Devlog · 26 September 2026

Blockline is live

Blockline is now open to everyone. It is a city builder that runs in your web browser: no download, no installer, nothing to buy. You found a settlement on an empty map, lay out streets and zones, and keep it supplied with power, water, sewage and an internet connection while it grows from a handful of houses into a metropolis. This first post explains what is in the game on day one, and why a few of the bigger decisions were made the way they were.

Your city lives in your account

Blockline asks you to create an account before you play. That is deliberate. Your cities are saved to your account on the server rather than in the browser, so the same city is there when you sign in from another computer, and clearing your browser data does not wipe out weeks of work. Signing up takes a minute: choose an email address and password on Blockline's own sign-in page, confirm the address, and you are straight into the game.

The game saves as you play. There is no save button to forget and no slot to overwrite by accident.

The charter: eight chapters from village to metropolis

Rather than handing you every building at once, Blockline tells the story of your city through a charter of eight chapters. Each chapter sets a goal, introduces an adviser and, when you complete it, pays a grant and unlocks a new set of tools. The first chapter, A place to call home, is about getting homes, jobs and roads to work together. By A skyline of our own you are dealing with hospitals, universities and highways, and the final chapter, A city worth inheriting, asks whether what you have built will last.

The point is pacing: a new player is not faced with every building at once, and an experienced one always has a next goal.

Utilities are real networks

Power, water, sewage and digital service are each modelled as networks. Streets carry the mains for all four, so anything built beside a connected street is served. A gas plant or a water tower only feeds the network it touches, and conduits such as power lines and water pipes link sources and off-street sites into it. If you build a second neighbourhood across a river with no road between them, it is a separate network, and it needs its own supply. The underground view shows each network, how much of it is served, and which buildings are cut off.

The digital network works the same way: an internet exchange brings bandwidth into the city, and fibre cable carries it to sites away from the streets. The utility networks guide goes through all of this in detail.

Resources, farms and the Trade Center

Buildings are not just paid for in cash. Larger projects carry a bill of materials such as steel, timber and copper, and the city keeps stock of each commodity. If you run short, you can buy what you need in the Trade Center, an app on the Mayor's Computer with price charts, an order book, market and limit orders, and policies to reserve, auto-buy or auto-sell each commodity.

Food comes from farms. A farmstead works the farm fields you paint around it, up to 12 of them, and the rest lie fallow. A field has to join a farmstead, either directly or through another field, to be worked at all. See farms and trade for how the pieces fit together.

A city that ages and learns

A few systems keep a long-running city interesting:

• Construction takes time. Bigger buildings are put up by a crew over a number of days rather than appearing instantly.
• Infrastructure wears out. Roads, mains and civic buildings age, cost more to keep up as they do, and eventually need renewing.
• Research. The city builds up research points and spends them on a tree of technologies across four eras: industrial, electric, digital and green.
• Neighbouring cities. A handful of nearby towns, generated from your city's seed, grow alongside yours, post delivery contracts and go through shortages and booms that move market prices.

The Mayor's Computer

Almost all of the management screens live on the Mayor's Computer, a small desktop with its own apps: Finance, Problems, Mail, The Gazette (the city's newspaper), Research, Region & Contracts, the Trade Center and more. The map stays uncluttered, and when you want to dig into the numbers you sit down at the desk. By default the city pauses while the computer is open, so nothing gets away from you while you read.

Where to start

If you are new, the getting started guide covers your first few years in office, and why isn't my city growing? is the page to read when things stall. This devlog will record every notable change from here on, with the reasoning behind it.