City Life First Look - SimCity with a Social Conscience

While EA's The Sims franchise is showing no signs of weakening, fans of SimCity have been waiting a while now for the next chapter in the iconic city-building series. Looking to tide this crowd over until then is CDV and French developer Monte Cristo. The two companies have teamed up to release City Life, which is essentially a French take on SimCity, this summer. (CDV is publishing the game in North America, but City Life has different publishers elsewhere.)

City Life won't have you rebuilding any existing cities, but, like SimCity, it allows you to build a modern, generic, American-style metropolis from the ground up. And while many of the game's basic mechanics will seem familiar to fans of SimCity (you designate building zones for residential, commercial, and industrial construction; build power plants, hospitals, schools, and other services; and tinker with tax rates), City Life differs from SimCity in one very key way. This is a city-building game with a social conscience, which is what you might expect from a French game.

In City Life, you have to worry about classes--the strata lines in society that divide the population into the haves and the have-nots, or the poor from the bourgeoisie. There are six distinct social classes in the game, such as the "fringes," the "have-nots," and the "blue collars," and each class has basic needs, as well as up or down relationships with the other classes. It makes sense, for example, that the "have-nots" might have a problem with the wealthy or intellectuals (and vice versa), while they get along better with the "fringes." What this means is that you have to design your city to find a good balance and get the cultures living together in some kind of social harmony, because if the balance is upset, you'll end up with riots and other issues on your hands. And while you can call in SWAT teams and build prisons to try and pacify the crowds, keep in mind that enforcing short-term security this way often comes with long-term repercussions.

Of course, this might make you wonder why you wouldn't just build a city full of the "good" people and leave all of the others out. That won't work in City Life, because all cities need a mix of the different classes. Build a power plant, and you may discover that it won't run because you need a certain number of blue-collar workers. Or, some of your businesses may hire predominately from the lower (and less expensive) classes. You've got to accommodate everyone and find what the right balance is. Each class has its own needs and wants, so you'll need to build them their structures. For example, the lower classes will settle for basics such as supermarkets, but the upper classes will want luxury goods, and that means that you have to develop the infrastructure to deliver to both.

City Life will have a campaign structure, where you'll have to progress through a series of objective-based scenarios to unlock the next city. These scenarios might range from boosting a city's population by a certain amount to reaching a certain level of social harmony between the classes. Each scenario will have three differing victory conditions, and so you'll be able to keep playing each city until you achieve all three, or you can move on to the next city once you've unlocked it. The game will also ship with a powerful editor, which will let you create your own cities and scenarios, and then upload them to CDV's Web site to share with other players. Or, you can simply download other people's creations and play around with those.

Visually, City Life uses a 3D-graphics engine and has a nice presentation. The 3D camera allows for one of the neat features in the game, as well. You can zoom the camera down to street level and see your citizens going about their daily lives. You can also use this feature to gauge the health of your city. If trash isn't getting picked up, you'll see dumpsters overflowing, or if the neighborhood is going to the dogs, graffiti and other signs of crime appear. You'll also be able to import your own music into the game, if you want.

With the last SimCity game released three years ago, City Life looks like it will bridge the gap to the next SimCity title, whenever that comes out. The game has all the basic building blocks of SimCity, but its emphasis on social awareness is a nice touch. Expect City Life to ship this summer.