Build a Town Game: CityZen Review

Build a Town Game: CityZen Review
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CityZen Another Build a Town Game (4 out of 5)

CityZen lets you be mayor of your own city on Facebook. Players have housing, businesses, and public buildings for your citizens. Public buildings such as parks and schools are important in the game because they help to keep your citizens happy. As you place houses your people need jobs so you’ll need plenty of businesses too. If you click on homes and then a business jobs can be filled at that business. If your businesses are too far away from your citizen they will become unhappy. You can click on homes and see how happy your people are with their surroundings. People who are very unhappy will have a crying face above the home. It’s a challenge to have enough businesses and homes to support the jobs while also providing public amenities to keep everyone happy.

Homes (3 out of 5)

CityZen

Like most city games homes are needed to ad population to your city. As you place a home you can click on it and see the happiness rating of the residents. You’ll need a business close by to provide jobs and a short commute time. Homes must also have some type of public building nearby such as a park or school to keep citizens happy. The game has your standard houses and apartments but the selection is a bit limited. Many of the nicer apartments and condos can’t be unlocked until the player reaches very high levels in the game.

Businesses (3 out of 5)

The business provides jobs for your citizens. To assign jobs click on the business and then a home with free citizens and a green arrow will display. Jobs can then be assigned n to that home and other homes can be clicked until all jobs are filled out. The business can also be upgraded to generate more money for your city.

Public Buildings (3 out of 5)

Public buildings such as parks, schools, swimming pools and other structures provide happiness for your citizens. If these buildings are located too far away from homes the people will become unhappy. The game creates a balancing act between population, businesses and public buildings. While the public buildings look nice the game lacks any basic decorations such as signs, trees or any other simple decorative item. This lack of decorative items is a low point of the game and these items should be included with any city builder game. There’s plenty of nice looking parks but little else on the decorative side. Your city ends up looking very plain and stale without decorations.

Making Money (4 out of 5)

Earning income in CityZen is very easy. Your top five businesses will earn money in the game at a rapid pace. You can upgrade businesses that are performing well to earn more income. Clicking the collect money tab will place dollar signs above the top five best performing businesses and you can collect your income. Expansions can be bought for money or game cash called “build points.”

General Game Play and Conclusion (3 out of 5)

CityZen is an average city builder but it does have one nice feature. You can use disasters such as a meteor storm and have Facebook friends destroy your city which gives you cash to rebuild. City Zen makes it easy to earn money but the lack of decorative options makes your city very plain looking. CityZen can be fun but it needs a little more to put it over the top and make it a great build a town game.

This post is part of the series: CityZen Guide

A collection of articles to guide you through CityZen for Facebook.

  1. Facebook Games: CityZen Review
  2. Facebook CityZen Game Guide