High Rise City by developer Fourexo Entertainment and publisher Deck13—PC(Steam) preview written by Susan N. with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 4.5 minutes.
Introduction
Fourexo Entertainment stepped into the city building genre with it's highly anticipated title High Rise City. It's meant to be a more challenging simulation game with complex system chains and slow building of the economy. Not only does it succeed at providing a bit of a challenge, it also manages to add a ton of extra unnecessary frustrations as you build up your megalopolis. While it has a sturdy foundation, it has a bunch of flaws that may irritate players. Let's cover the good, the bad, and the ugly in this preview of High Rise City.
Gameplay
The city building genre can fluctuate from incredibly good gameplay to incredibly bad with anything else in between. In the case of High Rise City, I found that it begins rather well. The visual look and feel of the game is darn good. Beginning the game with its tutorial on the mechanics is simple enough to grasp but more challenging to master. And unlike some other city builders, it has a feature that most don't utilize. Every now and then, the game will give players optional objectives to build a clay pit or add another fishery. It even incentivizes you to complete these tasks because it will help increase building levels. This is not a feature present in many city builders that I've seen. Mostly, games will give players an end objective to reach for, beyond the tutorial objectives, city builders tend to abandon this idea.
Unlike games like Cities Skylines where players can only place buildings down on a road, High Rise City will erect buildings in between other ones to take up the whole space. It's not as linear in this way. However, placing down a farm or a resource generating establishment often leads to closing off an area by roads and not by fencing - which is a unique decision.
In fact, placing buildings will depending entirely on what kind of establishment you're looking to place. Instead of putting down a huge section of commercial buildings, players will put down a supermarket or a warehouse.
Overall, High Rise City relies on players watching their resources and building accordingly. You'll need wood, planks, and money to build. In order for the buildings to function properly, there will need to be electricity and water to the building. They will also need a fire house, a police station, hauler, and warehouse nearby as well. To neglect building these crucial buildings will result in disastrous results like a burned down establishment! And that isn't even the worst part, either. Unlike other games that will allow you to rebuild, this game harkens back to city builders of old where you have to demolish the building and make a new one, thus wasting a ton of materials.
Graphics and UI
One of the most interesting aspects of High Rise City is its graphics. The UI is also a bit more unique than other city builders. Graphically, the game is rather detailed with clear indications of supplies that are being hauled by trucks. Additionally, when players are placing down buildings that have an area of effect, it is clearly colored to show how far the building will operate.
If you are placing down a new farm, players will need to surround the area with roads, the space will indicate if something will interfere with the farm. But most importantly, the different types of farms will appear as a different color, making it easier for players to see how much area they have allocated to a specific farm.
A neat feature that the developers added to High Rise City is the ability to embark on a delivery quest where players get to drive a vehicle in third person to a designated location. While it is a nice concept to add in a game, my graphics just wasn't having any of it. More on that point later.
As for the UI, the developers have chosen to progressively show your resources on the top bar that are relevant to whatever stage you happen to be on. The full resource list will show you items that are not yet unlocked. The building UI in many aspects is the true downfall. While the buttons group services together, it does so through a series of sub menus. For example, the iron industry that you can build up displays a nice iron bar. When you click on the industry button, you then have to go into the iron sub menu to see the buildings. I'd rather just skip having one of these sub menus to build what I need.
Pros and Cons
High Rise City has a number of pros and cons. Beginning with some of the good points, the graphics are quite nice. It's easy to distinguish what buildings perform a function based on the color or look of the building. It has a lot of popup menus that display valuable information. The game also doesn't worry about the traffic flow as there is no collision with the vehicles. Other notable good features are:
- Clearly marked materials being transported from place to place
- Mini objectives to complete which upgrade buildings with no cost to you
- Handy autosaving feature
- Progress letters that are voice acted
- Customizability of city through manual upgrading and a plethora of decorations in base game
Among my gripes of High Rise City range from too many sub menus for basic building, poor optimization of graphics in certain locations, and lack of specific options at times.
- Public transportation setup is clunky and annoying
- Too many sub menus for basic buildings
- The delivery mechanic is a neat idea but too buggy to be worthwhile
- Even after being available for a few months, the game crashes a decent amount
Final Thoughts
High Rise City is fundamentally a great game to get into. It has excellent graphical integrity and decent customization to allow it to be enjoyable. The voice acting for the progress updates is a nice touch. It even has smaller incentivized objectives to complete while working on a great megalopolis. Its transportation system is not the most desirable, personally. With the metros and planes update, players have the ability to get citizens to and from work easier. Overall, High Rise City is quite fun and challenging even with the issues it has. I recommend giving this city builder a try!
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