Cityconomy Review

Simulators are a strange breed. From Farming Simulators to Arma 3, there are plenty of slow-paced games that demand meticulous attention to every action. To a certain extent, one can understand why some of them are so popular. Flight simulators offer an opportunity to take up a role that otherwise would be near impossible in real life, not to mention its cost. Games like Rising Sun offer the challenge and severity of a real war without the death, massacre and gore that come with it. Even train simulators are a great option for train enthusiasts, which for some reason, there are plenty. But Cityconomy is even stranger than most other simulators. What’s more, its definition as a sim is loose and makes for some awkward moments when put in comparison to other games, to the point that it feels that it is trying to make a statement with its tedious gameplay.

You start the game as a bin man, who’s both manager and worker of a company of public services. You objective is simple: you have to drive your truck to the locations marked on your map and there, load the dumpsters onto the truck, unload the bin bags and put the dumpsters back where they were. Once your truck is full, you must empty it in the rubbish dump nearby, and then rinse and repeat. In the process, you can do exciting activities such as refuelling your fuel tank, or collecting more waste. If you feel bold, you can even break a red light. Well, maybe Cityconomy is not particularly fun. But put this way, most simulators are not fun at all. However, Cityconomy takes very menial, dull and repetitive activities that are at hand in everybody’s lives, and artificially turns them into a system of unlocks, rewards and progression.

Cityconomy is not fully a simulator, and I say this with little contempt for its status. It includes a series of unlocks and rewards systems that are much more engaging than the core activities and that reflect a series of design trends which work only under very particular contexts. This may sound like a long-winded argument, but bear with me. As you earn more capital by spending an insane amount of time picking up rubbish, you will eventually be able to buy new trucks and expand your company into other areas such as plumbing, gardening or car towing. These activities allow you to have larger control of the city’s public services, and are, at large, a materialisation of the expected progression seen in plenty of games.

Here we have the capitalist representation of videogame mechanics, using money as a strangely meaningful goal. It is a near-endless ascension to the full control and total access to all resources (vehicles, workers, areas, etc.) that we see in pretty much all games where currency takes a part. From The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 to The Sims and Invisible Inc. more money translates in more options to play around, more and better weapons, armours, even areas! The main difference is that in these games money takes a side role, and (most) missions can be completed without getting money for it, so it becomes more of a commodity than the primary goal of the game. More cash means more resources, but it doesn’t necessarily give you a better experience of the game, or it’s indicative of your performance. Missions in which money is the only reward can be considered a grind. What’s more, the lore and stories that they contain is usually more enticing than the money in the rewards.

If we look at some other games, like Rollercoaster Tycoon or Cities: Skylines, money becomes a primary objective. The more money you have, the bigger, more efficient and prettier your amusement park or city will be, and consequently, people will come swarming through the gates. So yes, these games do work in a very similar fashion as Cityconomy. However, there is a subtle difference that makes Cityconomy feel like the embodiment of capitalism and the American Dream; the idea that hard work will give you enough rewards – no matter what – that owning a corporation controlling all services of a city is accomplishable. All this boils down to the fact that you own the company and, at the same time, work your ass off in the most trivial jobs, such as collecting rubbish. The management of this company is just a tiny part of what you’ll be doing in Cityconomy, which makes it feel like having an actual job where the only purpose is earning money - but with more visible rewards, although less exciting. There is no room for an economic strategy for your company and no real advantages in taking over one service sector over another.

Perhaps the game is making a statement with this, but it’s just flying over my head. However, it does feel that these repetitive, tedious and meaningless quests that you pick up either at the base or the hub, share some similarities in how some other games are structured. They seem to have been included into the game as filler, repetitive chores which only draw you in with the promise of some experiential or lucrative reward. When we jump into games like Destiny and we do the same segments over and over, with no real effect in the world or in ourselves, what’s the point? Is the possibility of better guns and armour just a way to trick ourselves into thinking that what we’re doing is fun? I can guarantee that Destiny’s missions rarely get more innovative than your seventh round as a gardener.

On top of that, the city is very antagonistic to you. Cars will often crash into you and you will get automatically fined for it, or they will refuse to overtake you even if there are a few lanes and no other car in the road, honking at you like maniacs. Dumpsters are sometimes located in places difficult to access to, and the city feels like a miniature model rather than an actual city full of life. There are barely any people walking by, no shops, no sports courts… It feels like being in The Truman Show, and with only one purpose: collect enough garbage to be able to start fixing pipes. The city won’t even be noticeably impacted by you to feel that you’re making a change. All advancement is confined to the number of trucks you own, or the money in your account, or the depictive graphs illustrating your process.

Cityconomy’s mix of RPG elements, such as unlocks in the shape of a skill tree and items available to buy, makes it resemble a different kind of game than the one it actually is. The core gameplay tells you about the tranquillity and comfort of routine, whereas the constant encouragement to keep unlocking and getting new ways of playing evoke progression, dynamism and a set of values that are quite different from the one we’ve traditionally seen in simulators. For me, this is something that simply doesn’t work, as it pulls you to two different trains of thought. Even though the rubbish in my bin was piling up, all I cared about was unlocking a bigger truck.