SimCity Build It

Summary
Sim City: Build It is full of Sims’ classic humour and involves some strategy - you are the mayor of a city after all! You’ll have to think about what kind of energy you’ll be using, how to get water to your residents, and how to produce building materials to make your city grow.

Description
Type: Simulation/Strategy
Platform: Android, iPhone
Players: 1, Online Play
Age: Suitable for Children
Game Time: Ongoing
Developer or Designer: Electronic Arts
Publisher: Electronic Arts

Pros

Cons

Review
At its core, Sim City: Build It is another strategy game like the others, where you wait it out to develop resources so you can improve your town. But this game is more than that. This Sim world is quirky, silly, safe for kids and fun for adults. It is slightly more intricate than other strategy games, as you have to contend with the happiness of your city as well as all of its other maintenance.

Waiting for resources can be arduous, especially because it has to be done manually. There is no automatic build up that accumulates over the time you spend not playing. But there are also a wide variety of materials, and it is not limited to the standard two-resource mechanic that RTSs employ. Build It’s materials include wood, metal, plastic, seeds, minerals and so on, which can then be used to build houses or other resources like plants, bricks, chairs, hammers, nails and so on.

You also have a finite number of resources you can store in your city storage.This requires some strategy, but if you fill up on resources you don’t need it is possible to sell them to other players or even to NPCs that pop up from time to time. There are special resources that pop up as well that allow you to increase your city storage or expand your city.


Expanding your city is important and requires strategy. Your population grows based on your city’s happiness. Thus, the happier they are, the more money you will get from taxes. The more money you have, the more you can build. But if you build your factories or sewage plants too close to residential areas, the residents will be unhappy with you.

One of the game’s best mechanics is the choice between clean energy and fossil fuels. In the game, fossil fuels are cheaper and provide a lot more energy for your city. But they also pollute the air, which means their unhappiness radius is much larger. Clean energy like windmills and solar farms are slightly less efficient but make people happier. It’s an interesting moral choice they’ve been able to slip into the game.

Overall, SimCity: Build It is a fairly well produced game. Given that it is for a mobile device and can be played anywhere, it works very well. It runs seamlessly, is full of silly Sims humour and the game mechanics seem to have been forged together cohesively. It is possible to get yourself into trouble with the game if you make poor choices, but it is also very easy to keep your townspeople happy. If you choose to pay, you will develop a city much faster and easier, but without paying you can still enjoy the game for a few minutes at a time.


Categories
#simulation
#strategy
#sims
#iphone
#android
#mobile
#In-App_Purchases
#child_friendly



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