Torn¹ has run since 2004. It's a text-based crime game in the browser, and players stay for years because of how it's built: the world never resets, you play a few minutes several times a day, and the city is full of real people you trade with, fight, join and betray.
The seven games below share that build, each in a different setting. They're PBBGs, persistent browser-based games: your progress lives on a server, and the world moves while you're away.
At a glance
| Game | Setting | What you mostly do | How long a world lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Miniconomy | A small economy | Trade, run a shop, hold office | Trade resets every few weeks, politics carries on |
| Politics and War | Your own nation | Build cities, join an alliance, go to war | Ongoing |
| eRepublik | A mirror of real countries | Work, fight, vote, run for office | Ongoing |
| Travian: Legends | Ancient villages | Grow, raid, fight with an alliance | Months per server |
| Sim Companies | A company | Produce and sell on a player market | Ongoing |
| Prosperous Universe | A company in space | Produce, ship and trade between planets | Ongoing |
| Override | One shared city | Rent, trade, vote, run for mayor | Ongoing |
Miniconomy
Miniconomy² comes closest to Torn's city of strangers. It's a free browser game about a small society where players trade, work, run businesses and win public roles, up to mayor and president. Whoever holds those roles writes the laws.
Trade runs in rounds of a few weeks and then resets, so nobody builds an unbeatable lead in the economy. Politics carries over from round to round, along with every reputation and grudge.
Good for you if you liked Torn's economy and its people, and you don't mind your wallet starting over now and then.
Politics and War
In Politics and War³ you run a nation. You name it, pick a government, draw its borders, then build cities, mine and refine resources, and raise an army. The game launched in 2014.
Alliances carry the game. Groups of players sign treaties, impose sanctions, protect members from raiders and fight wars that pull in half the map. Players also run banks, loan schemes and newspapers inside it.
Good for you if your faction was your favourite part of Torn, and so were its wars.
eRepublik
eRepublik⁴ launched in 2008 and puts you in a whole society run by players. The map copies the real world's countries, and you play one citizen of one of them: you work, train, fight in your country's wars and vote.
Each country elects a president and a congress that votes on laws. Players run the parties, the alliances and the newspapers. You can play a day in a few minutes, and a political career there takes months.
Good for you if you liked Torn's community and its feuds, and you'd enjoy running for office.
Travian: Legends
Travian⁵ came out in the summer of 2004, the same year as Torn, and it's still one of the best-known browser strategy games. You start with a village, grow it into an empire, raid your neighbours and fight alongside an alliance.
Travian worlds end. A regular server runs for months until an alliance completes a Wonder of the World, then a new server starts. Each one gets a beginning, a middle and a climax.
Good for you if you like long campaigns with a finish line, and fights where timing decides the outcome.
Sim Companies
Sim Companies⁶ is a business game with no crime or combat. You start with a little capital, build production, and turn raw materials into finished goods in farming, energy, retail, cars, aerospace and more. You sell on a market where players set the prices.
The rhythm will feel familiar from Torn: set production running, come back a few hours later, adjust. You win by reading the market better than the people you trade against.
Good for you if you ran a company in Torn and wanted more from it. It runs in the browser, on Steam and on phones.
Prosperous Universe
Prosperous Universe⁷ is a space business game you play in the browser through a dense, terminal-style interface. You run a company on a planet, build production, keep your workers happy, build ships and haul goods between planets. Players make the whole economy: each planet has its own market, and players sign contracts, ship cargo and form political groups.
It asks more of you than anything else here. One production chain can take days to plan, and logistics is half the game.
Good for you if you want the deepest economy on this list and you like spreadsheets. It's free to play, and a paid licence unlocks everything.
Override
We make this one, so weigh our words accordingly. Override is a free PBBG about one city its players run. It has no combat, no hospital and no jail. It shares Torn's city: real people whose choices stay in the world.
The city sits on a hex map. Where you live sets how far you travel to work, so homes matter, and players rent flats to each other in apartment blocks they build. Players set every price on the market, and a port ship buys what nobody else wants. Residents elect a mayor, who sets the taxes and spends the treasury.
You play it in short visits, like Torn: set a price, sign a lease, cast a vote, and the city carries on without you.
We borrowed two things from Torn on purpose. Every player gets a camp shack that costs nothing and never goes away, so you can always come back, however long you've been gone. And you learn skills in real time: you start a course, and it runs while you're away, like education in Torn.
Override isn't open yet. The first alpha ran with real players in spring 2026, and we're building Alpha 2.0 now.
Good for you if you liked living in Torn's city with other people more than you liked the fighting.
What we learned from the games that went quiet
Before designing Override we studied the games on this list and others in the niche: EVE Online, Albion Online, Eco, A Tale in the Desert. Several browser games we loved have far fewer players than they used to, and the same three problems show up again and again.
Players stopped needing each other. eRepublik had hundreds of thousands of active citizens around 2010. Its players date the decline to one change: company owners could produce goods without hiring anyone⁸. Owners stopped hiring, wages fell to the floor, prices crashed, and the market never recovered. Later the developers merged every country's currency into one, and the import and export game went with it.
Shortcuts let players skip the market. In Travian you can swap any resource for any other through a trader you pay in premium currency⁹. It saves time, and it's a big reason few players use the open market.
Big groups produced everything themselves. In the large sandbox MMOs, guilds and coalitions grow until they make every part of a chain inside the group. On a small server, that splits one shared economy into a few closed ones.
We're building Override around those lessons, and we're aiming high: a city game that brings smart people together, keeps them needing each other, and teaches how an economy works by letting you run part of one. You learn supply and demand when you set a price and nobody pays it. You learn what a tax does when you vote for the mayor who sets it. You learn why location matters when you pay the fare to get to work.
What to look for
Most "games like Torn" lists recommend single-player mobile games with a crime theme. If you're judging a game yourself, ask three questions:
- Does the world reset? If your progress disappears every season, you're playing a different kind of game. Travian and Miniconomy reset part of the game on purpose and tell you so up front.
- Are the other players real? People should drive the prices, the wars and the elections, with no scripts standing in.
- Can you play it in ten minutes? Torn fits around a working day. A game that needs hours at a stretch won't.
If you'd like to be there when the city opens, join the waitlist.
