Minerva Rising Is an Underground City Builder Where Neglected Citizens Hack Your Cameras

Minerva Rising is an upcoming post-apocalyptic city builder that turns the genre downward, with settlements arranged across multiple underground levels instead of sprawling across a surface map. Each level has its own resource chains, industries, and social groups, and you act as an artificial intelligence managing the whole system.

How the camera hacking works

The central twist is oversight. If you neglect a level, for example by failing to keep its oxygen supply stable, residents there can become hostile. Subversive citizens may hack or cut your monitoring equipment, leaving that section of the city blank on your display. Repeated failures could blind you to more of the settlement, forcing you to make decisions without full information.

Influences and details

Solo developer Jonny Strellman has compared the project to Frostpunk's survival-driven city management and the underground society of the Apple TV+ series Silo. It also includes unusual tools for shaping morale. Propaganda screens can display early public-domain animation to remind dwellers of the world above, while other upgrades may encourage them to appreciate cave life, including waterfalls and glowing fungus.

The Steam page promises different runs shaped by blight, starvation, coal shortages, and the resources you find. According to the listing, there are varied routes toward the goal of seeing the sun again. There is no release date yet, so players can only watch for more details.

Why it matters

City builders often treat information as something the player simply has. By making camera feeds vulnerable, Minerva Rising could create a more paranoid management loop: you may need to restore trust before you can even see what is happening in a rebellious district. That is a compelling twist for players who enjoy systems-driven crisis management.

Would you try to keep every level loyal, or would you risk losing sight of a troublesome group just to see how badly things can fall apart?