Building a City - enercities and urban planning game

This week we were asked to play four games similar to sim city. Each game had something to do with building or sustaining a city. They were all different, some were good, whilst some were bad. Each had their own ups and downs. I really enjoyed playing some of these games, but some were a bit boring.

I am going to talk about the positives and negatives of 2 of the games which we played: enercities and urban planning game.

 

Enercities:
Positive -

• entertaining
• good graphics
• 
  

Negative -

• no way to refill natural resources
• natural resources run out quickly

I actually really enjoyed this game. There was a woman in the corner who gave advice and helped us. You had to make sure to keep the citizens happy by building residential away from factories and by building entertainment for them. You also have to build up the economy so that there is money for the city to function and be an environmental and sustainable city.

The biggest let down of this game is probably the fact that your natural resources run out quite quickly and there is no way to refill them. The highest level on this game is 5, I only got up to level 3 before I had no more natural resources left. Since I had no more natural resources, the buildings stopped working and i was not allowed to play anymore.

Urban Planning Game:
Positive -

• learns about budgeting

Negative -

• Bad graphics
• boring
• nothing happens during the game

Urban planning game was really boring. I didn't notice that the instructions were under the game, so i just randomly put anything anywhere. I didn't finish the game, because it was too boring. The only good thing about this game, was that you realize that every city has a budget and you need to keep within it. 

In the game it was important to place all the industry related buildings and anything that makes noise, away from residential areas. This is because people don't like to live next to a loud factory.

Overall I enjoyed enercities the most from all four of the games. There is one problem they all have and that is that you start building the city from the beginning. This is not very realistic as nowadays cities don't start from scratch, but rather replace old buildings or expand around the old city. Therefore it is harder for cities to become more sustainable as they would have to replace a lot or build around the old structures.