https://store.steampowered.com/app/1638300/Solargene/For an indepth look at the game, this guy probably has the best let's play/tutorial series
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYYLIhUH_Eg&list=PLoUZf1UXR9qtqvwP1jqCv8o_269inTIk1This is the exact type of game bay12 likes.
The closest I can compare it to is Hazeron, mixed with Rimworld, Sims (just very little) and maybe tropico in some ways (at least those are the vibes I get).
Genres I'd put it in is tycoon, economic, simulator and colony builder, if that helps more than comparing it to the above games.
You have a choice to start a colony on the moon, mars, one of jupiter's moons (look at Io
) or saturn's moons, or my favorite start (but the hardest by far), the cradle start where you must build a ship and then go to the moon and setup a colony there and succeed the contract before it runs out. The easiest start most recommend is actually Mars, because mining is pretty good there and you don't need to worry about long nights (long nights without a LONG lasting energy source can be death). Also the cradle start, you got to ferry people over to the moon, which is quite a learning experience in itself.
The premise of the game is you build a colony, and eventually get to a stage where you can then fund independent colonies that are owned more by you (early on got to take a colonizing contract to get initial funds, you can break the contract if you earn enough money to pay to break it, Io and Mars are the only starts probably possible for that. After that the game becomes vastly more relaxing and more sandbox)
Its early access and is a bit janky at the moment, so bare that in mind. However this is probably the most indepth colony builder (its more a colony simulator really) that I have played. The tutorial is there but not very helpful, the learning curve is rather extreme.
You do get tourists that can come to your colony (you can set how many tourists if any at all), and I believe there is not really a population cap to a colony...do note I may be wrong there, but I haven't found any hard stopping point, so MIGHT be able to turn a colony and make it into an actual city with tourists and stuff residing there. One can build VERY big and VERY tall buildings, for example I built a 30ish sized apartment building which is enough for well, 50 staff or tourists. Process of expanding it to 50 apartments. But its definitely more a colony builder. Though the logistics of supplying so many people would become hard with oxygen and food. But you do get farms can grow, so maybe not too hard, and the farms produce oxygen.
You can build a massive space station too, I haven't really done this yet, but nothing stopping me from making a huge space station outside one of the planets.
Future updates will expand past the solar system (pretty sure that will be a thing), and also there is going to be terraforming apparently. Not sure what else is going to be put in.
Also you can mine asteroids. No idea what that entails or how to do that.