Dystopika just dropped its B-Sides DLC on December 3, 2024, and it’s exactly what fans of this chill cyberpunk city builder have been waiting for. The new expansion adds hanging gardens, monorails, a massive air traffic spire megastructure, and an entirely new district called Rustport that looks like a post-apocalyptic junkyard straight out of Blade Runner. Best part? It stays true to the game’s core philosophy – no stress, no management, no fail states. Just you, creating impossibly beautiful dystopian cityscapes while contemplating the dark side of cozy.
What Makes Dystopika Different
Dystopika launched on June 21, 2024 from solo developer Matt Marshall at Voids Within Studio, and immediately carved out its own niche in the crowded city-builder space. The pitch is simple but radical – a city builder with absolutely no management, no goals, no budgets, and no failure conditions. You’re not optimizing traffic flow, managing taxes, or balancing residential zones. You’re sculpting cyberpunk atmosphere.
Think of it as Townscaper meets Blade Runner. You place buildings, scale them up to create towering skyscrapers, rotate them to perfect the composition, and adjust environmental settings until you achieve exactly the noir mood you’re chasing. The game includes full undo and redo functionality because this isn’t about making strategic decisions under pressure – it’s about creative expression without consequences.
The reception has been overwhelmingly positive, with a 97% rating on Steam from over 1,200 reviews. Players describe it as meditative, atmospheric, and the perfect antidote to complex management sims that demand constant attention. You can play for five minutes placing a few buildings or sink into hour-long photo mode sessions capturing impossible architectural compositions.
What really resonates is the permission to just build without worrying about being wrong. Cities: Skylines players stress about sewage systems. SimCity fans worry about power grids. Dystopika players? They’re adjusting neon colors and adding holographic billboards because it looks cool.
What’s Actually in B-Sides DLC
The name B-Sides perfectly captures what this DLC represents – concepts and experiments that got left on the cutting room floor during Dystopika’s original development. Marshall dusted off sketchbook ideas and concept art that didn’t make the initial release and fully realized them as props, districts, and features over the past few months.
The new content includes:
- Rustport district – Abandoned, stripped metallic skyscrapers gradually disintegrating into rust
- Air Traffic Spire megastructure – Massive offworld colony shuttle terminal with runways shooting in every direction
- Utility district featuring scaffolding buildings for precise prop placement
- Hanging gardens bringing greenery to dystopian brutalism
- Monorail system for elevated transit between megastructures
- New hologram types for additional atmospheric lighting
- Hologram wall emitters that attach to angled surfaces
The Rustport district particularly stands out as something visually distinctive. Where existing districts focus on sleek neon-soaked corporate towers or dense residential blocks, Rustport embraces decay and abandonment. These buildings look like they’ve been stripped for parts, with exposed metal frameworks slowly oxidizing in acid rain. It’s the aesthetic of economic collapse made beautiful.
The Air Traffic Spire provides that missing piece many players wanted – vertical connectivity that makes sense in a world with flying vehicles. Runways extend in multiple directions at different elevations, creating impossible architectural geometry that looks straight out of The Fifth Element. It towers above older ground-based infrastructure, visualizing technological progress through sheer scale.
The Free Update Everyone Gets
Even if you don’t buy the B-Sides DLC, the v1.7.0 update includes significant free improvements for all players. The standout addition is the “Nothing” cursor – a tool that literally does nothing, allowing you to navigate and admire your city without building previews cluttering the view. It’s such a simple quality of life feature that players immediately wondered why it wasn’t there from the start.
Other free updates include:
- Density Brush tool for controlling building concentration
- Camera button for airship props that flips to first-person flight view
- Reversible airship direction for better traffic control
- Sorted district selection menu grouped by type
- DLC ownership tracking in settings menu
- Smooth drag interpolation based on building weight
- More accurate air traffic density calculations
- Various bug fixes for prop placement and monorail adjustments
The airship camera feature deserves special mention because it transforms how you experience your cities. Instead of only viewing from the exterior god-perspective, you can now ride along with the traffic you’ve created, seeing your skyline from inside the world. It’s a small touch that makes the cities feel more alive and inhabited despite the lack of actual citizens.
The Solo Dev Success Story
Matt Marshall’s journey with Dystopika provides fascinating insights into indie game development in 2024. After leaving Ubisoft, he set out to create the city builder he always wanted – one focused purely on atmosphere and creativity rather than complex gameplay loops. His success model was simple: there’s a massive audience consuming cyberpunk ambiance content on YouTube that hadn’t been tapped by interactive experiences.
Marshall modeled Dystopika after Townscaper’s minimal approach but with Blade Runner aesthetics. By understanding his audience and success criteria upfront, he could ignore conventional wisdom about needing complex gameplay systems. He practiced design by subtraction, removing features rather than adding them to satisfy everyone.
The development approach emphasized community building through transparency. Marshall shared early versions on Reddit and Discord, eventually partnering with publisher UNIKAT for marketing support. He released a comprehensive demo before the full launch, generating momentum and goodwill from an engaged community eager for the game. Player reviews frequently mentioned wanting to “support the dev” – a clear benefit of fostering genuine connection with your audience.
Timing the launch alongside Shadow of Erdtree was a calculated risk that paid off. Marshall reasoned that gamers would be on Steam in a spending mood, making Dystopika the perfect small impulse purchase. The game gained significant traction on Steam’s New and Trending list for several days, demonstrating how strategic release timing can benefit indie titles.
One unexpected success factor was allowing players to import custom images for in-game billboards. What Marshall included as a fun surprise feature ignited an entire modding community. Players began creating custom content, sharing creations, and extending the game’s life through user-generated additions. This seemingly minor feature became a major source of ongoing excitement.
The Reception Reality Check
Despite overwhelmingly positive reviews, Dystopika faces the common indie struggle of converting critical success into sustained player numbers. At launch, concurrent players peaked at only 258, with average numbers around 150. In a perfect world, more people would experience what’s being called 2024’s best new city builder, but visibility remains the eternal indie game challenge.
The game achieved critical and financial success for Marshall, allowing him to continue development and release substantial free updates alongside paid DLC. The Discord community has grown to nearly 3,000 members – not massive by AAA standards but healthy for a small indie focusing on a specific niche.
Who This DLC Is For
Marshall explicitly describes B-Sides as “optional bonus content for our most enthusiastic city-builders, new and old.” This isn’t essential DLC gating core features – it’s additional toys for players who’ve already squeezed everything from the base game and want fresh building blocks for their creativity.
The target audience includes:
- Players who’ve built dozens of cities and want new aesthetic options
- Cyberpunk enthusiasts craving that abandoned industrial wasteland look
- Screenshot artists using the game for portfolio pieces and concept art practice
- Fans who want to support continued development through purchase
- Content creators looking for fresh material to showcase
If you haven’t tried Dystopika yet, the B-Sides DLC probably isn’t where you should start. The base game provides more than enough content to determine if this style of experience resonates with you. But for existing fans who’ve been waiting for more, B-Sides delivers exactly what the name promises – unreleased experiments now fully realized.
The Broader Appeal of No-Fail Gaming
Dystopika represents a growing trend in gaming toward experiences without traditional failure states or win conditions. Titles like Townscaper, Tiny Glade, and Bulwark Falconeer Chronicles embrace creativity over challenge, atmosphere over achievement. These games recognize that not every interactive experience needs combat, resource management, or competitive elements.
The appeal is obvious once you try it – no stress, no pressure, just creation. You can’t lose at Dystopika because there’s nothing to lose. Buildings don’t collapse from poor planning. Citizens don’t riot over traffic congestion. Your city never goes bankrupt because there’s no economy. It’s pure sandbox creativity focused entirely on visual expression.
Critics might dismiss this as “not a real game” because it lacks traditional objectives. But that perspective misses the point entirely. Dystopika succeeds precisely because it removes everything players find tedious about city builders while preserving the core pleasure – watching impossible structures rise into cyberpunk skylines.
FAQs
What is Dystopika’s B-Sides DLC?
B-Sides is an optional content expansion for Dystopika released on December 3, 2024. It includes the Rustport district, Air Traffic Spire megastructure, scaffolding utility buildings, hanging gardens, monorails, new holograms, and various props. The name refers to unreleased concepts from development that have now been fully realized.
Does Dystopika have gameplay or is it just a sandbox?
Dystopika is intentionally designed without traditional gameplay loops. There are no goals, no management systems, no budgets, and no failure conditions. You simply place, scale, and rotate buildings to create cyberpunk cityscapes focused on atmosphere and aesthetics rather than strategic city management.
When did Dystopika originally release?
Dystopika launched on June 21, 2024 for PC via Steam. The game was developed by solo developer Matt Marshall at Voids Within Studio and published by UNIKAT. It currently has a 97% overwhelmingly positive rating from over 1,200 reviews.
How much does Dystopika cost?
Dystopika is priced as an affordable indie title, typically under $20. The B-Sides DLC is optional bonus content sold separately for enthusiastic players who want additional building options. A free demo is available on Steam for anyone wanting to try before purchasing.
What games is Dystopika similar to?
Dystopika is frequently compared to Townscaper for its minimal, creative city-building without management mechanics. The cyberpunk aesthetic draws comparisons to Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, and Akira. It’s also similar to Tiny Glade but with a dark, futuristic setting instead of medieval fantasy.
Can you walk through your cities in Dystopika?
The v1.7.0 update added a camera button for airship props that switches to first-person flight view, allowing you to experience your city from inside rather than just the exterior god-perspective. However, there’s no traditional ground-level walking mode.
Does Dystopika require powerful hardware?
As a city builder focused on atmosphere and visuals, Dystopika benefits from decent graphics cards for rendering complex cityscapes with lighting effects. The v1.7.0 update includes console commands for manually adjusting render scale and draw call batching to optimize performance on various hardware configurations.
Conclusion
Dystopika’s B-Sides DLC perfectly captures what makes this game special – it’s optional content for people who already love the experience, not essential features held hostage behind a paywall. The addition of Rustport’s decaying industrial aesthetic, the massive Air Traffic Spire, and various quality of life improvements in the free update demonstrate Matt Marshall’s commitment to continuously supporting his creation. In an industry obsessed with live service treadmills and battle pass monetization, Dystopika offers something refreshingly simple – tools for creating beautiful cyberpunk cities without stress, pressure, or the possibility of failure. Whether you’re a screenshot artist crafting impossible architectural compositions, a cyberpunk enthusiast chasing that perfect Blade Runner mood, or simply someone tired of complex management systems demanding constant optimization, Dystopika provides exactly what it promises. The B-Sides DLC adds more toys to that creative sandbox for players who’ve already exhausted the base content and want fresh inspiration. For everyone else discovering this meditative city-sculpting experience for the first time, welcome to the dark side of cozy – where neon-soaked dystopian futures look impossibly beautiful and absolutely nothing can go wrong.