SimCity BuildIt (for iPad) - Review 2022

I didn't bother buying 2022's disasterous, online-only SimCity reboot, even after developer Maxis introduced an offline manner. I figured that its creators had decided to follow their own calendar, even though that meant alienating and losing much of its fan base, including myself. The game soon exited my consciousness, only information technology has returned—this time as an iPad app. And it works. SimCity BuildIt's online features, particularly the power to trade with and compete confronting other players around the world, raise the classic formula. The franchise has risen from the ashes, and SimCity BuildIt is a new PCMag Editors' Choice iPad game.

Same Metropolis, New Features

The object of SimCity BuildIt is the same as the other games in the franchise: To create and grow a prosperous virtual city. As Mayor, you lay down the roads, place houses, stores, and factories, collect taxes, and suit deals with other cities. You must also provide services for your citizens, the Sims, when the options become bachelor—power, water, sewage treatment, sanitation, and education. If you neglect expanding services and the overall urban center upkeep, your Sims motility out, y'all lose taxation revenue, and the city stagnates. First, though, they can and volition talk dorsum to yous (with their words appearing in an opinion bubble higher up a house or other property), tell you what'south working and what isn't, although their responses are admittedly canned.

Before that, though, the Sims can and will talk dorsum to you lot, by telling yous what'due south working and what isn't, using canned responses. In these ways, SimCity BuildIt is cutting from the same cloth as previous SimCities—although with BuildIt, it's probably cloth y'all've produced yourself, or bought in the Global Merchandise HQ. Dissimilar about previous SimCity iterations, you can't generate terrain, although you have some limited ability to shape it (mostly past calculation canals, lakes, and other bodies of water.)

In the commencement of the game, there's a sea, and a highway that leads past an unbuilt seaport towards distant mountains. Several commercial buildings and an unbuilt airport are on the highway'due south left side. On the right side, across from a billboard advertising The Sims, is a turnoff leading to an open area where yous are to construct your city.

Your advisors guide y'all in how to become upward and running, and then they'll footstep aside. Occasionally, the advisors alert you lot to deals that other mayors have tried to brand with them to buy some of your urban center'southward resources. If the deals involve products, they're probably worth making, as they brinig in cash and free storage infinite. But equally frequently as non, the deals are for your storage and expansion parts. Money generated from these deals come at the expense of your city'due south growth, and then think long and hard almost giving these parts up. You're the Mayor, and have the final word.

Commerce, SimCity BuildIt Style

Borer the Global Trade HQ, which I ever remember of as the World Trade Center, shows items that other Sims accept put up for sale. Touching the edifice brings up a list of offers, which you can refresh every 30 seconds. Each offer consists of the seller'due south city'due south name (many are in other alphabets, most commonly Cyrillic and Chinese), an icon identifying the product for sale, the quantity, and the cost. When you click on an particular you are interested in, yous are teleported to the seller's city, to their Trade Depot, in which all the products they take listed for sale are displayed. There, you tin buy it or any other products listed. All trades are with real people, and you're seeing the actual cities they've congenital in the game.

When you lot're washed dealing, or if you make up one's mind non to buy anything, closing the Trade Depot box brings y'all into their city proper. It's well worth taking a look around, every bit some cities are quite exquisite, and examining other people's cities may give you ideas as to how to design your own. Keep an center out for a bluish souvenir icon in a talk balloon; borer it gives you a gift, anything from an ingot of metal or a log to really valuable products (including expansion and storage parts). Equally a rule, I only tap the gift icons if I've actually bought something at that city, simply there's zippo to stop you lot from taking the gift without ownership annihilation, equally I have occasionally.

This commerce process is one of my favorite parts of the game. It is well designed. Factories, which at first y'all should keep to the edge of your city considering they tend to pollute, produce raw materials. In stores—there are nine dissimilar stores ranging from edifice supplies and hardware to fashion and home appliances—the materials are further processed and usually turned into finished products. Athough Maxis could accept designed SimCity BuildIt's commerce function for single-player utilize, making transactions with real players and visiting their cities adds greatly to the richness of the game. The downside is that I really miss the ability to trade when I'g offline.

I online characteristic that lets y'all directly interact with other players is the Mayors' Club, which unlocks at Level eighteen. You lot can join a Mayors' Social club, which is a group of up to 25 players who can chat or make deals with each other. They likewise compete together in the Contest of Mayors. Y'all don't have to bring together one, and you can go out ane yous've joined if it doesn't entreatment to you. The Contest of Mayors is a v-twenty-four hour period issue in which Mayors who choose to participate are given a number of tasks. They get points for each one they consummate, earning Simoleons and Platinum Keys in the process.

Storage and Expansion

The almost coveted, if not the most expensive, items are related to storage and expansion: Locks, bars, and security cameras in the former instance, and bulldozer (better known in the game as dozer) parts in the latter. (There are additional items for expansion to the beach and mountainside.) To increase your territory or your city's storage capacity, you demand to become a certain number of each of a prepare of three parts. For example, to expand into a certain half dozen-by-viii lot, you might need five dozer wheels, five dozer blades, and 5 dozer frazzle pipes. For a different lot, y'all might need 7 of each item.

To acquire these parts, you can purchase them in the Global Trade HQ (exist advised that they sell quickly), or on rare occasions receive them as gifts when you travel to some other city to buy something else, and click on a gift icon. Probably the all-time fashion to get them, though, is by clicking on your Sims' opinion bubbling, as sometimes you are gifted these items. And if you get 1 storage or expansion part in this thing, keep clicking, as the parts tend to come in batches.

You lot can likewise get these parts by ownership them in SimCash. To get an expansion part, yous tap an undeveloped plot next to i you already own (or an untouched area of beach or mountainside). Up pop icons showing the triad of parts. These let you know how many you have and how many you demand of each role. There's a push beneath the part showing how many SimCash dollars it costs. The toll is per function: If yous need, say, v dozer wheels, and the price on the button is 24, you would have to pay five times, totalling 121 SimCash dollars. You employ the same general process to buy storage parts.

I found the payment buttons problematic. They come up in other circumstances. For case, you can pay to remove an particular from factory product. 1 time I had just put some raw materials into product. I must have touched ane of the buttons with my thumb, because it had removed a canteen of chemical from production and charged me 28 SimCash dollars, which seemed an enormous sum to pay for a unproblematic mistake.

Stability

SimCity BuildIt tin be played on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch running iOS 7.0 or later. I tested it on an iPad Pro 10.v and an iPad Air ii, each running a different urban center. (At that place doesn't seem to be any good way to run more than one city on one device.) I beginning installed SimCity BuildIt on the iPad Pro—that game is at present on Level 35—and then installed the app on my iPad Air, curious to see if the game would be equally stable on it. Information technology is, and I am up to Level 17. The only departure I've noticed in running the app on the ii machines is that you get a more than zoomed-in default view on the Air because of the difference in resolution.

Whichever device you lot use, the basic game is free, though you can buy diverse amounts of SimCash for prices ranging from 99 cents to $99.99. With your purchase, you should be able to expand your city faster or buy exotic items you couldn't otherwise beget. I tried the payment part by buying 250 SimCash dollars for $four.99. (I but had to show off the World's Largest Ball of Twine, which actually costs 300 SimCash dollars, then I had to make upwards the difference.) To make the buy, y'all enter your Apple countersign, and the SimCash appears in your account within the game.

Offline Use

In playing tens of hours of SimCity BuildIt on 2 iPads, I have experienced no crashes at all. Occasionally it has hung while loading; invariably, it loaded with no problem subsequently I closed and rebooted the plan. The only other, not unexpected, functioning issues had to do with connectivity. Much of my playing time was on the subway, going to and from work. Wi-Fi connectivity is pretty good in virtually New York Metropolis subway stations these days, but not while a train is moving.

You tin can't buy or sell products when you're offline, because you're making deals with actual people—other participants in the game—rather than an AI. That said, you tin can do most anything else. Things you've put up for sale can be sold while you're offline, but you won't know, and tin't collect the proceeds, until you're reconnected, simply yous'll be credited with the Simoleons eventually. You tin can't conversation with members of your Mayors' Group if you've joined i or check your standing in the Competition of Mayors. The i matter I really miss when playing offline is the ability to purchase and sell. If, for case, y'all're missing a backpack to consummate an order to be flown to Paris within the hour, yous can't go to the Global Merchandise HQ—which refreshes with new offerings every xxx seconds when you're online—to try to snag one (though yous could create one from scratch if yous had the materials, fourth dimension, and the proper upgrade to your Fashion shop). All you can do is watch the clock run down.

Movie Night

Every so ofttimes, you lot'll encounter a blue moving-picture show icon hovering to a higher place ane building or another. Borer it makes an advisor appear and ask if you want to watch a brusk video in return for one of 3 prizes, two of which are shown and the 3rd identified simply by a question mark. Each prize is subconscious in a box, and you receive whatever is inside the box you tap. Watching a video, nigh of which are ads for other mobile games or cars, seems like a small cost to pay for scrap of SimCash, a wad of Simoleons, some product, a gilt primal, or a lock or camera to assist expand storage.

These videos only work while you're online. Also, sometimes if I didn't notice the movie icon quickly enough, the video would expire and goose egg would happen when I clicked on the icon. Several times, I would listen to my counselor and lookout the ad, but the advisor would non reappear to allow me pick my reward. When that happens, I find it's best not to click on the movie icon for a while, because if information technology happens once, it'south likely to keep happening.

Another minor glitch I've encountered is that the space occupied by buildings is really higher and wider than it seems, every bit in that location is invisible virtual space above and to their sides. Peculiarly when your urban center gets taller, it can be difficult to perform actions (say, moving a edifice) without taller buildings getting in the fashion.

Mad Scientists and Futurity Labs

When trying to, for example, remove a production from a factory, an archetypal mad scientist would announced at the lower left corner of the screen and gesticulate. This is Dr. Vu, who wants you—for a mere xl,000 Simoleons—to fix up his belfry, the building that was getting in the manner, so yous can unleash disasters on your urban center and earn Gilt Keys equally rewards. Is Dr. Vu a harmless crank or an evil genius? The only way for you to find out is to play the game and build the tower.

Y'all can construct a few specialized neighborhoods in SimCity BuildIt. The Omega Zone includes the Omega Corporation'south labs and bank (it has its own cyberbanking system and currency, the NeoSimoleon), and houses its employees and their families. It does its ain policing (via a fleet of drones), and its buildings wait very futuristic. Information technology takes your currency (7,000 Simoleons a pop) and uses information technology to make "Omega material" and plow information technology into Omega objects—which resemble futuristic toys—that it returns to you, as well as conventional products. You can use these Omega objects to upgrade your Omega buildings.

Speaking of NeoSimoleons, there are five dissimilar kinds of currency in SimCity Buildit, as well including regular Simoleons, SimCash, Gold Keys, and Platinum Keys, which seems excessive, specially in those situations where you need to estimate their value against each other.

An International Flair

Once y'all build the airport, several specialized neighborhoods become bachelor that give your urban center an international grapheme, including a Parisian Zone and a London Town Zone. With the airport, you tin can ship cargo to Paris and London. You'll be paid for the goods, and with each shipment you get a distinctive detail (such as baguettes for Paris and a cherry telephone booth for London) that y'all will demand in society to upgrade buildings in these neighborhoods. Once your population reaches 260,000, your airport can ship cargo to Tokyo and you can add a Tokyo Town Zone as well.

Time in SimCity BuildIt doesn't work the same way as in some earlier SimCity iterations: You don't know what twelvemonth it is within the game, allow lonely the month or date, and the introduction of technological advances isn't dependent on reaching a sure yr. Instead, leveling upwardly is the deciding factor in when you lot tin unlock some product or service. With each new level, new products, services, or features may exist unlocked, only in terms of fourth dimension, you're ever in the present.

SimCity Is Dead, Long Live SimCity!

I accept been playing SimCity BuildIt for about a month now, both for the purpose of this review and considering I thoroughly enjoy the game. I missed the previous SimCity iteration, and I figured that was the end of the line for the franchise. I'k glad to say I was wrong. SimCity BuildIt makes great use of online features, primarily its global marketplace, though you can play offline, too. This app is a successful reboot of the SimCity franchise, and a PCMag Editors' Choice iPad game.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/software/17307/simcity-buildit-for-ipad

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