I would love a city game, where along side managing a city, you had to manage weird geography and disasters by doing crazy stuff, like leaning buildings onto each other. I just think that so far the concept sounds better than the execution.
If you still think this sounds cool, or if you just wanna blow a city up for a few minutes after the game refuses to continue, download it. Image: MeNic GamesĪs always during the Steam Game Festival, this was just a demo and by a fledgeling studio. No where is there wild physics shenanigan’s.
You build houses so you can get people, and build stores so they can get jobs. Physics games are fun because they’re unpredictable and often lead to wild explosive situations, which isn’t how this game plays either. This game has no grid and makes you throw building willy-nilly, sometimes breaking your city in the process. City builders are great for people who want to be precise and get into the nitty gritty of civic planning. But conceptually, I worry that this wild idea forgets what makes the two concepts that it mixes great in the first place. I can also understand a lack of polish and game breaking bugs.
See, this is a demo, so I can put aside things like weird UI that doesn’t have an immediately obvious way to start a level(see image). Its ideas are sound, and the mechanics are simple yet engrossing, especially for the player who wants to see the highest tier for all. The physics base draw of the game though is that if you place buildings wrong they may fall over, destroying them selves and injuring the people inside. Tinytopia is a good entry point into the city management genre. And that’s about all the game will tell you. Tinytopia is exactly that, a physics based city builder that replaces building upgrades in sim city, with the act of placing buildings on top of other buildings, and watching them morph into the upgraded forms. You’d ask me why I thought this would be a good idea. For instance, what if I told you that I had a physics engine game, mixed with a city builder. However, some concepts do absolutely nothing for each other. When this sort of genre mixing goes well, it brings out the best features of both concepts. And obviously it worked well enough for them.
For instance, Fall Guys(I refuse to add Ultimate Knockdown) is a mix of the Battle Royale genre, and obstacle course TV shows, like WIPEOUT. It is fairly common practice, to come up with a game concept, by mixing two other concepts. So why am I talking about it? Well… it’s concept was interesting. When it comes to the Steam Game Festival, this is one of those weird ones that doesn’t really pop, or immediately grab attention. Hell, it broke so bad when I played the demo that I couldn’t even finish the first level. Frankly this game looks like an interactive ad for a phone game.