Games Like Lifelines

A cozy puzzle about the lines beneath a growing town

Every home in Lifelines needs its lifelines: water, power, internet and gas. Homes move in, put up a little marker for what they need, and wait for you. Draw a line from a station to the home, and the moment it lands, the home is served.

Then the neighbors arrive.

One line at a time

Drag a line from a station, or from any pipe already joined to one, to a home that is waiting. Branch off the lines you have already laid. Pull up a route that isn't working and draw it again: every tile goes straight back into your stock.

It is calm, until it isn't. Your pipe stock is limited, every station can serve only so many homes, and each one only reaches so far.

Settled homes keep asking for more. Water and power come first, then internet and gas, and every utility needs its own line. Data centers even need power of their own before they can serve anyone.

Four networks, one crowded map

Two utilities can't share a tile. When the streets fill up, send a line underneath: switch to the deep layer and dig under the other networks. Every dive costs a dig, so choose where you go down.

Cities shaped by water

The campaign starts on the open plains of Greenfield and moves on to real cities, each with its own geography to plan around. In Zürich, the Limmat splits the old town. Istanbul is one city on two continents, and only aqueducts cross the Bosphorus. In Amsterdam, three canal rings circle Centraal.

Where there is no bridge or ford, a line needs an aqueduct to cross the water or a tunnel to get through the rock, and both are won at elections.

Every five years, the town votes

Homes that have every line they asked for vote for you. Homes left waiting vote against you. Keep enough of the town happy and you get five more years, and the council offers a grant: fresh pipe, dig crews and permits, or express links that connect straight through anything. Leave too many homes waiting and the town votes you out.

A little world that keeps going

Trains pull into Amsterdam Centraal, the ferry works its way across the Bosphorus and tour boats drift along the canals. The town keeps growing year after year, and the map grows with it.

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