This is not your average city builder.
Taajama Online is a Finnish city-building game and living small-town simulator. You don't just build houses – you build a whole community where every resident has their own name, family, profession, health, car and opinion about you.
Build a city and try to keep it under control
In most city games, residents are numbers on a screen. In Taajama Online they're individuals: each is born with a name and a surname, inherits traits from their parents, goes through school, graduates into a profession, gets a job, falls in love, has children, maybe studies something new and who knows what else. You build the framework – streets, homes, schools, jobs and services – but the residents write the stories themselves.
Your job is to hold a little, beautiful chaos together.
Residents live – and get up to strange things
Every townsperson has an inherited surname, a branching family tree and hundreds of possible innate health traits – half blessings, half curses, all ridiculously named. Traits are passed down from parents, and if the gene pool gets too tight, inbreeding adds extra spice to the game.
Residents also get sick, have accidents and feel fear. They actually walk the map to work, school and the shop – no teleporting – so a badly planned road network leaves them stuck, and they'll be sure to tell you about it.
A city where every piece matters
You start with minimal tools and unlock more as the city grows. You zone residential areas in four densities from detached houses to high-rises, build shops and industry across different fields, lay roads, power lines and water pipes, and take care of schools, health and waste.
Power comes out of the socket for everyone and water from the tap – but both still have to be genuinely produced, stored and delivered. A single broken road connection or an empty water tower shows up immediately in residents' daily lives and mood.
An economy you can't cheat
Your treasury fills from income tax and businesses' production income – but only present workers produce, so a city that can't get to work doesn't earn. You set the tax rate and the funding for waste and healthcare, and every choice swings residents' satisfaction.
The finance modal shows the books and graphs: income, expenses and mood on one timeline. Tax too hard and people move away; ease off too much and the money runs out. Keep the economy balanced and your residents stay happy and the city grows.
Networks you actually have to build
Power flows from plants and wind turbines, water from pumps and towers. You run the power lines and water pipes to their destination yourself — a misplaced plant blacks out a block and a dry water tower shows up at the washbasin instantly. Infrastructure isn't decoration; it's a constant balancing act between supply and demand.
An education path from daycare to university
Residents progress from daycare to primary school, upper secondary, vocational school, university of applied sciences and university. Every job demands the right degree, so without schools there are no skilled workers — and without teachers, schools close their doors. You decide what kind of generation you raise.
A living world that never sleeps
Time passes, night turns to day, cars move and lights flick on in the windows. Winter turns to spring, summer soon to autumn. Taajama lives its own life — you just steer it.
And as they say: that's not all!
Everything affects everything. Here's just some of what happens in your town.
Your own local paper
Every month a newspaper comes out, writing its headlines from your city's real events – move-ins, births, outages and mishaps – complete with residents' sharp opinions.
The suggestion box
Residents send thousands of improvement ideas. Most are nonsense, some are brilliant – and hidden among them are real hints about the city's actual needs.
Health & accidents
Innate traits and hundreds of location-specific accidents determine residents' health. Build a health station and hire trained staff – or live dangerously.
Waste management
Every household makes trash. Build a landfill, run a road to it and hope for the best that someone might turn up to work there. Or let the stink creep into the bedrooms and your residents rage.
Fires & fear
An unlucky or clumsy resident can start a fire that escalates if left unchecked. Set up a fire post for the nearest adult to rush in and put it out. Fires spread fear and drive people away, so make sure not every corner is smouldering.
Food & hunger
Shops and grocery kiosks feed the city. Run out of food and hunger grows, residents move away and, at worst, starve.
A car for everyone
Every resident has their own car in their own colour, and if you like, you can follow their real trips to work, school and the shop.
Residents' dreams
Every resident gets a life dream and a goal roadmap from education to their dream job and family. Setbacks frustrate them; achievements delight them.
Solo or two-player
Play solo or build one shared city side by side with a friend. The halves are neighbours, so roads and networks connect across the seam.
Goals & progression
The city grows and unlocks new tools, settings and features as you progress.
Taajama Online needs no installation – it runs straight in your browser. The game is updated actively and new features keep appearing; you can follow development in the dev diary.