SimCity: BuildIt
Developer(s)TrackTwenty
Publisher(s)Electronic Arts
SeriesSimCity
Platform(s)
ReleaseAndroid
  • CAN: October 22, 2014
  • WW: December 16, 2014
iOS
  • CAN/AUS/NZL: October 24, 2014
  • WW: December 16, 2014
Genre(s)City-building
Mode(s)Single-player

SimCity: BuildIt is a city-building mobile game. Developed by TrackTwenty and published by Electronic Arts, it was launched in late 2014. The game is part of the SimCity franchise,[1] and is available to download from the Google Play Store,[2] Amazon Appstore[3] and the Apple App Store.

This game allows users to solve real-life situations like fire, sewage, pollution and traffic, and helps in dealing with problems that the public faces. Players can connect and compete with other users for more connected gameplay.[4]

Gameplay

The game is freemium (free-to-play with pop-up advertisements and in-game purchases). It utilizes music and graphics similar to the 2013 SimCity game, although it is slightly downscaled in order to fit in with iOS and Android devices' graphic capabilities. The game starts with 25,000 simoleons (standard in-game currency) and 50 SimCash (premium currency) on hand.

Users play as the mayor of their city and make choices in order to keep their sims happy. When they do this, players can earn taxes from the City Hall. The more people in the city, and the happier the people, the more taxes are earned.

Users can trade, friend, chat, and join clubs with others players for connected online gameplay.

Contest HQ unlocks at level 11. Club Wars, a competitive player-versus-player mode, unlocks at level 18.

There is no zoning feature in SimCity: BuildIt. Instead, buildings are moved manually. Commercial and industrial buildings produce items, and residential zones require them in order to upgrade to a higher density. Factories can also be upgraded, although this requires demolishing the original building when it is not producing anything, then replacing it with a new one.

Special buildings can be placed in the city during season tournaments and holidays such as Christmas, New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween, Black Friday and Thanksgiving. Each season plays every three months, with buildings available for a limited time in categories such as movie studios, amusement parks, wild west, special landmarks, universities and parades. There are also buildings based on real-world promotional events, such as promotion of Lay's Max potato chips. Once players have used all the city space available, they can only store or swap these buildings. The game has five additional regions that players can switch to and develop. This extends the gameplay to provide varied new land, buildings, and materials, and lets players also use the season buildings.

Players can only build two-lane roads using the build tool. Players cannot manually build higher-capacity roads; they must upgrade them instead. At launch, only two, four, and six-lane roads were available; three more road types (avenues, boulevards, and streetcar avenues) were introduced in the Disasters update.

The Disasters update allows players to launch meteor collisions, earthquakes and other disasters in their own city. Each disaster has three levels to unlock.

Production and commerce

  • Factories in the game produce metal (every 1 minute), wood (3 minutes), plastic (9 minutes), seeds (20 minutes), minerals (30 minutes), chemicals (2 hours), textiles (3 hours), sugar and spices (4 hours), glass (5 hours), animal feed (6 hours), and electrical components (7 hours)
  • Building Supplies Store produces nails, planks, bricks, cement, glue, and paint
  • Hardware Store produces hammers, measuring tapes, shovels, cooking utensils, ladders, and drills
  • Farmers Market produces vegetables, flour bags, fruit and berries, cream, corn, cheese, and beef
  • Furniture Store produces chairs, tables, home textiles, cupboards, and couches
  • Gardening Supplies produces grass, tree saplings, garden furniture, fire pit, lawn mower, and garden gnomes
  • Donut Shop produces donuts, green smoothies, bread rolls, cherry cheesecake, frozen yogurt, and coffee
  • Fashion Store produces caps, shoes, watches, business suits, and backpacks
  • Fast Food Restaurant produces ice cream sandwiches, pizza, burgers, cheese fries, lemonade bottles, and popcorn
  • Home Appliances produces BBQ grill, refrigerator, lighting system, TV, and microwave oven

Regions

An update to the game added Regions, and different types of terrain to build cities on, with each having its local factories and commercial supplies. At first, the player can only pick one out of the 5 available, but if they reach a certain number of inhabitants, the player can choose another region to build on, and so forth. The 5 regions available are the following:[5]

  • Cactus Canyon, with supplies such as oil and tires
  • Green Valley, with recycled fabric and cotton bags, for example
  • Limestone Cliffs, with products related to string and/or silk
  • Frosty Fjords, with products related to fish
  • Sunny Isles, with coconuts, coconut oil, face cream, and tropical drinks

Development

The game started development after the release of SimCity (2013) in an effort to develop a game more quickly and at a much higher profit margin. BuildIt uses many assets from SimCity (2013).[6]

Reception

As of October 2021, the application has been downloaded over 100 million times on the Google Play Store.[12] It ranks number four all-time in simulation games downloads operating on Android.

In 2018, according to EA Mobile, SimCity: BuildIt became the most-played SimCity game ever. It stayed in the top 10 in U.S. sim and strategy games on iOS platforms, in the top 100 for U.S. games overall and in the top 150 games globally.[13]

References

  1. ↑ "SimCity BuildIt – Free Mobile Game – EA Official Site – Electronic Arts EA.com › games › simcity-buildit". ea.com. January 13, 2017.
  2. ↑ "SimCity BuildIt – Apps on Google Play". play.google.com. Retrieved February 21, 2023.
  3. ↑ "SimCity BuildIt:Amazon.co.uk:Appstore for Android". www.amazon.co.uk. Retrieved February 21, 2023.
  4. ↑ ARTS, ELECTRONIC (January 22, 2018), SimCity BuildIt, ELECTRONIC ARTS, retrieved February 11, 2018
  5. ↑ Arts, Electronic (September 25, 2018). "Regions – SimCity BuildIt – EA Official Site". Electronic Arts Inc. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  6. ↑ Bains, Callum (March 7, 2023). "SimCity launched a decade ago, and it was so disastrous it killed the series". PC Gamer. Future plc. Retrieved March 12, 2023.
  7. ↑ "SimCity BuildIt for iPhone/iPad Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved December 15, 2014.
  8. ↑ "SimCity BuildIt – IGN". IGN.com. November 25, 2015. Retrieved October 24, 2017.
  9. ↑ "SimCity BuildIt review – iPhone reviews Pocket Gamer". pocketgamer.co.uk. December 18, 2014.
  10. ↑ Ford, Eric (December 23, 2014). "'SimCity BuildIt' Review – Actual City Planning Has Timers Too". TouchArcade. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
  11. ↑ "SimCity BuildIt (for iPad) Review". PCMAG. September 5, 2017. Retrieved July 16, 2021.
  12. ↑ "SimCity BuildIt – Apps on Google Play".
  13. ↑ "SimCity BuildIt – The Best Construction Game". August 15, 2019. Archived from the original on August 20, 2019. Retrieved August 20, 2019.
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