How to Play BraaiVille
Grow a South African city from empty veld into a thriving metro — without going broke. Keep your citizens housed, employed, powered and happy while the treasury stays in the black.
Your first five minutes
- Build a Solar Farm. It is the one power station you can build straight away, because it needs no fuel delivered to it. Nothing in your city grows without electricity. (A Coal Power Station is cheaper to run, but you have to dig the coal and cart it there first — see Build order.)
- Lay roads. Roads carry traffic and let citizens travel between home and work. Drag to lay several tiles at once.
- Zone residential. Pick RES from the zone strip and drag out a few tiles beside your road. Residents move in over the following months — growth is not instant.
- Connect the power. Run Power Lines from the station to your zones. A flashing red ⚡ marks any tile with no electricity.
- Build a Municipality. Once eight residential tiles are zoned, 🏛️ Municipality unlocks under Services. It earns nothing — it is the council that makes hospitals, policing, fire cover and road repairs possible at all.
- Add commercial zones for jobs, then services to lift happiness and attract more residents.
Build order — why some tools are greyed out
A city is not a shopping list. Real ones grow in a sequence: people arrive, then they need schooling; coal is dug, then it is burnt; a council forms, then it delivers services. BraaiVille follows the same order, so a tool you have not earned yet sits greyed out with a 🔒 in the left panel.
Click any greyed-out tool and a panel opens listing exactly what it is waiting for, ticking off what you have already done and explaining why each thing is needed. Nothing is hidden from you — you can always see what exists and what it will take to get there.
| To build | You first need | Because |
|---|---|---|
| 🏭 Coal Power Station | A coal mine, and a road route from the mine to the site | A coal station burns coal, and coal moves by road in enormous quantities — a large station gets through a trainload a day. Build it right against the mine and no road is needed at all: that is a mine-mouth station, exactly how Kendal, Matimba and Medupi work. |
| 🏛️ Municipality | 8 tiles of residential zone | A council exists to serve residents. The community comes first. |
| 🏥 Hospital, 🚔 Police, 🚒 Fire Station, 🏊 Rec Centre |
A Municipality | These are municipal functions in South Africa. The council provides the budget, the by-laws and the accountability. |
| 🕳️ Road Repairs | A Municipality | The council is the roads authority. Until it exists there is nobody to run a tender, appoint a contractor or pay the invoice — so no potholes are recorded against your city either. |
| 🏫 School | 12 tiles of residential zone | Schools are built where the children already are. |
| 🏦 Bank | 8 tiles of commercial zone | Banks make their money lending to business. No commerce, no clients. |
| ☢️ Nuclear Power Plant | A school, and any existing power station | Nuclear runs on skilled people — operators, physicists, safety inspectors — and nobody builds it as their first station. |
| ✈️ Airport | 2 000 residents, and a road to the Municipality | An airport is only worth its cost if there are people to fill the seats, and it must be joined to the city it serves. |
| ⚽ Soccer Stadium | 4 000 residents | Stadiums built for cities too small to fill them are the most expensive mistake in South African sport. |
| 🦁 Reserve Gate, 🎖️ Ranger Post | 4 tiles of Game Reserve zone | There has to be a reserve before you can gate it or guard it. |
You can never get stuck. Roads, bridges, power lines, all five zones, every mine, farms, solar farms, braai parks, jacarandas, stokvel halls and bunny chow stalls need nothing at all — so there is always a way forward from an empty map, and every locked item traces back to something you can build today.
Building up instead of out
Ordinary residential zone fills slowly and holds relatively few people. Once you have 20 tiles of residential zone, three kinds of high-rise accommodation unlock under Housing. Each is built on top of residential land — zone the ground first, then build up on it — and each holds far more people than the same tiles ever would as suburb.
| Structure | Footprint | Residents | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🏬 HiRise Flats (row) | 4×1 | ~1 000 | A single row of walk-up flats. Fits a street frontage where a square tower will not. |
| 🏢 HiRise Tower | 2×2 | ~1 400 | A residential tower. The most people per tile of the two smaller options. |
| 🏨 HiRise Block (large) | 8×2 | ~4 200 | The densest housing in the game. Needs a police station built before you may place it. |
Press R to rotate. The row of flats and the large block are oblong, so R turns them between lying along the street and standing end-on — a 4×1 becomes 1×4, an 8×2 becomes 2×8. The red preview shows exactly which tiles will be taken before you click. Square buildings have nothing to rotate and will say so.
Crime, and why density needs policing
Concentrating people concentrates crime. Every high-rise carries a crime rating — the large block worst of all — on top of a small background rate that scales with your total population. Each 🚔 Police Station absorbs a fixed amount of it.
Whatever is left uncovered costs happiness, and unhappy cities stop growing. So density that outruns its policing stalls the very growth it was built for. Click 😊 Happiness in the top bar to see how much crime is uncovered and how many more stations would clear it.
Build the police station first, not after. This is why the 8×2 block will not unlock until you have one — four thousand people arriving at once with no policing is a happiness collapse you then have to dig out of.
Growing up: population milestones
Passing 1 000, 10 000, 50 000 and 250 000 residents is celebrated with a shower of sparkles and a title — from "You have reached a small town!" upward. Each is awarded once and remembered in your save.
How electricity flows
Power starts at a generator and flows outward through power lines, zones and buildings alike. Anything touching something already powered becomes powered itself, so a single cable reaching a neighbourhood lights the whole block, and a bank beside a powered suburb needs no cable of its own.
Plain roads do not carry power. To get electricity across a street, place a power line on the road tile — the cable then runs along it. The same applies to bridges, which is how current crosses a river.
Order does not matter: lay the cable on an existing road, or lay a road over an existing cable, and you end up with the same thing — a road with a live cable running above it. Bulldozing removes the cable first and leaves the road.
Zone boundaries are absolute
Once land is zoned, nothing may be built on it until the zone is cleared — not a building, not a power line, not even a road. Bulldoze the zone first, then build.
Plan the layout before you zone: lay your roads and cables, then zone the blocks between them. The hover preview turns red over any tile you cannot build on, so you can see the problem before you click.
Power capacity — supply against demand
Connecting a zone is only half the job. Every powered zone and structure draws current, and your stations only generate so much. The ⚡ Power figure in the top bar shows load / capacity:
| Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Green | Comfortable headroom. |
| Amber | Above 85% of capacity — plan the next station now. |
| Red | Overloaded. Demand exceeds what you can generate. |
An overloaded grid stops the entire city growing — not just the newest suburb. Nothing develops anywhere until you add generating capacity. Industry is the heaviest consumer by far, then commercial, then housing. Game reserves draw almost nothing.
Zones that are not connected at all draw nothing, because they are dark — they show the flashing red ⚡ instead. Watch for both problems: unconnected zones need power lines, an overloaded grid needs another station.
Crossing rivers
Rivers are protected. Nothing may be built on water except a Bridge — and a bridge can only be placed on water, never on dry land.
Lay bridge tiles across the river to join the road network on both banks; traffic drives straight over. To carry electricity across as well, place a power line on the bridge. A bare bridge carries traffic but no current, exactly like a bare road.
The tools
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| 🔍 Inspect | Click any tile for detailed statistics — a mine's revenue, workers, ore grade, shaft depth and remaining reserves; a zone's residents, employment rate, land value and monthly tax. |
| 📐 Select | Drag a rectangle across the map, then name it to create a suburb or township. Hold Ctrl while dragging to add another block to the same area. |
| 🔨 Bulldoze | Clear a tile and recover 40% of what it cost. |
| 💾 Save | Quick-save to this browser, or export your city to a file you can back up, move to another device, or send to a friend. |
| 📻 Music | Optional background music in twelve South African styles — amapiano, kwaito, sokkie, maskandi, gqom and more. Composed live in your browser as you play, so it never repeats. |
Reading the city at a glance
Every figure in the top bar is clickable — look for the 🔍 next to the label. Each one opens a full breakdown of how that number was arrived at, in the same panel a tile uses:
| Panel | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Treasury | Cash on hand, income against upkeep, loan interest, and — the number that matters most — how many months your reserves last at the current rate. A building is paid for once; its upkeep is charged every month forever, and that gap is what sinks most cities. |
| Monthly Inc | The whole budget: tax from each zone type, mining royalties, tourism and trade, each as a share of income — then upkeep grouped exactly as the build panel groups it, so you can see which category is eating the money. |
| Date | The date, the season, how old the city is and when the next payday falls, plus what actually happens each day, every five days and every month. |
| Speed | What each setting means in real seconds — how many game days pass per second and how long a month takes — and every keyboard shortcut. |
| Happiness | The overall mood, then every contribution that produced it — zones, buildings, pollution, unrepaired potholes and any current event — plus the single biggest thing dragging it down. |
| Population | Total residents, households, the age profile, how many are of working age, how many have jobs, and how much zoned housing is still empty. |
| Power | Every station and what it generates, then demand broken out by residential, township, commercial, industrial, reserves and buildings — each as a share of total load, with unconnected tiles flagged. |
Game reserves are protected
Once land is zoned as a Game Reserve, roads, power lines and ordinary buildings cannot be driven through it — you must build around it. Only reserve buildings belong inside: the Game Reserve Gate, Ranger Post and Jacaranda Trees.
The Airport
The most expensive structure in the game, and the fussiest. An airport occupies a 4×4 block and earns strong tourism income — but only once both conditions are met:
- it is connected to your power grid; and
- roads actually link it to your residential, township or commercial zones.
Miss either and not a single plane flies, while the monthly upkeep is charged regardless. When it is working you will see aircraft taking off and coming in to land over your city. Use 🔍 Inspect on the airport to see exactly which requirement is missing.
Potholes and repair tenders
Once your city has a 🏛️ Municipality, tarred roads start developing potholes. Each week any are left open, city happiness drops by 1, to a maximum penalty of −10. Bridges do not develop them.
Before the Municipality exists, none are recorded — the council is the roads authority, so there is nobody to count them and nobody who could fix them if they did.
You cannot patch them yourself — the city must put the work out to tender. Open 🕳️ Road Repairs at the bottom of the left panel to see how many are open and what a repair would cost, then advertise the tender.
- Advertise — the tender goes to the market for three days.
- A contractor accepts — a firm such as Jabu's Roadworks or Van der Merwe Padwerke wins it. Each quotes a different rate.
- Work proceeds for four days, then the city is invoiced and the happiness penalty clears.
Waiting costs money. The invoice is a callout fee plus a charge for every pothole open on the day work begins — and more open every week you delay. Repair early and you pay for three; leave it a year and you pay for thirty.
Farms, schools and services
Beyond the basics, five structures round out a working city:
| Structure | Size | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 🏛️ Municipality | 3×3 | The seat of local government. Earns nothing directly — that is the point: administration is the cost you carry so that everything else can function. Hospitals, policing, fire cover, recreation and road repairs all wait on it. |
| 🌾 Farm | 6×6 | The largest footprint in the game. Steady monthly income for very little power or upkeep — the low-risk opposite of a mine. |
| 🏫 School | 2×2 | Slowest payback and the largest. Educated residents lift land values and tax income for decades. |
| 🚒 Fire Station | 2×2 | Protects nearby buildings. Insurance you hope never pays out. |
| 🏊 Recreation Centre | 2×2 | The best happiness-per-Rand in the game. Build these before reaching for an expensive stadium. |
Keeping the panel tidy
Each category in the left panel — Infrastructure, Mining, Services and the rest — has an ▲ / ▼ arrow in its header. Click the header to fold that category away; click again to bring it back. Your choices are remembered between sessions, so you can keep only what you are currently building on screen. The ◀ tab on the panel's edge hides the whole thing.
Messages, and turning them down
The 🔔 bell at the top right keeps every message your city has sent you. Click it and a panel slides in from the right, newest first, with the time each one arrived. The ⟩ button tucks it back to the edge.
If the messages popping up over the map are getting in your way, the panel has three settings:
- All messages — everything pops up as it happens.
- Important only — warnings and problems still interrupt you; routine news goes quietly to the list.
- Silent — nothing pops up at all.
Turning alerts down never loses anything. Even on Silent, every message is still written to the list, and the bell shows a count of what you have not read yet — so a warning that the grid is overloaded waits for you rather than disappearing. Your choice is remembered between sessions.
Your city advisor
As the city grows, an advisor speaks up when something needs attention:
- Growth has stalled — every home is full, so zone more housing.
- Unemployment — too many residents for the number of jobs. Zone commercial and industrial. Left long enough this turns into dissatisfaction, then protests.
- Crime rising — police coverage has not kept up with the population, or your industrial areas are unpoliced. Build police stations.
- Healthcare under strain — build more hospitals.
- Zones without power — they cannot grow at all until connected.
Money
Income comes from taxes on developed zones, mining royalties and tourism. Expenses are the monthly upkeep on everything you have built. Watch the Surplus figure in the right-hand panel — if it stays negative you will eventually run out of Rands.
Mines run out. They earn well, but every deposit is finite — the Inspect panel shows how many years are left. Reinvest mining profits into commercial zones before the ore is gone.
Building a Bank unlocks loans. Borrow carefully: interest is charged every month and compounds against you.
Power stations compared
| Station | Output | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Coal | 100 units | Cheapest to build. Heavy pollution, drags happiness down. |
| Solar | 80 units | Higher upfront cost, zero fuel cost, zero emissions. |
| Nuclear | 300 units | Most expensive to build but the lowest cost per unit. Very low routine pollution; long-term radioactive waste needs safe storage. |
Getting around
- Pan: right-click drag, or hold Shift and drag.
- Zoom: mouse wheel, or + / −.
- Minimap: click or drag it (bottom right) to jump across the map.
- Speed: the ⏸ ▶ ▶▶ ▶▶▶ buttons, or Space to pause.
- Esc returns to Inspect mode.
Watch out for
- Load shedding and other random events will hit you. Keep a cash reserve so one bad month doesn't sink the city.
- Escaped wildlife. Game reserves draw tourists, but the animals sometimes wander into town. Dispatch a ranger.
- Pollution. Coal plants and industrial zones drag happiness down. Keep industry well away from housing.
- Unpowered zones cannot grow at all. If a suburb has stalled, check for the flashing ⚡ first.
Your city is saved in this browser. It saves automatically each game month. Clearing your browser data will delete it — use 💾 Save → Export Save File to keep a permanent copy.