effects, creating a visually stunning and immersive city-building experience.”
- “Graphics blur when changing perspective sometimes.”
- “Graphics looks like that of a mobile game, UI elements that are locked at the moment can still be clicked on for some reason.”
- “Graphics are meh, lots of things look unfinished.”
gameplay
354 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
34%
63%
3%
Cliff Empire offers a unique and challenging city-building gameplay centered on managing limited vertical and horizontal space on cliffs, with evolving mechanics and a rewarding progression that unlocks new technologies and building options. While the game presents a steep learning curve with some unintuitive or poorly explained systems, it balances complexity, strategic resource management, and engaging trade and defense elements, providing a fresh experience within the genre. Despite occasional rough edges and some repetitive or slow moments, the gameplay is addictive, deep, and well-supported by ongoing updates, making it appealing for players seeking a thoughtful and innovative city-builder.
- “The core gameplay revolves around constructing your city vertically and horizontally on the cliff edges, where space is scarce and precious.”
- “The terrain’s verticality introduces unique logistical challenges, such as building elevators or managing gravity-affected systems, which add depth and novelty to familiar city-building mechanics.”
- “What sets this game apart from many of the other city builders, even the AAA ones, is that Cliff Empire does a fantastic job of keeping you interested through continually changing the focus of what you are doing and adding new gameplay ideas into the game.”
- “The mechanics are overly simplistic and the game does a terrible job at explaining itself.”
- “The gameplay makes little sense, the tutorial doesn't teach you anything, and it's grindy as heck.”
- “On the other you have to contend with a tedious early-mid game, obscure mechanics and a host of half baked features that get in the way of the good stuff.”
story
161 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
17%
79%
4%
The game features a loosely woven story focused on humanity's post-apocalyptic rebuilding of Earth through progressive missions and quests that gradually unlock new areas and technologies. While the narrative provides a meaningful backdrop of survival and resilience, many players find the story thin, repetitive, and somewhat undermined by punishing or unclear mission objectives and an anticlimactic ending. Overall, the story serves more as an integrated framework for gameplay progression rather than a deeply engaging or fully developed campaign.
- “Narrative and world-building are subtly woven into the gameplay through various missions and quests that provide context for your city’s survival and growth.”
- “These story elements explore themes of human resilience, innovation, and cooperation in the face of environmental collapse, giving your management efforts a meaningful backdrop.”
- “The interplay between city management and story progression enhances engagement, as players are motivated not only by numbers and efficiency but also by the unfolding saga of humanity’s second chance.”
- “The campaign has no real plot and there's no internal logic here.”
- “What's more, the story objectives (where you provide resources to the orbital station as your home base) are often very difficult or even impossible even if you have a thriving economy on one or more cliffs.”
- “The missions are too dense after the 2nd cliff is built, and why can't my citizens shop or learn on another cliff? It's hard to build all the constructions on one cliff, or maybe we need an upgrade system.”
music
64 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
44%
51%
5%
The music in the game is widely praised for being relaxing, atmospheric, and well-suited to the futuristic and city-building vibe, often described as soothing, chill, and immersive. While some find the soundtrack somewhat repetitive or not outstanding, it generally complements the gameplay without being intrusive, enhancing immersion and creating a calming, enjoyable environment.
- “The OST by Vadim Krakhmal is one of only a few recent game soundtracks that I'll listen to when not playing the game.”
- “The concept is unique, the visuals are stunning, the soundtrack is wonderful, the atmosphere and immersion are off the charts!”
- “Spending time watching your city go on its way is not so boring anyway, there is a myriad of hypnotic details you can watch just for fun, and the music is very relaxing, even after listening to it for 40 hours.”
- “Apart from that, music will get old quickly; exploring the city with a car or in free form is pretty great, art style is interesting but optimization isn’t so good.”
- “Graphics are nice and effective, the game does not lag at all, instant loads of saved game, soundtrack is probably a weak point.”
- “The background music is ... well, there.”
optimization
30 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
43%
47%
10%
The game generally performs well, with smooth and stable gameplay even in late stages, and few bugs or crashes reported. However, some users note occasional performance spikes and strain on hardware, as well as UI and tutorial aspects that could be better optimized. Overall, optimization is solid but leaves room for improvement in balancing resource gathering times and reducing stressful management elements.
- “Haven't had a single crash so far (in 40 hrs), performance is great (100+ fps in late game on 2k screen), and it looks fantastic and as futuristic as the game's premise would have you expect.”
- “+ smooth performance with no bugs found in the 6 hours I played.”
- “It is well optimized, no drops in performance observed as your cities grow, although the smaller scale might contribute to that.”
- “This coupled with insanely long time to gather resources leads to a soulless optimization of your builds - you don’t want to wait 4 more hours to build a big building that gives less than half the income that the better building provides.”
- “It absolutely ravages through your PC with performance issues at times but besides that and some balance issues, it's a good game.”
- “Performance will probably dip end-game on some machines during storms.”
replayability
30 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
30%
60%
10%
Replayability in Cliff Empire is generally seen as strong due to its variety of game modes, flexible settings, and consistent updates adding new features and upgrades. While many players appreciate the depth and learning curve that encourage experimentation and multiple playthroughs, some critique its limited map variety, building options, and eventual routine that can dampen long-term replay value. Overall, ongoing development and expanding mechanics promise to enhance its replayability over time.
- “One of the standout features of Cliff Empire is its approach to replayability and player choice.”
- “The variety of game modes, including sandbox and tower defense, adds depth and makes the game highly replayable.”
- “The devs are adding new (useful) buildings and variable tweaks with sometimes new features every week on a consistent basis, making this well worth the price with a promise to be replayable and fresh in several months with more mechanics coming like diseases, more complex tourism, and more export possibilities.”
- “The only negative thing I can say about Cliff Empire is limited replayability.”
- “There is nearly no replay value, even with the built-in 'tower defence'.”
- “You will get a few weeks of enjoyment before the routine kicks in because the replayability is dampened by the limited depth in buildings available, events and singular development strategy at the start.”
grinding
28 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
7%
4%
89%
Grinding in the game is frequently described as tedious and slow, especially in the early to mid-game due to unclear financial systems, slow research, and resource management challenges that can stall progress or cause financial collapse. While late-game play tends to be more rewarding, some design choices and repetitive mechanics still make the experience feel grindy and frustrating at times. However, with careful strategy, grinding can be minimized, and the game offers meaningful challenges for city-building fans.
- “You'll need a second life for grinding.”
- “You could get all achievements in one playthrough, no grinding required.”
- “Without the loans, players can totally brick their game or have an absurdly tedious amount of time waiting for the orbital station to generate enough money to build something, mostly centers for mental health.”
- “The financial system does not present clear cash flow statements or balance sheets, making mid-game decision making extremely tedious.”
- “Combine that with the fact that there is always a loss in value due to purchase prices always being about 50% more than sales prices, makes inter-city trading tedious at best to balance and can outright bankrupt one of your cities if not careful.”
atmosphere
26 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
69%
31%
The game delivers a unique, immersive, and visually stunning atmosphere that blends relaxing, zen-like qualities with engaging, strategic gameplay. Its thoughtful design, soothing soundtrack, and sci-fi aesthetic create a compelling and surreal environment, though some repetitive narration can detract slightly. Overall, the atmosphere greatly enhances the experience, making it both calming and mentally stimulating for fans of city-building and simulation games.
- “The concept is unique, the visuals are stunning, the soundtrack is wonderful, the atmosphere and immersion are off the charts!”
- “This is a great city building game; I really enjoyed its peculiar setting and atmosphere. The cities feel pretty unique, and having multiple self-sustainable cities trading between them, sending tourists over with zeppelins etc., is really satisfying.”
- “Fantastic atmosphere, relaxing but also keeps you thinking ahead.”
stability
21 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
14%
86%
User reports on stability are mixed, with many experiencing various bugs and UI glitches that affect gameplay, while others report a mostly bug-free experience. Common issues include persistent UI elements, broken game mechanics, and occasional graphical glitches, though some find the game stable enough to enjoy. Overall, the game shows instability in certain areas but also potential for improvement.
- “Sweet game, bug free.”
- “Bug free.”
- “The main issue I had with this game is some UI glitches, where if I click away from a trading window, it won't fully close and some parts of it will stay on screen until I click away again.”
- “Island trading is broken, populations are picky, drones are buggy or broken and food is impossible for a large population.”
- “Other than that glaring issue you got your typical buggy, glitchy experiences: civilians not walking on roads, demolish objects not disappearing, etc.”
humor
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The humor in the game is described as quirky and situational, often stemming from amusing gameplay mechanics and ironic scenarios, such as resource management glitches or unexpected game design details. While initially entertaining, some humorous elements may become repetitive over time. Overall, the humor adds a charming and lighthearted touch to the experience.
- “A hilarious detail is that you can walk around the town.”
- “So this game is really really funny, the first time I played it I almost spent 3 hours in it.”
- “Embellished with a trace of humor as a final touch.”
monetization
5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
20%
80%
The game features an integrated but optional in-game advertising system through holograms that players can choose to enable, allowing for monetization without intrusive ads during regular gameplay. There are no mandatory ads, preserving the game's aesthetic unless players opt to add advertising themselves. Overall, the monetization approach is subtle and player-controlled, avoiding typical cash grab tactics.
- “There is no advertising, that is great.”
- “Like a victim of a cash grab.”
- “I was really impressed when I found and built a parliament and passed a law to allow advertisers to erect gaudy and equally depressing holographic advertising all over my cliff cities - turning my starkly beautiful buildings into money-making billboards.”
- “Each building has positions to display ads as per the in-game 'holograms' policy, and undercliff buildings have dedicated positions for each construction material that drones fly to deliver them.”
emotional
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The emotional aspect is described as feeling sterile and emotionally distant, lacking warmth or connection compared to more immersive settings, though this detachment made players feel less guilty about utilizing in-game resources.