SimCity, but with Permits
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HN · launched Oct 20, 2026 · 936 upvotes (top 1%)
- Media & entertainment
- B2C
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Similar launches
See all 90 similar launches →Could you build this?
Partial A browser UI and basic city map can be vibe-coded, but a convincing simulation with a linked economy, political actors, and procedural case events needs real game-design depth and balancing.
What it would actually take: A real version would be a browser game using a canvas or WebGL renderer, with a tick-based economic simulation (population, jobs, land values, rents) and a state machine for permit applications, hearings, and elections. The hard part is designing systems that stay fun and balanced when they interact. That needs a game designer and a simulation-focused developer with iterative playtesting.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Concerns raised: unpaved road tiles can't be zoned, streets on unpaved tiles don't provide building access, zoomed-out view hangs for 20-30 seconds on large cities
Feature requests: overlay view showing schools and police stations, ability to zone unpaved road tiles
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 90 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #1 of 91 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 321 days after the earliest competitor.
- Verdant: helping cities process permits faster · yc · 2026-07-07 · 4 upvotes · similarity 0.60
- OpenSC4 · github · 2026-10-12 · 13 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- FirstDig · ph · 2026-10-24 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- placemaker · github · 2026-10-17 · 18 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- AI agents play SimCity through a REST API · hn · 2026-02-09 · 216 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Skyline Co-op is like SimTower, but built around democratic socialism · hn · 2026-08-06 · 41 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Built a Rome City Builder · hn · 2026-10-14 · 15 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- simcity3000-gta-mode · github · 2026-10-05 · 38 upvotes · similarity 0.43
Other launches for this product
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