EnerCities: the Energy and Sustainability City Builder Game
EnerCities is a casual city builder about energy and sustainability, made by the Dutch studio Paladin Studios and funded by the European Commission. It was announced in December 2009 as a game on Facebook and on its own website.
Updated
What EnerCities is
Players start with a small grid of nine squares and a limited choice of buildings, then place industrial plots, residential areas and power sources. A well-run city levels up and grows. Paladin describes the game as four levels that end in a level 5 metropolis, with new buildings at each level, from windmills or a small coal plant at the start to heavy industry, commercial districts, forests and, at the top, super structures such as a nuclear fusion plant.
The mechanic at the core is the balance of People, Planet and Profit. Product manager and Paladin co-founder Dylan Nagel described it as a rock-paper-scissors dilemma: favor one side and the others suffer. Scores can be compared with friends, although the game has no persistent world.
Funding and rollout
The December 2009 announcement from Leiden said the project had a budget of 1.4 million euros, funded through the Intelligent Energy Program of the European Commission's energy agency. Paladin CEO Derk de Geus said roughly 20% went to the game itself. The other 80% covered educational material, marketing, impact research and, above all, the rollout to schools.
Paladin worked inside a consortium with educational institutions from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, Slovenia and Greece, plus an energy agency in Granada and an innovation agency in the Netherlands. The announcement called it the first serious game on Facebook, which is the company's claim. The game was then in public beta on Facebook and at enercities.eu, with an official release planned for early 2010.
Paladin's current EnerCities page repeats the aim: to improve awareness of energy issues among young people. It says the project partners would roll the game out in schools in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Greece, Germany and Spain, while Paladin handled development of the game and its online community platform.
Key facts
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Developer | Paladin Studios, Leiden, the Netherlands |
| Funding | European Commission, Intelligent Energy Program |
| Budget announced in 2009 | 1.4 million euros |
| Core mechanic | Balancing People, Planet and Profit |
| Levels | Four, ending in a level 5 city |
What is true today
Paladin's EnerCities page is still online on paladinstudios.com. The same site carries an announcement that Paladin shut down operations on May 1, 2024. The page does not say what happened to the game. The address enercities.eu, named in 2009, forwarded in November 2026 to a domain-sales page at mijndomein.nl.
No page opened for this article says whether the game can still be played, so its status is listed as unconfirmed.
Questions about EnerCities
Who made EnerCities?
Paladin Studios, a game studio in Leiden, the Netherlands, made it with a European consortium and funding from the European Commission.
Can EnerCities still be played?
It could not be confirmed. Paladin's page still describes the game, but the studio announced it shut down on May 1, 2024, and enercities.eu forwarded to a mijndomein.nl address listed for sale.
What does the game teach?
It teaches that energy choices trade off against people and the planet: players balance People, Planet and Profit while supplying a growing city with power.