Memoriapolis is a bold and innovative city-building simulation that dares to blend the granular management of urban planning with the sweeping strategic depth of 4X games.
Developed and published by 5PM Studio, this Early Access title invites players to guide a single city through 2,500 years of history, from the dawn of Antiquity to the Renaissance, with the Age of Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution to follow. Its organic city growth, faction-driven politics, and emphasis on historical legacy can make it a true standout in the genre. However, promises are often huge, but what does it look like in reality? I had a chance to dig into a full version of the game and see for myself.
What comes first when you start to build your first city is the ability of the game to immerse you into the role of historical ruler. Your city grows and evolves like a living entity, while your actions impact the lives of the citizens. The new people join the city based on the cultural and political choices. The prosperity of the city depends on numerous aspects the player has to pay attention to and react in time. Even political intrigues come into play when different factions join the city and new alliances are forged.
As a true ruler, player has to deal with problems of their people, suppress rebellions and appease ambitious guilds to prevent the city, or rather an entire civilization, from falling. The emphasis on civic leadership leads to an absence of direct combat.
The player isn’t a general, leading troops into a battle, but a ruler that decides how many resources can be spent, while battles are being simply simulated and resolved depending on choices. Atop of that, historical events ground the game to reality, and decisions players make during these key points create a unique narrative of the city across millennia.
At its core, Memoriapolis reimagines the city-building formula by bringing in an algorithm that governs organic city growth. As a result, it appears like the citizens are shaping the urban landscape based on players’ strategic decisions, not the players themselves. This creates visually unique cities that feel alive, with winding roads and neighborhoods that evolve naturally. The effect is mesmerizing, as your settlement transforms from a humble village in Antiquity to a sprawling Renaissance metropolis.
At the start it offers to choose one of the six cultural factions—Military, Religion, Trade, Education, Production, and Politics—each influencing the special bonuses, citizen ambitions, and political landscape. These factions become one of the most important mechanics of the game, and prioritizing one over the other can drastically change the vector of development. For example, prioritizing Trade might yield bustling markets and wealth, but neglecting Military could leave you vulnerable to simulated battles.
As the city grows, citizens from different factions and groups can become allies or rivals, potentially challenging players’ authority through riots or coups. Solving these problems in time gives more chances for the city to survive through ages.
Time progresses through real-time cycles (roughly 4 seconds each), with options to pause or accelerate. Each era lasts a set number of cycles, after which you transition to the next, carrying over unused cycles for strategic bonuses. While the era lasts, the main goal for the players becomes a construction of the Wonders of this exact era, which will leave a trace in history and possibly impact future eras. This ties the game to the theme of historical memory, and allows one to feel the greatness of famous cultural wonders, some of which don’t exist now.
However, with all the cool ideas and innovations, the gameplay of Memoriapolis isn’t flawless. One of the main problems lies within the learning curve, especially for newcomers to the genre. It’s a game where tutorials can become essential to walkthrough since the game has many details in management and politics, else it can become an endless circle of tries and errors.
A good example is the building upgrade tree, which can be used right from the start of the game and the player even has the resources for it, but choosing the wrong upgrade leads to blockers where players simply can’t build a production structure. After an upgrade, some buildings demand a special resource, which unlocks after the certain city development stage, but to reach it the player would need the production building they can’t construct.
The tutorial mission explains these details and shows the right pattern to proceed through the game cycles. It takes the player step by step through the early stages of city growth, introducing core mechanics and slowly immersing them into the experience. However, the tutorial still doesn’t fully bridge the gap in knowledge, leaving some mechanics opaque until the player figures them out the hard way. Mostly, these holes are related to factions and the political system, as well as reasons for the riots and how to prevent them.
One of the most confusing moments for me happened when the era was supposed to change. I expected my city to transition seamlessly into the new age, so I had spent time carefully planning it—balancing functionality and aesthetics. Yet when the era shifted to the Middle Ages, the game prompted me to build a completely new city, now centered around a medieval-style castle.
Meanwhile, my ancient city continued to operate, still generating resources, and factions still demanded attention and political investment—but half of its functions stopped working properly. Maybe there was a way to resolve this, but once again, it highlights flaws in the game’s design, making it unnecessarily frustrating, especially for newcomers.
The UI of Memoriapolis is a mixed bag, offering a functional but occasionally cluttered gateway to its complex mechanics. Designed to manage the game’s intricate systems, the UI presents a wealth of information through menus, tooltips, and a HUD that tracks cycles, prestige, and faction influence. Its clean, minimalist aesthetic aligns with the game’s dioramic visuals, with icons and color-coded indicators that attempt to streamline decision-making.
However, the sheer volume of data can overwhelm newcomers, as critical details like faction rivalries or building effects are sometimes buried in sub-menus or lack clear explanations. Navigating the UI feels intuitive for basic tasks like placing buildings, but advanced mechanics, such as balancing citizen ambitions or interpreting Memory Points, often require time to figure them all out.
When it comes to the graphics—Memoriapolis is a visual triumph. Having the dioramic, museum-like aesthetics creates an effect of a living miniature model, filled with intricate details. Each culture’s buildings are distinct—Military structures are fortified and imposing, while Education buildings exude scholarly elegance. Wonders are particularly stunning, serving as focal points in your evolving skyline. Each era has its own historically accurate style, bringing the feeling of evolution onto new levels.
However, this beauty and attention to detail come at a steep cost—performance is where Memoriapolis struggles the most.
The early game generally runs smoothly, but problems begin to emerge once the city surpasses 600 years of existence. By this point, your settlement has usually expanded significantly, and with that growth comes a sharp rise in GPU demand.
The first noticeable FPS drops occur as the Antique era draws to a close, worsening when the Middle Ages arrive. Buildings grow larger, populations swell, and farms and production chains multiply to sustain the civilization—all of which strain the system. Strangely, even lowering every setting to minimum and disabling all post-processing effects only delays the inevitable. By the Renaissance era and beyond, even high-end systems may struggle to keep up.
The issue likely stems from the natural growth algorithm, which calculates citizen behavior, road generation, and city expansion in real time. By the mid-game, the volume of these calculations increases exponentially, overloading both the CPU (handling the computations) and the GPU (managing real-time rendering). At this point, I can’t help but wonder—without further optimization, low-end systems might struggle to even reach the Industrial Revolution.
While a 96% GPU load appears to be the norm for this game (which really shouldn’t be the case), technical issues don’t stop there. During my playthroughs, I’ve encountered memory leaks and game crashes – both of which proved particularly frustrating. Thankfully the autosave feature does help mitigate the critical errors, but it doesn’t fully compensate for the frustration caused by them.
And the last but not the least disappointment with the Memoriapolis experience comes from an unexpected aspect. The audio experience falls truly short. The lo-fi soundtrack is pleasant, but it exists in its own world, isolated from the picture on the screen. It lacks the gravity of the era the player goes through even though it could significantly enhance immersion, bringing more historical beats to the game. Other sound effects are functional but also unremarkable, and the overall audio package feels like an afterthought. The player can simply turn on their own music and it won’t ruin the game experience, maybe even improve it with a fitting track.
Overall, Memoriapolis is an intriguing city-builder that captures the sweep of history with its organic growth. Its dioramic visuals and innovative mechanics offer a fresh take on the genre that bridges city-building and 4X strategy. However, performance issues, a steep learning curve and rough edges temper its brilliance. It can truly shine on a beefy PC, offering a captivating experience with both thrill of ruling and relaxation of cozy city building.
Complexity and historical depth can help the Memoriapolis to earn the place in the hearts of city-builders and strategy fans, but only if developers manage to solve the technical issues and improve performance. For now, it’s a diamond in the rough—flawed but brimming with promise. If you’re willing to embrace its ambitions and overlook its growing pains, Memoriapolis offers a rewarding journey through the ages.
