However all it managed to do at launch was bring EA’s inadequate servers down, which was a major problem considering it required you to remain online at all times if you wished to play.

This engine replaced simulating general values and creating visuals to match them with simulating actual individual agents, citizens if you will, and then calculating the rest based on their actions. The 2013 SimCity reboot, developed by Maxis and published by EA for the PC and Mac, was supposed to bring the simulation to the next level with its GlassBox engine. Speaking of ambition and failure, let’s talk about one of the biggest disappointments EA has ever been responsible for(and that’s saying something).

That said, for a Facebook game it was a relatively fun resource management game with a pretty art-style, at the very least worthy of mentioning in this list. It was released in June 2012 but only ran for about a year until EA decided to shut it down to focus on other projects.Īs you may expect from a Facebook game, it suffered from the classic maladies such as micro-transactions and a very simple game-play designed to entertain your half-dead gray matter while you were on the page.

On the contrary, you’d have to pull some complicated stunts in order to run this Facebook game. Well truth be told, it’s not like you need to do anything to avoid SimCity Social. And when we do, we want to have the best time possible.įor that very reason I’ve decided to rank all the main SimCity games so you can best choose which games to pour your time into. SimCity, in most of its forms, is an amazing and immersive experience that’s given most of us irreplaceable memories.īut let’s be real: most of us don’t usually have the time to watch a city go from population 1 to bustling metropolis. Hours upon hours poured into designing the perfect city, setting down roads and planning districts, enacting policies for the good of the people and preparing for the disasters on the horizon.

Glued to our screens, mortal bodies left behind in favor of a hovering camera connected to our immortal mayor brain. Nowadays video games about designing and managing your own space station, prison, mine or even amusement park are a dime a dozen.īut this simulation fever wasn’t always around, and I think it’s appropriate to give some love to the franchise that started it all: SimCity.

Free sim city games to download