IsoCity is a laid-back sandbox for building a little isometric town one square at a time. You start with a bare 7x7 patch and a palette of 72 pieces, from straight streets and crosswalks to canals, red brick walls, corner shops and glass office towers. You can play IsoCity unblocked in any modern browser, and there’s no budget or score, so the only goal is making a place you like. Its bright tiles come from Kenney’s free art collection.
How to Play IsoCity
Pick a piece from the palette. On a wide screen it is a scrolling column on the left, and on a tall, narrow screen it becomes a strip above the map. The piece you chose gets a highlight so you know what you’re holding.
Next, click any square on the grid. A dark shaded diamond follows your pointer to show which square you’re about to change, and the new piece simply replaces whatever was there. There’s no undo button, so if you make a mistake, just place the right piece on top.
Mouse users can hold the button down and sweep across the grid to stamp the same piece onto many squares. It’s the quickest way to lay a long street or a block of houses. A right-click turns a square back into bare ground. On a touchscreen, choose the bare ground piece, which is the very first one in the palette, and tap the squares you want cleared.
What’s in the Palette
The 72 pieces are sorted in six rows of twelve, roughly by type:
- Streets and junctions. Straight roads in both directions, crosswalks, roads lined with trees, a four-way crossing, a roundabout and roads with a center strip.
- Lights, ends and T-junctions. Roads with street lamps, dead ends and three-way joins.
- Curves and bends. Gentle curves, tight turns and short connector pieces.
- Walls and water. Red walls along one or two sides, plus pools and canal sections in light blue.
- Buildings. About twenty in all, from low corner stores with colored awnings to tall brick apartments and glass towers.
Design Ideas for Your Town
- Lay streets before buildings. Tall buildings hide whatever sits behind them, so plan the road grid first.
- Put tall pieces at the back. Squares closer to the bottom of the screen draw over the ones behind them, so keep towers toward the top edge.
- Match the road openings. A street only looks connected when its open sides face its neighbors. Check the palette picture before you place it.
- Use water as a border. A line of canal pieces makes a clean edge for a waterfront row.
- Mix heights. Low shops next to tall blocks keep the skyline from looking flat.
- Wipe fast. Pick bare ground and drag it across an area to clear a whole section at once.
- Try a theme. Build a downtown of only glass towers, a quiet canal village, or a walled block of brick apartments, then compare which one looks best.
Mistakes New Builders Make
The most common one is building from the front. If you fill the bottom rows with towers first, you can’t see the squares behind them clearly. Start at the top corner and work toward the bottom.
Another is mixing road styles by accident. Several pieces look alike at palette size, like a plain road and one with a center strip, so check your street after each few placements. Finally, remember that a 7x7 map fills up fast. Leave a few open squares or plazas so the town has room to breathe.
Saving Your Town
Every change is saved to your browser as you build, so when you come back the same layout loads again. That save lives only on that device and browser. If you use a different Chromebook, a guest window or clear your browsing data, you start with an empty patch.
Since there’s only one saved town, starting fresh means clearing the old one. If you’re proud of a design, take a screenshot before you wipe it.
Building on a Chromebook, Phone or Tablet
IsoCity works with a mouse or with taps, and the map scales to fit the player, so a Chromebook or tablet is fine. On a phone, the palette strip moves above the map in portrait mode. Sweeping to paint needs a mouse, so on touch you’ll place pieces one tap at a time.
With no sound and no clock, it’s an easy, low-stress way to spend a short break. You can stop anytime and pick up where you left off.
More Building and Planning Games
If you like designing spaces, look through the strategy games or try one of these:
- PixelCraft lets you draw your own pixel art square by square.
- Canvas TD turns layout into a challenge, since where you build each turret along the road decides whether the waves get through.
