About

About Blockline

A calm, modern city builder that plays in your browser, made by one independent developer in the United Kingdom.

What Blockline is

Blockline is a city builder in the tradition of the classic simulation games, rebuilt for the browser. You lay streets, zone land, wire up power and water and watch a settlement grow into a city. The guiding idea is that the city should always be able to explain itself: when a neighbourhood stalls, the game tells you why, and every number it shows comes from the same rules the simulation runs on.

The campaign, called the charter, takes a city through eight chapters from its first street to a metropolis of twenty-five thousand people. Along the way the city gains utilities, transit, industry, a trading exchange and four buildings you can walk inside and run: a Police HQ, a City Hospital, a City Prison and a Music Venue.

Who makes it

Blockline is designed and built by Phil Lavender, an independent developer based in the United Kingdom. It is a small, self-funded project: there is no publisher and no investor, and the game is free to play. Advertising on this website and in the game helps cover the cost of the servers.

How it is made

The game runs entirely in your browser. The city simulation is written in TypeScript and runs in a background worker so the map stays smooth while the city ticks; the map is drawn with WebGL. Your cities are saved to your account on our servers, so you can pick a city up on another computer. Development happens in the open with players: updates are posted to the devlog and discussed on the Blockline Discord server.

Get involved

The best way to help is to play, and to tell us what works and what does not. Join the Blockline Discord server, or email hello@blockline.city. New to the game? Start with the getting started guide.