A fresh, modern city builder with charming aesthetics. Detailed agent-based simulation and scheduling. See inside buildings. Design and customize almost anything. Business-specific zoning, and mixed use zones too!
Thing with Sid Meier and Maxis was, they kind of adapted their simulation algorithms to their games, or rather the other way around- they knew simulation and had simulation engines, and Sid Meier made games kind of top of that. That’s why the Sim City series was so successful, because of the strategic depth that came from the underlying framework. That’s hard to replicate when you start with the game and then try to work your way backwards to depth.
Sid and the team released so many games based on this bottom up approach- SimEarth, SimAnt, Sim City et c, and most notably they had SimRefinery that a lot of people don’t know about, a tentative attempt to simulate the daily running of an oil refinery.
You can find it online, but it’s hard to make sense of unless you are an actual oil refinery worker, as far as I recollect they were hired to make this as an educational tool or whatever. Later they built on this type of coding and pivoted into more commercially accessible games.
But I ramble, it’s late, my point is, there’s a reason titles like SimCity never got replicated or emulated, no pun intended, mainly because there was so much actual engineering laying the groundwork for these timeless games that isn’t easy to create when you start out instead with the aim to make a game and then add simulation complexity as a means to that end, you just don’t end up with the same kind of product.
I will always cheer attempts, buy I stay realistic in my anticipations.
I am intrigued.
Thing with Sid Meier and Maxis was, they kind of adapted their simulation algorithms to their games, or rather the other way around- they knew simulation and had simulation engines, and Sid Meier made games kind of top of that. That’s why the Sim City series was so successful, because of the strategic depth that came from the underlying framework. That’s hard to replicate when you start with the game and then try to work your way backwards to depth.
Sid and the team released so many games based on this bottom up approach- SimEarth, SimAnt, Sim City et c, and most notably they had SimRefinery that a lot of people don’t know about, a tentative attempt to simulate the daily running of an oil refinery.
You can find it online, but it’s hard to make sense of unless you are an actual oil refinery worker, as far as I recollect they were hired to make this as an educational tool or whatever. Later they built on this type of coding and pivoted into more commercially accessible games.
But I ramble, it’s late, my point is, there’s a reason titles like SimCity never got replicated or emulated, no pun intended, mainly because there was so much actual engineering laying the groundwork for these timeless games that isn’t easy to create when you start out instead with the aim to make a game and then add simulation complexity as a means to that end, you just don’t end up with the same kind of product.
I will always cheer attempts, buy I stay realistic in my anticipations.