Metropolis, a Facebook game by Kramaley Games Ltd., is a construction and management simulation focused on building your own personal city, collecting taxes, and keeping your population happy (or at least happy enough).
We’ll take a look at the Game Flavor, the Game Mechanics, the Good, the Bad, and the Final Review. So, is this game best for casual gaming, hardcore gaming, or no gaming at all? Read on!
Game Flavor
Metropolis has a fairly standard city styled flair. You develop your City through purchasing land, developing buildings on that land, and raising revenue. There are limited images associated with the buildings you purchase, and very little flavor text associated with the game.
Game Mechanics
As a construction and management simulation Metropolis has a basic set of rules by which to abide. First, the point of the game is to build, and you can’t build anything without money. To get money you tax your population, and, as you tax your population, they get unhappy. To keep your people happy, you can build certain buildings that increase happiness, at least temporarily. There is no long term fix on happiness, it is simply an ongoing component of the game of raising revenue through taxes, building, and keeping your people happy at the same time. These are the main game mechanics (Money, Culture, Happiness, and Population), which are further complimented by the City Indexes.
Of the four City Indexes – Education, Health, Crime, and Fire Protection – the first three affect your population in various ways, thereby affecting your cash flow. The last one determines if your buildings have a chance to burn down; not a good idea when the point is to keep building being built.
Finally, there are three types of buildings: Landmarks, Establishments, and No Revenue. To keep it short, I’ll generalize here, and there are some exceptions to the rule. For the most part, Landmarks are best at increasing Culture, Establishments are best at generating Revenue (a.k.a., Money), and No Revenue buildings are best at raising Happiness and the City Indexes.
That’s the rough overview of the Game Mechanics. There are of course a couple other factors, such as using Connections, which enables social interaction between Cities, although this interaction is fairly limited to raising population or happiness.
The Good
Metropolis has a nice set of rules, grounded in a somewhat tested simulated environment. The game has a pretty loyal following, and is pretty open ended. In this respect, your city can continue to grow in population, buildings, money, to nearly unlimited proportions; as long as you have the time to dedicate to keep your City growing.
The Bad
Unfortunately, the game is a bit bland at times. Although there is a plethora of rules and necessary complexity, at a certain point in the game variety ceases. Sure you can buy newer types of buildings, you have to start monitoring your City Indexes, but very little happens to keep the game interesting. Coupled with the fact the game has very little visual stimulation, it can get boring fairly quickly.
Final Review
Metropolis has the complexity for long term game play, but falls flat in flavor. While it has some limited social interaction, for a Facebook application/game it does not really take advantage of being on a social network.
Although the game has fairly solid mechanics, the flavor just isn’t there. What this ultimately does is leave the game feeling unfinished. Like a skyscraper fully erected, but completely unfurnished, there is a great deal of room for continued development, but as it stands there sits only a frame. Metropolis, primarily for the lack of significant flavor, but bolstered by decent game mechanics, gets a “C.”
Metropolis – fun to play for a bit, but interest is lost quickly – “C”
