Block'hood is underrated. It's more complex than your average city builder. What makes it unique is that structures don't have up-front resource costs: instead they have inputs and outputs toward your stored resources. Those with insufficient input will decay. Simple to learn, tricky to master. It's a refreshingly transparent system compared to the more "black box" mechanics of other popular city-builders, which often require a FAQ/walkthrough to fully comprehend. As a result, this one is incredibly satisfying once you finally work out how to build an elaborate city that doesn't decay. I compare it to SimTower because, minus all the elevator stuff, you're basically doing the same thing: building a vertical city. Except there are dozens of resources and hundreds of structures, which can make for quite the steep learning curve. Seriously - it's one notch below Dwarf Fortress. Maybe harder, especially if you just jump straight into a sandbox game. Best to start with the story mode, which functions like a tutorial campaign. Alternatively, the Challenge mode also progressively introduces you to increasingly complex configurations of buildings to inspire the basis of more advanced designs. Highly recommend spending plenty of time with both before moving on to the open-ended gameplay.
The only reason I didn't like this one as much as the original when it first came out was because (iirc) there was no freeplay mode. And the campaign is hard, but also kind of short. And it functions like an extended tutorial, which is great but once you beat the campaign it lost some replay value. Now that there's a freeplay, I give it five stars. This is a challenging and unique blend of RTS and management-sim that keeps you on your toes. If they remade this in a similar quality to the remake of the original I would buy it in a second. It's my all-time favorite 1930's gangster-style game.
It's basically "The Real Texas" minus everything which made that game turn out alright. (except the music - good work, Yesso) There is no combat, no puzzle solving, nor any real reason to explore the (deceptively small) game world. Essentially it's a short series of fetch quests. This might not be so bad, if the game weren't constantly teasing you with the notion that there's some kind of actual game here, waiting just around the next corner. For instance, you find a shop which sells an assortment of "charms" of various types and levels... all of them are useless and do nothing. The starter town is surrounded by a fence featuring several locked doors... none of them have keys. All the lore about the city, the trains, the comms down... all goes nowhere. The entire game is a huge tease, and when the end finally comes you'll be thinking "wait... that's it?" And it ends with a cliffhanger, promising a Part 2. Apparently the designer thought that promising a Part 2 is a fine way to excuse the lack of any real gameplay or fun factor in Part 1. Unfortunately, unless Part 2 is offered for free to those who bought Part 1, I will never know how it turns out. Because this was the only time I've ever seriously contemplated asking GOG for a refund. Do yourself a favor and just skip this one. ESPECIALLY if you're a fan of The Real Texas. This was just so bad, I never want to play anything by this developer ever again.
