Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Dec 23, 2022

  Fun
• Prof. GSOM

  Jan 22, 2023

  Simplified SimCity2000 with nicer graphics and focus on policies. Minor bugs. Developer moved on to Citystate 2.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 24, 2018

  In the mid 1980's I got the Commodore Amiga computer and my first game for it was SimCity 1. Ever since I was hooked on every kind of city builder. "Citystate" offers an intriguing and fresh premise: focus on the socio-political issues of urban planning. You can go for a liberal welfare state, a fascist dictatorship, a North Korean dystopia etc. Sounds too good to be true? Well, the game has a lot of issues. It's quite bare-bone in its current incarnation and the usability is poor. I was almost ready to abandon it and cut my losses. However, the developer - albeit being of the silent type - is actively listening to the community and already released an update, addressing several UI issues and bugs that were reported by us. He's also planning to add more content in future patches. I will give a thumbs up for 3 reasons: 1. the game is unique and very interesting 2. the dev is doing his best to tackle the biggest issues 3. the game is very reasonably priced at 9€ (or your local equivalence) You can't expect a 9€ game to deliver the same quality as a 50€ game. Buy it now if and only if you love a fresh take on city builder AND are willing to join the rocky ride towards a good game. Right now it's not great, so you should wait for future patches if you're expecting a complete game. ------------------------------ Update: I wanted to build a fascist dictatorship in my new city "Germania" and 157,000 citizens later I was a "Socialist Oligarchy". :D -------------------------------------------- Update May 2018: The dev is currently on a post-release update streak like I've never seen before. Just check the roadmap on the store page. Numerous new content updates, bug fixes and usability improvements. Highly recommend game by now! The best thing: the improvement wave isn't even over yet!
• gamedeal user

  May 30, 2018

  I'd stay away for two reasons. First, intellectually the game seems to have strange motives. Second, the other is in that the game lacks a certain depth of play and its mechanics fail to deliver. I thought it would be cool to have a city builder with more political elements, but this doesn't really give a fair shake to all the political angles. The game seems to have a libertarian bent and is pretty anti socialist. There is also some weird in jokes about sjw's and hipsters. From an idiological standpoint, I think this game's developer shows their biases. It seems informed, but from a very particular outlook. That is, extract, exploit, capitalize. I feel like this is a weird propoganda tool which really detracts from the fun of the game. I don't want to be manipulated when I buy a game. When I played with a venture capitalist mindset I crushed the game, too easy. I tried playing as a enviromental socialist and the city wouldn't grow at all and I went bankrupt. I played with a mixed economy and was barely making it through, often taking loans. Maybe I'm missing something or blowing it out of proportion but something just isn't right. Onto the game. The traffic managment is pretty limited and very surface level. There is not much diversity in what you can build or zone for. There is no police building element (or fire, or education) but you can pump money into social programs. It is hard to determine what the 1-100 means for those though. Also the punishment for changing policies and taxes is steep, and that may be realistic, but starting with a tax rate of between 1% and 3% is just dumb then, and the initial tax rate should be yours to set. Also the punishment for having any taxes is ridiculous, like a 6% tax rate will keep the rich from coming to town, but a 6% tax on the poor wont mean a thing, come on. Also there isn't really that many policies, the one's that are there make sense but not all the consequences really make sense. They often have weirdly weak or strong influences on your three types of citzens. The loan system is stupid too. There just isn't a lot here either, you experience the whole game pretty quickly. I might give it another go around and try to be a good and just leader for everyone, but I'll probably go bankrupt.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 4, 2018

  A light city-builder that does what I've always wanted, introduced politics into the mix. Pros: -Nails the Sim City vibe -Attempts and sometimes successfully implements the political aspect, which alone should probably sell you on it. -Special buildings are nifty and fun to work towards -The trade cap is a smart mechanic - Gets the basics right - Cute little flag creator (coulduse more pixels, for the vexillologists among us) - Continued development. The Designer continues to expand and improve the game, another major selling point. - Genuine improvement. - Makes me want to play more, and to try different gov't styles. - Anarcho-Syndaclism maybe, rather than "Libertarian Anarchism?" Cons: -Many, many typos -Needs different types of commercial and industrial density - Needs a corporate tax slider (Sim City 4 style), rather than just 3 tiers of direct income tax+sales tax -Not always politically accurate (and really needs to explain itself better in respect to policy effects on given social classes) -The designer seems to have injected some personal politics, and genuinly stupid (as oppossed to charming) stats in the demographics screen. (SJWs/Attractive women... Come on guy, you're better than that) - Some performance issues. Wildest dreams: - Politically active neighboring states to deal with. - State infastructure such as police stations, hospitals, and military bases. - immigration should be more detailled. - Needs a happyness index in addition to the standard of living and income brackets. (Everyone could have low income, but be very happy for non-financial reasons) - Trains and light rail. Subways? (there are monorails though) Ultimately, trying to make a city-builder incorporate political classifications is bound to be incredibly difficult, but this game makes a genuine, good attempt, and is worth any Sim City/ Skylines fan to try.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 1, 2018

  Hrm, not sure I can recomend this game. Kudo's to the Dev for the political, and social aspects. Makes it super interesting.... BUT it falls flat on it's face pretty fast. I put 8 hours into my first city, I got the majority of achives, pop of 4mil, and unlocked everything. I played for several hours just seeing if I could find something else. But there wasn't. And because of that I just can't recommend this game. Maybe with updates? Not sure what else they would add that would bring me back.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 9, 2018

  A combination of simcity 3000 and Democracy 3. It does a pretty good job in combining those two, but keep in mind that this is a one man project. I think some critics went way overboard with their expectations on how in depth the game should be. Others accused it of being biased. Well, I had no problems bulding my socialist, environment loving, welfare state ;p You need to be careful with your initial choices though. At the beginning I couldn't help anyone. Taxes were far too low and the economy consisted of some farms. But with time I could spend more and more money until I got my utopian welfare state :D I guess some critics went like "Here, you have to pay almost no taxes and now you get everything for free, lul" and were obviously surprised to see that this meant instant bankruptcy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• gamedeal user

  Aug 21, 2018

  Some say this game is ant socialist. But I think they just dont know how to run a succesful socialist/communist country. I pretty much only play socialist/libertarian/communist and I can always get 100 health/edu/security positive balance, low taxes and positive growth all round, with low inequality. Its hard, and I went through periods of rioting and 60 % unemployment. Sounds like a challenge. That's the whole point in games, non? If you find making a communist society too difficult, keep at it. It is possible. Just dont expect to have any industry. Only commercial, state owned, and grow you population as quick as possible to unlock arcos. Trade panel is key, and it is always profitable to clear slums. Unemployment and your income will be much better off if you pillage through the slums. Yeah sure, capitalist is a bit easier, but it depends on your measure of success. Capitalist is more like management simulator. Communist is like crisis simulator. As a communist dictator I wouldnt mind if I could have higher control of state security. Like be able to dispatch tanks against protestors a la Tianenmen Square. If major events were added to a timelline to look back on that would be nice. Also a procedurally generated wikipedia page for your country would be pretyy cool. But probably a bit too much to expect from a one man band. And for that I salute the man.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 3, 2018

  This is an interesting game that works with big ideas, and compartmentalises them into both obvious, and not as obvious, consequences. The basic idea is that you build a city-state, not simply a city of which you are a mayor but something like Singapore or Hong Kong. You have a range of political, civil, economic, immigration, and legal issues to deal with that have direct consequences on your citizenry, as well as some city-building. As far as city-building goes, it's very much like the original SimCIty but simplified further - you plonk down a RCI lot, it builds. There are parks to increase land value, special service and government buildings for different purposes, a basic resource prospecting system and associated state/private mechanic. Utilities are abstracted, as are health, education, "safety and security". The budget window handles taxes and your nominal per capita expense on the abstracts just mentioned. The Stock Market window opens up a government bonds tab where you can get your much needed borrowings at the going rates. The Trade Balance window measures your major imports vs. your exports, which has a direct impact on your budget. It sounds a bit convoluted at first, but it's devilishly simple to use - the learning curve is a gentle slope. The political mechanics in the game add a tonne of flavour and real consequences. You can go from "Full Open-Border AnCapistan™", where your dominant political stances emphasize the rights of companies to do as they please (really, a Capitalist Oligarchy is what you end up with), to "People's Heroic Union of Socialist Peoples", where everybody is free to do as they're told (again, the Proletariat Dictatorship might sound great, until you're the one lifting rocks). I've played with all the different directions to see how they impact on the society. In my opinion it's very well thought through. The most "popular" legislation is not always the best choice. The impact of legislation on social mobility is clever. For example, a basic student funds system has a negative impact on the lower class and a positive impact on the middle class - this represents additional students accessing education opportunities that were previously unavailable to them because of finance, and as a result they rise from lower to middle class. Whereas, growth in the lower class usually represents a punitive policy that targets the middle class. I've found the upper class tends to benefit the most from harsh legislation. All of the choices you are presented with can lead to public disorder, and rioting is common if your society is unbalanced. If you go full AnCap or full Commie, always expect your society to be riddled with unrest and inequality. I've found that the easiest societies to build tend to be open, quasi-libertarian democratic societies with a small bit of immigration, lean but effective welfare, a strong and robust middle class and generally free economy with smart regulatory bodies ensuring that people are not exploited by the private sector, but are also free to engage in commerce without a heavy-handed oligarchial government. The challenge is in getting there.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 18, 2018

  I was expecting SimCity with a economic/political engine integrated into it. It is that to a degree, but the actual traditional city building elements are bare, and the political choices seems arbitrary to the city building aspect. Maybe I should have waited for the full release, but I saw the game was version 1.x which made me think it was released and "done." I was likely expecting too much, but I really like the underlying idea for the game. At this point, I think it needs more time in the oven, and some rounding out of features/messaging. I plan to check back in on the game in a year to see if it went anywhere Summary: It's a really cute idea for a game and I hope this game develops into more, but I was honestly shocked there wasn't the basic 1989 SimCity engine as the foundation to the game, the game does a really poor job telling you how your decisions in any of the one "layers" of the game impact anything wider than that layer, and there seems to be poor cohesion between the economic game, political game, and city building game they stampled into "the actual game." Most of the GUI boilerplate stuff is missing. GUI: Hitting escape does not give you the options main menu, and the main menu is not in the traditional top left. Instead it's bottom-right, but not even in the corner; it's sort of arbitrarily in the middle of your buttons at the bottom right. When you are out of money the game simply doesn't allow you to take actions. (traditionally you get a pop-up that says, "hey dummy you don't have X to do Y.") And you won't know if that's due to being out of money, or some advanced game aspect you don't understand until the bankrupt window comes up. Not that these things are always a problem, but when you are drilling (which feels like a contrived mini-game) you need to click a bunch of times, and if you cancel at any point your progress/square is basically trashed. So not only is the drilling mini-game annoying, but the cost of "not understanding" some aspect of it or a misclick completely trashed the square. City Building: There is literally no power, water, or garbage management. You really don't even need to manage traffic in as much as you need to make sure all things are no more than 3 squares away. I didn't need all those things per se, but considering it looks like SimCity 2000 I was expecting at least water/power. The only inferstructure the game cares about as far as I can tell, is roads. which has density levels for the roads, but that's it. And as far as I can tell, you can leave them at the lowest tier for the majority of the game and just spread the town out. The other management aspects are clearly the thing that makes the game interesting. If you wanted a city builder with economic/political engine, this is more like the other way around. It's a econ-politics game that has a "city builder" strapped to it, but it's mostly for the benefit of having something to look at. Also, it's worth noting in spite of all of this, there are a dozen city parks to choose from for plopping inside of your city and Arcologies like SimCity 2000 had, oddly enough. Economic/political engine: Privately or state owned is a major theme, but that is the breath of the choices and I can't determine the point of it, outside of "fitting" the political stuff you set. You can "drill for oil," "discover oil," and then arbitrarily declare the oil the ownership of the state or for private companies, and I'll be damned the game doesn't explain why it matters. The people don't seem to have any individual thoughts, other than "middle class hates/likes policy X" which was extremely unsatisfying. I would have expected people to move in agreeing with the way things are done and a portion who would want change, and any shift would have upset a number of them, even at least slightly. Like decision X upset %% of middle class who are [political idealogy]. There is this concept of stability that seems to only be effected by raising taxes or swapping advisors which are something you could completely ignore while slowly transforming your style. So from my experience in the game, all the stability mechanci does is punish me for not knowing what tax rate I should set from the beginning. I am surprised all the choices are strictly aboveboard as well. Everything basically aims to allow you to do things along a political axium and explore that set of ideas. I was extremely surprised you had to pick your "council" which is exactly one of two, while your city state is presumably the entire spectrum of ideas. I would have thought the advisors would have followed your "school of thought" questions you answered when founding the city. I was likely expecting too much, but I really liked the underlying idea for the game. At this point, I think it needs more time in the oven, and some rounding out of features/messaging. I plan to check back in on the game in a year to see if it went anywhere.