SimCity BuildIt is a city building game that is less intense than the original Sim Cities games. It is also more relaxed than other popular free-to-play city building games such as Clash of Clans and Township.
Despite this, it has still managed to captivate 50 million players worldwide. Some of the reasons why can be attributed to its social system.
Download
Play the hit city-building game on your PC. Create your own bustling metropolis, watch it grow and change – from an undeveloped region to a thriving urban center. Build skyscrapers, parks and bridges, and connect them all with roads and waterways. Designate fire and police coverage, and place specialty buildings like education, transportation, and power. Make your citizens happy and earn simoleons.
There’s a reason why this game has over 50 million downloads. It may not be as deep as Cities Skyline or Sim City 4 – but it’s still a phenomenal experience.
The controls are intuitive and work well on the big screen of your PC. Plus, it’s much easier to hammer out complex interwoven systems with a keyboard and mouse rather than a tiny touchscreen. It’s also a great game to play with friends. You can even battle each other’s cities in Club Wars, trading supplies and competing against fellow mayors. There’s never a dull moment in this freemium simulation game.
Install
Design your dream city and create a bustling metropolis. It’s up to you to make the citizens happy and keep the city growing. Make decisions that allow you to build skyscrapers, parks, bridges and more! Defend your city from monsters and compete against other mayors in Club Wars.
This is a purely simulation game and as such is more streamlined than the 2013 reboot of SimCity 3000 or SimCity 4. Unlike those games, it doesn’t have complex interwoven systems that require learning complex concepts to master. It is easy to get started and become absorbed in the gameplay. Its launch social features do an adequate job of creating beneficial interaction among players, although there are two glaring omissions that could be implemented to drive player engagement and payer conversion even further. One is the omission of competition systems like those seen in Clash of Clans and Farmville 2 that are great for driving extreme sessions per day engagement and whale behavior.
Run
While a few of the more snobby Sim City purists here have scoffed at BuildIt because it isn’t exactly what they think a Sim City game should be, I’ve found that most of them are missing the point. Rather than complaining that it isn’t Cities Skylines or Sim City 4 – they should be rebuking themselves for not understanding what the game actually is.
While BuildIt has a strong core loop and early progression, it lacks an aspiration system to keep players coming back over time. The game does a good job of driving short-term engagement through events, but could benefit from a more sustainable social competition system similar to the one that Hay Day established with their clans.
Play SimCity BuildIt on PC with BlueStacks, and watch your new metropolis grow before your very eyes. Expand your city, make it a bustling hub of commerce, and bring in more citizens to increase population density.
Enjoy
SimCity BuildIt is a fun and addicting city building game from ELECTRONIC ARTS. The best way to experience this free-to-play mobile simulation is by downloading and playing it on PC with MEmu Android Emulator.
While the collection compulsion in SimCity BuildIt isn’t as intense as that in other popular mobile games such as Clash of Clans and Farmville 2 — the game still encourages it. It could do with some help articulating the aspiration that lies beneath that compulsion by adding some sort of milestone markers along the way to a player’s ultimate goal of maximizing their city’s population.
SimCity BuildIt is a simpler form of the decades-old simulator series that succeeds as such with a pinch of its own flare. It’s a fun game, and while purists are upset at it for not being like the original – they need to remember that people enjoy designing cities a whole lot more than they do running them.
