On @clayot 's suggestion, I got Before We Leave by Balancing Monkey Games and its reputation of chill city builder isn't undeserved. It reminds me of the Anno series with the different islands that can be colonized but without the tension of balancing a budget nor interacting with competing countries/tribes.

Instead building space is sparse, so there are real constraints on expansion. The more advanced production chains induce pollution and happiness penalties, so I've been mostly avoiding them since your people's happiness is a major goal given the associated speed/productivity gains/losses (50% to 150%).

So far I've been following the in-game tutorial, and I reached a point where it just says "Expand until something happens" and I'm mostly like "Nah, I'm good" but in a good way. I have a couple planets to explore in the solar system which I will get to, eventually, but making sure everybody eats their fruits and vegetables and wear clothing is more important to me, even though it doesn't result in any sort of monetary profits.

So far for me it's been more a people-caring game than a city-building one, and it's very good like this.

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