There’s summit (something) about Laysara: Summit Kingdom that instantly appeals. From indie developers Quite OK Games in Poland, this beautiful city builder mixes accessibility with increasing challenge.

The game launched on Steam in Early Access a year ago, but just got its official launch in February 2026. Set in the high mountains, you must plan production chains and keep residents alive and well in the lofty heights as storm clouds brew around you. It’s all rather glorious.

Peace and Quiet in the Mountains of Laysara: Summit Kingdom

This is available now on PC and all consoles. Alongside its dramatic looks, we have a challenging game here with a suitably steep learning curve. This may put some gamers off, as this is no ISLANDERS (2019) minimalist romp.

Laysara: Summit Kingdom is about creating a new home for people forced away from the lowlands. The usual city builder stuff is there, such as creating houses and sorting out basic resources. That’s all across a three-caste society that must also deal with avalanches and blizzards.

Early on in the game everything is accessible. As you can see in gameplay footage below, you build for your people and get society up and running. All to the tune of a mighty soundtrack.

The challenge soon ramps up, though, and you have to be prepared for the difficulty spike. Not least as you’re managing multiple towns spread across a mountainous region, with dodgy weather patterns, and limited resources.

It’s a precarious location, despite the beauty of it all, and therein lies the challenge.

One of the great things is crafting the transport network you need for fast transportation of people and goods. The game winds up a bit like Facotorio (2018) there, with a complex chain of bridges, roads, and conveyer belts.

Unlike other city builder titles, such as the legendary Settlers III (1998), there’s no combat here. You don’t have to build out an army, the focus is solely on socioeconomic matters. Plus, the survival element! The devs really focus in on that, as it’s a brutal environment and you must be prepared for the worst.

To help ease you through the experience there’s a really great score by composer Bartosz Pokrywka. It has an Tibetan quality and many peaks across the game’s runtime.

Seasoned city builder fans will take to Laysara very well, we think, but this is not something for the more casual player. We had issues with the income system, which can be tricky to get to grips with. Before you know it you can be totally bankrupt.

You can keep the difficulty settings down to help you out, so in that respect it can be forgiving. But then the next moment you can be struggling to get your yak cheese from one side of the mountain to the next and it all hits the fan.

With around 12-15 hours of gameplay time, it’s not the most expansive city builder game.

But then it’s an indie game and you should know what to expect from indie titles by now! They’re shorter, sharper, and play around with established genres. The appeal here being working around such a limited space.

For us, Summit Kingdom is a proper banging time of it. Lovely lovely, great music, and a sweeping sense of solitude out there in that distant mountain range. Just be prepared to curse the day yak cheese was invented.

And we Must Flag Up Laysara: Summit Kingdom’s Score

Bartosz Pokrywka has a low profile online, we couldn’t any information about this composer. He’s from Poland and the Laysara music was composed in time for the Early Access launch in April 2024.

The soundtrack has 14 pieces and Ambient Waves (ab0ve) is our favourite.

But there’s a lot going on here, with a consistent theme we’ve dubbed challenge-ahead-but-hopeful-atmospherics (an excellent genre of music). Some of the pieces are long, too, which is welcome as they are ambient excellence.

Dreaming (below) is another favourite. It all lifts the experience, adding to a sense of very much indeed being high up in the mountains, alone, fighting for survival in noble fashion. It’s all rather glorious.