SimCity BuildIt

SimCity BuildIt brings the philosophy of the legendary city-building series to the touchscreen, turning classic turn-based city planning into an elaborate mobile loop full of manufacturing, trading, and gradual expansion. The player establishes zones for housing, industry, and commerce, builds power plants, waterworks, and roads, and watches an empty map turn into a living city with its own economy. The key mechanic is manufacturing materials in factories, which are then consumed in building construction or sold on the global market to other players, pushing the game from pure simulation toward social economic strategy.

As a typical representative of the free-to-play segment, SimCity BuildIt is built on a dual currency – regular Simoleons earned through play and premium SimCash, which can be bought with real money to significantly speed up waiting for finished buildings or resource production. Timers are omnipresent, and the game works without payments, but requires patience; for more aggressive players it offers faster progress in exchange for money, a typical trade-off of Electronic Arts mobile titles. No ads interrupt the game; monetization takes the route of selling time and convenience.

On touch controls, building cities works surprisingly intuitively – dragging a building with a finger, tapping to upgrade, a simple zone menu. The game also adds a social dimension in the form of regions, where players group into clubs, help each other through trade, and compete in wars over resources, giving an otherwise solitary building game a community reach. It's a full-fledged, long-term playable adaptation of the SimCity brand for mobile, though without the depth and systemic interconnection of its computer predecessors.

Why play: Suits fans of building games who want to take SimCity in small sips between other activities, and who don't mind waiting timers in exchange for free play.