SimTower

SimTower, from 1994, is a construction simulation in which you build a skyscraper. It was developed by the Japanese studio Vivarium Inc. and released as part of the broader Sim family of simulation games.

The central idea is original and unexpectedly demanding: you view the building in cross-section, sliced open from outside, so every floor is visible simultaneously. You place offices, apartments, shops, restaurants and hotel rooms, and on top of that you must solve the problem most other building games ignore entirely, namely moving people around inside. Lifts are the heart of the design. They have limited capacity, serve only the floors you assign them, and if planned badly they produce rush-hour queues, angry tenants and eventually departures.

That produces an unusual kind of puzzle. You are not building purely for revenue but for circulation. Adding another floor means more people competing for the same lifts, so growth itself creates the problem you then have to solve with express lifts, sky lobbies and a layout that puts amenities where people actually need them.

The game is single-player, runs in real time with adjustable speed, and has no victory condition as such beyond promoting the building to a higher star rating. It remains one of the clearest demonstrations that a narrowly defined subject can support a complete game if the underlying system is interesting enough. OldGame.cz keeps a profile with release details and its placement in the Sim series.