I’m itching to play something like Cities Skylines, but also something that isn’t just about growing and growing, rather building within certain (spatial?) limitations and/or solving problems or something. I hope this isn’t a contradiction, but I’d also like if it had a bit more focus on individual buildings and livability rather than optimizing car traffic, if that makes any sense. I guess i’m looking for something that is a bit more than just a city sculpting sandbox, but less than a full blown metropolis-society-simulator.
You’re looking for Against the Storm.
It’s a rogue-like city-builder with goals that you meet and complete in order to move on to the next set of unique challenges. You’ll be faced with unique sets of challenges per biome, unique race-based sets of needs, and times events that need to be dealt with or their consequences will have to be mitigated.