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Citystate, a political city-builder preview

Citystate city builder preview and trailer

If you’re a fan of SimCity 4 and Democracy 3, I’ve got the game for you. Citystate is a game that’s all about building your own ideal country while juggling all the social, economic and political problems that the attempt brings.

As one would expect in any city-builder, there’s a huge focus on economic management and development, but there’s no right way to go about it. If you want a Capitalist laissez-faire system, or a worker’s state, you can set that up. And as the game progresses, the decisions you take will affect what economic markets develop and how the supply/demand structure develops within your overall economy. It’s all a pretty fun little balancing act.

One of the interesting ways the game excels at engagement is by allowing the player to set the overall political temperament of humanity and your own society when the game begins. It’s these kinds of political decisions that define one of the more interesting aspects of the game. You can also highly customize the look and layout of the initial map. If you want more challenge for example, you could limit the number of resource spawns.

Even if Citystate doesn’t include elections, a public approval rate is shown in the statistics window and has to be checked from time to time. Managing political approval and the developing interests of the various classes is vital to keeping your country from disaster. And the game is more than happy to model what happens when the people don’t like your policies. Protests and even riots can happen in Citystate, so the impetus to pay attention to the impacts of your policy is really high.

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Although there is some depth to the political system, some of the minutia of planning transport and resource distribution has been pushed to the side. Even with a less detailed and lively world, Citystate manages to tickle the fancy of any fan of economic simulations.

Citystate is out now on Steam, check out the trailer below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-YXgawx1ts

 

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