Highrise City

This isn't a city builder so much as a resource management game. Citizens won't walk to work, even directly across the street. Welcome to America. There's little point in realistic mixed development. Citizens are just another resource with a special placement menchanism. The controls are really fiddly. You can't upgrade residential or office zones, you have to bulldoze and re-place. There's a snap to grid feature, but it's inconsistent and really hard to actually build things on a grid. The progression system becomes limiting very fast. It's a good thing there's a setting for free movement of buildings, otherwise the game would mostly be about saving up enough resources to shuffle around your buildings every few levels. Performance is also inconsistent. At times, it runs incredibly smooth. Then other times, it will hog the UI thread and freeze the game for 10 seconds at a time.

Thank you! Fresh air in the rooted games of that genre. The game bet on different approach of management. It is not old-fashioned city builder where roads are the main problem. It is more about resource/zone planing. Impressive part is the game was made by a small collective that is respectable. I can see a big potential in that game.

After trying to play the nightmare of Soviet Republic, High Rise City was a wonder and a joy. It can be a little buggy but nothing showstopping. Like any city builder, its complicated. But this one mostly makes it easy to just do what you want to do. It does get a little grindy as the city gets big.

After couple of hours, you start to notice the problems with it. There is a constant tug of war between housing and offices. Housing for work force, offices to manage your industry. And thats where one super annoying mal function starts. Once an office space does not have workers, they never fill up again, while they are constantly telling you to build more offices while 1000s of workers are unemployed. The Ai doesnt seem to recognize empty office buildings. Or ... its much closer to real life then i realize with shell companies occupying buildings to launder money, witch of course is a thing ... hmm, maybe i need to declare war on organized crime ... But of course im over thinking it and its just a bug. Also destroying those offices that remain empty doesnt do anything, since the empty spaces just vacate to another office building that was working before. In all, it has some things better then Skylines, but not enough to be better. I did enjoy the delivery missions with an over the top floaty delivery truck.