Bit City

Voices of: N/A
Developer: NimbleBit
Designer: N/A
Rating: E
Genre: City Builder
System: Mobile
2017

Times Completed:
Tim: 1

Summary: Players build cities to reach specific population goals.

Review:
Tim: Man, Bit City is a dumb mobile game I spent WAY too much playing. Like the best/worst mobile games, it's easy but addicting. It's a City Building game, which is always fun, to see the upwards path of progress as you start small and increase in sophistication. The game throws a bunch of options at you, although you soon discover the game is far more mindless and simple than it appears. It offers you the illusion of strategic choice, but the reality is more mundane. Still, I played this game for hours and hours over months, in moments where I was waiting. You mostly just point and click.

One of the big plusses is having so many building designs. As you construct your cities, you see many different varieties of buildings, which give a nice sense of customization to the levels. There's also special buildings you can unlock. I never paid for anything on this app, but I still managed to unlock a bunch of different ones- NimbleBit, LLC was cool. As were the University, Empire Tower, Angkor Wat, Trevi Fountain, Yomeimon Gate, the Space Needle, Neuschwanstein Castle, and the Great Pyramid. There were a ton of other special buildings (I only unlocked 23 out of 62), but the game wants you to spend actual money to do that. No thank you. That's really the most fun part- building increasingly larger cities and seeing urban sprawl take place.

The game certainly keeps you interested- there are a series of City Upgrades you can unlock, which increasing your building earning, car earning, reduce construction time, increase bonuses, start auto construction, etc. There's planes, ships, cars, satellites- much to unlock and discover. It's all a bit mindless and repetitive, but you get invested in accomplishing all the different tasks. Without paying, some of them take extremely long to do- hence your face is in your phone, playing something you know is adding very little value to your life. Still, it's a fun distraction- to an extent. There's also Game Unlockables, which you can spend green dollars on- this makes the game go quicker and become more fun. If you're like me and unwilling to spend any money, it takes a long time to unlock these and there's no way I would open up everything. I could have gotten hundreds of thousands of the green dollars for like $2.99, but again, not interested.

I did play this game until the very end. I can't remember how many levels there were originally, but I was ecstatic to discover I finished them all! And then, that unlocked the frickin' Moon! So, I had to play through all the Moon levels, too. The key is eventually building up enough Prestige Points where you can start the game over, this time with increased profits. When I finished the Moon, I'd collected 568,012 Keys, which increased my Earnings Bonus +568,012%. I still had another 131,069 keys I could have obtained had I started over again. But, I finished Apollo City was 1.11 million residents and completed the game! Whew.

I admit, I still have mostly fond memories of Bit City although I was incredibly frustrated with it as I played hour after hour. Without paying, it takes a long, long time. I got so sick of clicking the little coins and rarely the green dollars, but the game really wants you to click, click, click. All things considered, for a free game, it had a surprising amount of depth (mostly perceived, but that's okay). I did feel accomplished when I finished the game on the moon. So, there's way better games out there, but Bit City did take up countless hours of my attention.



Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: N/A



If You Enjoyed This Game, We Recommend: Billionaire