Become a popular mayor in your own city by careful planning and quick acting

SimCity is part of The Sims world, but different. In SimCity: BuildIt you are a Mayor in charge of a city, competing with neighbouring cities for the prestige of best Mayor. In SimCity, the residents are called Sims, because it is in the same universe as The Sims game. At the start, the game offers help. You have Eva, your City Advisor who will give you the information on how to start your city. When you select the road building, the builder pops up to tell you random information after you build something. Eva then tells you to build residential zones, because you need people to start living in the city.

The game is pretty easy to start, because you are constantly guided by Sims who will pop up. At the start, you will need the basic essentials like a house, power and water so your residents can be happy. After you settle the people, they need jobs next. Build a building supplies store and a factory to provide the city for upgrades for residential zones. During the play, your neighbour Daniel, Mayor from the city across the Bay pops up and invites you to his city.

This sets up your game to play with friends, if you have friends on social media who play, you can add them into your list and visit their city! You can head on to your friend's Trade Depot to see what items you can buy fromyour neighbours. Once you visit Daniel, Eva will pop up to tell you that there are people in your city, so it needs a name. You can change the name of your city any time, but once you name your city, the next Sim will pop up to tell you you need a Town Hall.

Build materials like metal and wood in factory, and then refine them into nails and plank wood in the building supplies store. At the starting stage, you might put everything together, but beware, it might upset your residents. Your residents are the blue people at the top corner next to your pink level number. The green smiley face is how happy your residents are in the city. The building icon below your level number is City Storage, where you can see the materials you have in storage.

Once you have a Town Hall, the game opens up City Journal with a checklist. Completing the checklist will help you gain money and experience points to level up. You can upgrade your residential zones using materials like metals, nails and so on. Every upgrade will need more materials, but it can house more residence without needing to build more residential zones. To keep your people happy, keep the factories away from zones and build plenty of parklands when you have the money to do so.

There are 4 currencies in SimCity BuildIt: the general Simoleons look like gold coins and SimCash that is the green stack of cash. Simoleons are easy to earn by trading resources, or changed from SimCash. Purchase SimCash with real money or complete achievements. You sometimes find SimCash while visiting your neighbours. You start the game with 25,000 simoleons and 50 SimCash. There are Golden Keys that buy City Specialization Buildings, Platinum Keys are for special buildings and disaster cards. The keys have to be earned via special events and challenges.

After Eva leaves you alone, you have free rein to design your city the way you want it. The best way to start the city is slowly, build raw materials and supplies but not upgrading residential zones will help you slow down level up. Some unlocks require you to reach a certain amount of residents. At level 5, you will build City Hall to collect tax, which you can use to buy buildings and residential zones. You can expand land when you reach level 10, before that you need careful planning.

To keep your residents happy, you need to have parks around the zones and factories far away. Upgrading residential zones rewards you with more residents, money and experience points. If you do not have the right material, simple pick the round arrow button to change building plans. It will take 30 minutes to do so, but it might be quicker to gather more raw material. Keep your factories and stores working, because you can sell them at the Trade Depot later. Sometimes, your Sims will have a thought Simoleons thought bubble, tap on that and the Sim will tell you that someone is interested in buying your raw materials.

In SimCity BuildIt, natural disasters are man-made. When you hit 90,000 population, pay 40,000 Simoleons to repair the Vu Tower which unlocks the natural disasters. The tower is unsurprisingly hosted by a mad scientist. Use the Vu Tower to damage your own city, so when you repair it, you gain Golden Keys to build City Specialization Buildings.

Aside from the 4 normal currencies in the game, there are other coins you may need if you intend to participate in certain events. Regional Simoleons are mainly for regional events and trades. They are 5 different types and you gain them by upgrading your residential zones into regions or import and export. If you want to be part of Club Wars and Monster Trouble, you will need War Simoleons to buy battle stuff from the War Store. Lastly, Design Simoleons are for City Design Challenges, to bring out the city designer in you. When you first start out, you have 8000 Design Simoleons to start off, but you can buy them with SimCash or by upgrading your zones in Design Challenges.

Unlike the real world, you can move your buildings around by holding the building until the little tiny arrows pop up to shift them. You can also store buildings if you intend to reuse them later on. This is a great advantage as you are expanding, you can move parks and residence zones together, and all the factories to another side. Keeping the factories away from the zones improves resident happiness, while building conveniences like stores will keep people happy.

When you are building necessary buildings like fire and health, the map will have a green patch to show coverage. Make sure you build enough facilities to keep residents feeling safe to increase satisfaction. Those little thought bubbles will tell you what you need to do as they are resident's feedback. 

You can play the game for as long as you want, making changes or setting natural disasters on your unsuspecting people. The SimCity BuildIt is essentially your dream city in your phone. You are the Mayor and only you can make your people happy. You are welcome to share your game experience in the comment area below so that more people will like this game!