It would be a reasonable assumption to make that there are only so many variations on football games you can make. Ultimately, no matter how many bells, whistles, or rocket powered cars you throw at it, it always comes down to getting a ball in a net and shouting SCOOOOOORE. Except in the case of Nutmeg!, a "nostalgic deckbuilding football manager" which looks like it features more faxing than any sort of kicking, but I mean that in an endearing way, promise.

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I have two dreams as mayor of an island town in Nova Roma, the new early access city-building game from Lion Shield and Hooded Horse. One is to erect a fantastic water network for my people - a sturdy yet poetic lattice of aqueducts, following their deft gradations down from the mountain rivers to cisterns gracefully spaced amid the insulae, forums, circuses and temples. In my reborn Rome, no populous bathhouse, tinkling fountain, or humble latrine shall ever run dry. With my other hand, I shall raise mighty dams, diverting the rivers away from my walls to avoid flooding in times of heavy rainfall, while exposing velvety expanses of buildable, tillable soil.

My citizens will learn to treat water frivolously, swilling and pissing it away in their decadence, much as they did in the Rome of old. The fools! For when my empire of hydration is complete, I will ascend the slopes and whimsically commission one final dam. Trusting in my stewardship – for what reason have I given them to disobey? - the citizens shall toil day and night to finish the structure. Then, when the last stone is laid and the sluices slam shut, they shall gaze in horror as a tidal wave engulfs their fair metropolis and sweeps all their precious bloody bathhouses away.

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Sintopia, the very Bullfroggy strategy management game from developers Piraknights and publishers Team 17, will release on April 16th. I compared this one to The Screwtape Letters back at announcement, but the more obvious, gamer-brain pitch is that it's Black & White sitting on top of Dungeon Keeper. That is, a god sim parked on top of a management game, albeit with a greater emphasis on automation than you might recall from Bullfrog's heyday.

In Sintopia, you are the middle manager of Hell. Above you, there is a bucolic, self-sufficient realm of weirdly plant-based humans, all going about their lives farming, building and searching for treasure. And sinning. The Humus (Humusians? Humusings?) do love to sin. Which is where you come in. When the Humus die, they are swept away to the underworld by a toothy hellbus, and must be purged of moral stains before they can be safely granted a new body.

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