According to some Terran lore, God created the universe in seven days. Well, I got up this morning and created a compact suburban village with a hospital, school, police station AND cafe within 20 minutes. This is the backwater market town of Edwitherington. Population: 8 – one for every non-residential building in the town. Main imports: Ornate lanterns, because I like to maintain an old-timey feel. Main exports: Traffic jams, because I’ve laid out my village as a little crescent leading back to the motorway, meaning there are two traffic lithe junctions about 100 metres apart.
This motorway used to be almost traffic-free, a pristine tarmac embroidery on a whistling, seething expanse of forest. Cars? They were almost fairytales, seen once in a Russian year. Thanks to my failed attempts at city planning, the motorway has hardened into a diabolical sardine can the length of a map of isometric roadsters struggling to pass each other. Meanwhile, the eight residents of Edwitherington drift from one eerily empty municipal building to the next. Please stay away from the hospital: I forgot to open the bathroom doors, and the beds are swallowed by the bushes.
The game I play is Metropolis 1998 demoand it’s not nearly as hellish as I’ve just made it out to be. It’s a colorful, retrospective city-builder with lots of nifty little touches, the most vital of which is probably the ability to see and tinker with interior layouts. You can choose from pre-made offices, grocery stores, and so on, but a true craftsman will of course want to custom-build and, if need be, turn the game into a Simmish penal colony.
Solo developer YesBox (working with two outside pixel artists) is at pains to note that “it’s not a real game yet” and that it only has a “sliver of a game loop.” In June, the demo allowed you to place and tinker with a compact number of buildings, and the pops bought houses and went to work on weekdays, but there was nothing to talk about. Cities Skylines it is not. But the prototype has plenty of charm, and YesBox has Truly great projectsThese include more developed internal lives for citizens (including the ability to choose their religion), city councils with roles such as chief education officer and chief firefighter, celebrity visits and parades, individual citizen bank accounts, and disasters such as hurricanes and ruinous monopolies.
Post-1.0 aspirations include a zombie apocalypse button, perceptible crime, and a Sims-like mode that lets you live in a dysfunctional suburban sprawl that you’ve cobbled together from mismatched wallpaper patterns. Perhaps this should be the ultimate punishment for every city architect, as in certain Dwarf Fortress Let’s Plays. If there is justice in the universe, I will soon be living in Edwitherington. Metropolis 1998 is in development as of November 2021 and does not yet have a final release date.
