33 CITIES: SKYLINES How about you apply your creative skills to something realistic and modern. In this game, you need to set about creating an entire city, looking after all the important infrastructure such as roads and electricity and services such as schools and post offices. It’s incredibly deep and you can spend tens of hours fine-tuning and building the perfect city. It will change the way you look at the towns and cities around you, too.
SUPER MARIO MAKER (WII U) This is the latest super popular creation game, and no points for guessing why. It’s all about building your own Mario Bros. levels after all! The level editor gives you full access to all the items, enemies and objects from the Mario games and using the GamePad touchscreen to move things around and try out different ideas is easy. Levels can be shared with friends of course, or you can spend hours trying out other gamers’ levels.
PROJECT SPARK (XBO, PC) This visually stunning (and free-to-play) creation game is completely openended, allowing you to make anything you want in a glorious, colourful world. What’s particularly fun is using the Kinect camera to add voices and even act out animations that you can add to AI characters in the game. It’s one of the easiest creation games to use, too, because the program is smart enough to make large visual changes quickly.
TERRARIA (PS4, XBO, PC, PS3, 360, WII U, 3DS, VITA, ANDROID, IOS) Possibly the best known Minecraft alternative, this has a very similar gameplay mix of creation, exploration and survival, but places it in a 2D platformer style of gameplay. There is a real sense of freedom in this game – you can even summon bosses when you want to test out your combat skills. With a good mix of locations and a randomly generated starting landscape, this is definitely worth checking out by any Minecraft fans.
WORDS BY CHRIS STEAD