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The Population Must Grow

The Population Must Grow Game Cover
67%Game Brain Score
optimization, gameplay
graphics
78% User Score Based on 37 reviews

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The Population Must Grow Game Cover

About

The Population Must Grow is a single player city builder game. It was developed by Helmi Blub and was released on July 4, 2025. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

This is a very simple city builder game with the main purpose of scaling up your population. You can place build orders for your citizens to build new homes, plant food or plant new trees. The more citizens you have the faster the city can grow.  For me as the developer of this game, the purpose was to try to write efficient code to see how much a PC can handle before it begins to slow down. S…

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The Population Must Grow screenshot
The Population Must Grow screenshot
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78%
Audience ScoreBased on 37 reviews
optimization2 positive mentions
graphics3 negative mentions
  • Impressive technical achievement handling millions of agents and large populations.
  • Simple and easy-to-understand gameplay that can be fun for a short period.
  • Active developer engagement and potential for further improvements and features.
  • Extremely poor optimization causing high CPU and RAM usage, leading to crashes and lag at large populations.
  • Very basic and shallow gameplay with limited content and repetitive mechanics.
  • Low-quality visuals and art style that detract from the overall experience.
  • graphics
    5 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The graphics are widely criticized for being extremely low-quality and resembling crude, MS Paint-style art, lacking polish and professional 3D visuals. While this gives the game a prototype or tech demo feel, the simplistic PNG-based graphics do allow for user modification. Overall, the visuals are seen as a major drawback and detract from the gaming experience.

    • “The art style gives the game a tech demo or prototype feel, but with more polish and features, it could become a full-fledged game.”
    • “The graphics are basic, comprised of PNG files, allowing players to replace them if desired.”
    • “In terms of visuals, this features really godawful MS-Paint tier art instead of real graphics.”
    • “The deplorably bad visuals here come across as an insult to gamers.”
    • “It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter.”
  • optimization
    3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The game's optimization is notably poor, struggling with high CPU and RAM usage that leads to crashes when the population exceeds 10 million, making late-game progress difficult even on strong PCs. While the premise is engaging, performance issues significantly hinder long-term play.

    • “The game is fun for a couple of hours - for me, the fun comes from thinking about all the cool optimizations the developer had to make to handle millions of agents.”
    • “While the premise of the game is fun, its optimization (or lack thereof) is abysmal. Once the population reaches the level of 10+ million, it becomes prone to crashes, hogs CPU and RAM, making final achievements nearly impossible even with a fairly strong PC setup.”
    • “Might play around with an entire drive mounted as a page file.. I don't know how this game works or why it's so unoptimized.”
  • gameplay
    3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The gameplay is currently simple and feels like a prototype or free-to-play copy, lacking depth and content. However, reviewers see significant potential if more polish, features, and a richer gameplay loop are added.

    • “The art style gives it that tech demo or prototype feel to it with a simple gameplay loop, but I could imagine that with more polish and features it could become a full-fledged game.”
    • “Free to play copy paste game with great gameplay, can't complain.”
    • “Needs a lot more content and a gameplay loop but there is so much potential.”
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Frequently Asked Questions

The Population Must Grow is a city builder game.

The Population Must Grow is available on PC, Windows and Linux.

The Population Must Grow was released on July 4, 2025.

The Population Must Grow was developed by Helmi Blub.

The Population Must Grow has received mostly positive reviews from players. Most players liked The Population Must Grow for its optimization but disliked it for its graphics.

The Population Must Grow is a single player game.

Similar games include Factory Town, Idle Colony, City idle, Settlement Survival, Songs of Syx and others.