DIYgamer

SimCity + Tetris = CityRain [Review]

Can you even begin to imagine what the combination of SimCity and Tetris might be? Well, don’t think about it for too long because I’m not sure you can get much closer to that idea than CityRain.

CityRain is a unique, inspiring indie game born out of a concept from Mother Gaia Studio in Brazil and the final product lives up to exactly what we are all thinking, a damn near perfect envisioning of two great classic games melded into one. Fans of both games: prepare to have your minds blown and placed into nice, perfectly fit, nooks and crannies. Oh and score one for the environmentalists as this game is dripping with love for mother Earth.

Gameplay

• CityRain has implemented two great games into one and, what’s better, is that they did it without mucking up either of the other game’s basic philosophies. From a SimCity point of view you’ll instantly feel at home as you place police stations, residential, industrial, commercial, and other amenities around your city’s plots. From a Tetris point of view you’ll love that while city pieces come in sizes of one plot each, they are, randomly, clumped together in many of your favorite shapes adding a new dynamic to your city building scheme.
• Despite borrowing heavily from both Tetris and SimCity, CityRain’s gameplay feels fresh. This game is the ultimate homage to both of those classics. They take ideas but never, at any point, did I feel like the game was just a copycat trying to hone in on a cheap combination of the two games.
• The game comes with two seperate modes of play (outside of the campaign): Quickplay and Blockmania. In Quickplay you’ll be given a random map, and some various options (time length, turns, etc) and set out to build your city. It’s actually my favorite part of the game. Blockmania, on the other hand, is more of a Tetris game than SimCity game. You’ll be given a completely blank slate to place down buildings and plots. You’ll have to survive a certain amount of time limit until an earthquake wipes out most of your city and you can rebuild. It’s definitely the more difficult of the two.
• The game also has a campaign mode where in you’ll play as an intern for the R.A.I.N. organization. These are goal oriented levels that task you with building this and that. The problem with it is that it’s just not that much fun. Oftentimes the goals are fairly simple and don’t provide much of a challenge and, when compared to the Quickplay mode, there’s just not much to keep you playing other than the fact that you have to play the campaign in order to unlock special buildings in the Quickplay mode.
  
• Unfortunately, since the game’s view point is similar to that of SimCity 2000’s (isometric) you don’t exactly have any good indication of when your buildings plots will land. Sure, you can see the plots getting closer to the ground but it’s never really clear when it’ll actually touch base which can lead to some mishaps when your still trying to decide where to place that L-shaped plot.
  

Style

• CityRain has a clean, fresh art style to it. Which makes sense given that the game, itself, is largely an environmentalist-type game. By and large, however, the style is pleasant to look at and the colors are bright, vibrant and eye-catching. There’s not much more we could ask for out of a game like CityRain.

Story

• There’s not really a story with CityRain. You have your main campaign which tasks you with a number of goals as an intern for the R.A.I.N. organization but it’s nothing really noteworthy.

Everything Else

• CityRain has an excellent musical score attached to the game. In fact, it’s almost too perfect for the type of game it is; a city-building puzzler with a heavy emphasis on saving the environment. The inclusion of the music definitely adds to the look, feel, and message of the overall game.
• While there’s no direct multiplayer in the game, CityRain does keep an online leaderboards which, for the more hardcore of us out there, should be enough to bring us back back for some good ol’ Quickplay or Blockmania action.

For more information on CityRain, or if you wish to download the demo, please visit their website: CityRain.

Curious about our review process? Read all about it HERE.

-This reviewer was given a copy of the game in order to review it.-