Gourdlets is the relaxing building sim for people who are tired of grinding

Gourds is like the retirement phase of Building Sims.

The game tells you through a text tutorial at the beginning that each city you create Gourds has no money, and the little anthropomorphized gourd creatures will be content no matter what you build them. “We tried to explain capitalism to the gourds, but they got too tired of it, so you don’t need to worry about managing currency or resources,” the text reads.

Learning to play is a breeze. I played on a Windows PC, and the tutorial introduces you to a column of buttons, each with a specific function: the build menu brings up a small catalog of objects you can use to build your city; the “bulldoze objects & fences” option lets you demolish things you’ve built. It probably took me five minutes to boot up the game and get started making a little town square for the little ones.

You play the game from an isometric perspective, which you can rotate 90 degrees to view your pixelated creations from different angles. Little details, like a switch that lets you draw straight lines with decorative tiles or the ability to edit the number of tiles you want to place when creating a path, make building the crunchy pixelated paths and objects super satisfying. Tons of items — like benches, buildings, and cobblestone paths — are available in a variety of rainbow pastel colors right from the start, with no grinding required. I was able to Candyland cottagecore town of my dreams.

As promised, you can really mess around and do whatever you want. The game uses a system where you invite gourdlets to the city as often as you like. (The game hasn’t stopped me, but I imagine there’s a limit at some point.) You don’t manage the gourdlets, so you can sit back and build while the creatures play and grow up. As you get more adult gourdlets, you can unlock more items.

I started out making a town square, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as designing natural areas, so I moved on to making forest campsites complete with glow-in-the-dark bugs, mushrooms, and fairy-lit paths. I didn’t feel like the game encouraged either approach, whether I chose to make it a more formal town or focused on building natural areas.

According to the studio’s Steam page, this is AuntyGames’ debut game, and it’s an absolute gem. Whether it’s admiring a gourd watering a garden or finding the perfect spot for a shell on the beach, I’m obsessed with this sleepy little sim.

Gourds was released on August 24 on Windows, Linux, and Mac. The game was reviewed on Windows using a pre-release download code provided by Future Friends Games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.