Epic City Builder 4

UI is super rough around the edges. They need an experience UI/UX designer for sure. That said the gameplay seems alright. But I can't play it enough and enjoy it yet until they make serious improvements to the UI as it just kills it for me. It's almost there but it's missing basic stuff like: * Font / Scaling Issues * Consistency in theming * Selection boxes indicating which action a player is taking / which thing they have selected * Cursor indicator without having to click on map. * General organization, etc. I'll recommend for now just cause this is the first review. But I'll keep a close eye on progress and see if this should be changed later.

I cannot possibly recommend this game for 2 reasons, and 2 reasons alone (Giving them a pass on the EXTENSIVE spelling mistakes, poor tutorials, and lack of an ability to see any useful information on any plot including "What is this building I'm clicking on?) 1. There's no easy way to cancel your selection. Click on a Road or a Commercial Zone, place it, then want to swap to another building/object type? Congrats, you have to click on the button in the hotbar. Sounds simple, right? Only problem is... The game will place whatever object you're holding on the map behind the new button you click on, which is extremely problematic when you're using terraforming tools and suddenly find that not only is your neighbourhood now halfway destroyed because terraforming just paves over objects, but now you also get to play with the terraforming system to fix it, which brings me to point 2: 2. Terraforming in its current (and presumably permanent) state is an exercise in dragging your private parts through a kilometre of broken glass. You can not place buildings on slanted terrain, the terrain must be flat. So if you want an even halfway decent looking city, you will have to do some mass terraforming. However, the terraforming system will add or remove extra tiles that your selection is nowhere near, seemingly for no reason. "Oh, it's just working off a nearby ridgeline" WRONG. Even after completely removing all other height differences near a single tile, the game refused to behave normally / only edit the selected tiles, which was problematic as it was located in an intersection between what was supposed to be 4 city blocks. I spent EIGHT minutes trying to get it to cooperate, trying every possibly strategy short of just deleting the entirety of my city and then paving it all flat (Which costs money, by the way. Otherwise that would be the go-to solution, just make every map super-flat and boring from the start) to get this one single tile to go to the desired height to match all the terrain around it, and still could not get it to cooperate. Games are supposed to be fun, not so poorly programmed that they induce anxiety attacks. For those two crippling reasons alone, again ignoring the plethora of other much-more-obvious issues with the game after even 10 minutes of gameplay, I would not recommend anyone buy this game, even on sale.

Game keeps freezing up during the tutorial. I'll try it again when it no longer is in early access.

I was actually quite excited to get this game, I love city builder games and I thought I'll give this one a go. What stood out for me was the Research Tree for Industry ( Jobs ) and Military, plus the expansion of play with cities joining each other through trade. I like how at a glance I know what is Residential, Commercial, and Factories. There is traffic, and its nice that the people in the cars drive around and park up at work then head back home. Music is a nice loop but the developer is planning on adding more music so that will be nice to have while playing. The user interface works well, plus there's the added help of if you hover over an item you'll get a description of it. Also I like that there's the function to move the map around by holding down the right mouse button. Its cool that factories can make many different weapons...All in all I'm enjoying playing the game. I give this game at the moment a 77/100. My rating will increase as time goes by with updates. A year later and i can see a lot of the bugs have gone and things look better are more responsive , e.g connecting power or water to the grid which is needed. city growth is more forgiving and visually states that. I like it now has more options on how you would like to play be it single map or sandbox or scenario. I played for 30 minutes and the only thing that bugged me was the music. There needs to be more variety and better music at the moment so when i play i turn it off. At the moment I still give it a 77/100.

If there was a "Maybe" option for recommendations, I would press that button for this game. The UI is really weird, reminds me of like the early 2000s or something. It kind of makes it a chore to play the game. Nearly everything is clicking, which means that if you're used to hotkeys, this game will be wonky for you. On the surface it looks decent, but I feel that it lacks true substance. I feel that the policies I make don't really affect any lives, I don't feel truly invested in the leading of my country. Nevertheless, the very ability to set national policies is a big plus that I just don't see in more popular, shinier-looking city-building sims. Hopefully the developer will expand upon this aspect later. Multiple towns and the central city connected through resource sharing and net gains/deficits is a fun and interesting challenge that adds a layer of strategic thinking to an otherwise unimpressive-looking game, which means that this game is more complex than meets the eye. I'm currently under the assumption that one (1!) person developed this game. If this is the case, then he did a good job for being completely alone. Ultimately, since there is no "Maybe" recommendation, I might as well put "Yes." It's a rough-looking game with a clunky UI, but it was made by one guy. Good on him for making a game that's quickly eating up my time. TLDR: It's a game made by one guy, and it's fun, but looks dated. EDIT: I forgot to mention, the game slows down severely when a given city starts climbing above like 30,000-ish. It happened to me, at least. Another edit: As I play the game more and more, I feel that the cities start to look... blah. Like, there's no unique buildings or monuments, and you can't click on the ploppable ones (like the Police HQ, the Fire Dept., etc.). Another thing that brings the game down a bit from a Yes to a Maybe for the recommendations.

If you remember early city builder games, this is one of those. It's an indie title and clearly a bit of a passion project, this one is a bit rough around the edges. It does try to do something a little bit different in that there's an almost 4x element to it. There are other nations you can interact with and should you decide to develop nuclear weapons, can start a war with and nuke them. But the music. Please won't someone kill the music. I give this one 6 it's the same music track playing again out of 10, so scraping by with a recommendation, but maybe pick this up in a sale.

I really do like this game. Its very easy to pick up and feels like the kind of game il be playing for a very long time. Im 28 hours in at time of this review and im am very happy i brought this game. Its like city skyline..... but fun

Steam needs a sideways thumb option. Thumbing up for potential. https://youtu.be/Ssk7rkJH8gM

Initial thoughts: easy to play, simple concept not too cluttered with over management, needs to expand (signals, choice of roads, rotate buildings etc) and work on the bugs. 3.5/5 so far...

While I picked it up on discount, I took a quick look and while there is an attempt at some depth over all it seems quite simplistic, so I have requested a refund. I would have been happy enough if it was at 80% discount but as the project stands it should still be in EA. Dev still seems active, So there is hope things will improve, but has been at it for years so I am not so sure it will ever be worth the price tag.