Two years after its initial launch, 2D tower-building simulator Project Highrise is now drawing out blueprints on console and PC. Developed by SomaSims and published by Kasedo Games, Project Highrise: Architect’s Edition will feature all previously released expansions—Las Vegas, London Life, Miami Malls, and Tokyo Towers—and one brand new, unnamed add-on. Watch the announcement trailer above.
Project Highrise was first released on September 8, 2016. Though it didn’t score extraordinarily high amongst critics, currently sitting at a 73 on Metacritic, a look at the Steam Charts reveals it’s been seeing a steady increase of players since its launch two years ago. Many people even consider the game a spiritual successor to SimTower: The Vertical Empire (sometimes shortened to The Tower), a construction and management simulator developed by Japanese studio OPeNBooK (now Vivarium Inc., though it hasn’t released a game since 2012’s Guild01 / Aero Porter). SimTower was published in November 1994 by Maxis (then Maxis Software) for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh System 7 operating systems.
In 1998, SimTower did see a sequel of sorts in the form of Yoot Tower (known as The Tower II in Japan), developed by OPeNBooK9003 and Sega in Japan and North America, respectively. It would be another seven years before SimTower returned, this time in the form of The Tower SP, developed by a partnership between Nintendo and Sega for the Game Boy Advance in 2005. Then, it was nearly a decade and a half until SimTower came back in its current iteration, Project Highrise.
Project Highrise: Architect’s Edition will be available on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One this Autumn.
