Virtual City Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This game's a gem! Without getting too complicated, I think it offers a bit more depth and contents than a lot of other casual games in this genre. And something else I find rare and precious: replay value!

If I wanted to make a comparison, I'd say the mechanics of Virtual City remind me most of Transport Tycoon (in a much, much simplified way). Although you do get to build your little city, it's not so much a building game as it is a transportation and resource-management game.

There are lots of things you can build in the game though: roads, houses, decorations, bus stations, utility buildings (fire station, hospital, tech stations, recycling drop spots...) and 7 whole production chains (i.e. from wheat to pies). You can even modify the existing layout of a map (to a certain extent) by bulldozing existing roads and wooded areas, then rebuild it differently.

The buildings and vehicles' graphics change when we upgrade them, which is much nicer than just having a certain amount of stars next to them.

At the start of each level, you are given a set of goals to fulfill. The game consists mostly in bringing the required goods to the appropriate buildings (or neighboring cities), which in turn will produce another type of goods needed by another building, or fulfill a goal. The goals are varied: goods deliveries, population amount and/or happiness, income, special buildings to be built, etc.

The game's very relaxed. You can try to beat the "Expert" time if you want, but you won't be penalized in any way if you don't complete a level within that time frame -- you can still come back to a particular level any time to play it again and try to beat the timer if you feel like it. So, in this manner, the game is not at all stressful, and not even "clicky". You can just relax, enjoy the beautiful graphics and have fun building up your city and transportation network.

Between levels (50 in all!), new buildings, upgrades, and other types of improvements (i.e. a hot air balloon to be launched from the plaza) are unlocked for you to purchase.

The campaign game plays on various maps in 5 different locations, many of which large enough to be scrollable.

Now, one of the most important thing to me: replay value. For one thing, there's already replay value in the way that you can replay any level individually as I mentioned above, whether you want to improve your score or beat the timer or just try a different city layout. But also, every time you finish all the levels in a particular location, it opens a very large Sandbox map in that location where you can pretty much do whatever you want. Endless fun! :)

Anyway, I really enjoy this game. It's relaxing, very pretty, very entertaining, and I can tell I'll be playing it for a long time without getting tired of it. Well worth the small price tag for sure!

I've played Virtual City on Vista 32-bit, and currently playing it on Windows 7 64-bit. Works fine with either operating system.

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Product Description:
Create a residential paradise or an industrial center in this fun and exciting simulation game! Construct gorgeous houses and industrial buildings as you produce goods and deliver them to the shopping malls. Make the city a cleaner place by recycling garbage, adding hospitals and fire stations, and upgrading building. Deal with economic downturn and natural disasters. Build the city of your dreams today!

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