Welcome to our review of the city builder game… City Builder! Out now for Nintendo Switch. Discover if you have an inner Bob the Builder!
As you might have guessed by now, City Builder is a puzzle game with building elements. Developer Boombox describes the game as ‘an interactive puzzle game for all ages’. I agree with them, everyone can and will enjoy this game to some extent. It’s not extremely hard, nor complicated and brings a certain level of ‘fun’.
Roadkill:
The basic mechanic of the game is to build a road on a square piece of land. The goal is to connect the beginning of the road with the end while building as many homes along the way. The actual building part is automated since houses show up wherever you build a road. Meanwhile, a little car hovers on the road you’re building. The puzzling part kicks in with a Tetris-like pieces selection process. In Tetris, you have a little box in the corner that shows you what piece will drop next. In City Builder, you have half a dozen of these boxes. You can pick any road piece you want, from straight ahead to left-turns. If you don’t have any pieces you can use, just shuffle. Of course, there is a catch. You can’t shuffle all you want, otherwise, the game will overheat and it’s Game Over. If you build too slow, the car driving the road you’re building will crash/run off the road – Game Over.
City Builder – Store Builder – Industrial Builder?
Along the way, you will run into a large number of challenges, ranging from clever/pesky Mole-men to the elusive Bigfoot, Aliens, Wandering Hot-Air Balloons, Huge Bonus Levels and much more. But it does not change the fact that it’s the same concept over and over again. Sure, you build houses, stores or industrial areas – doesn’t change the concept. Sure, once you gain a little bit of experience the game adds plumbing. But still the plumbing is the same as the road you are building, it only upgrades the existing houses. Upgraded houses give you more money, but still same concept.
Conclusion
According to Boombox, the game offers over 20 hours of fun for a professional player. Which means a casual player will spend 40 hours to completely finish the game. I honestly don’t think I could play this game for 20 hours straight. It’s fun in small portions, for like five minutes at a time (small breaks), but that’s it. I have better looking, better functioning games at my disposal to fill these small breaks. City Builder just feels a little bit like shovelware.
