Despite the huge array of SimCity-like games on Facebook, including Playdom’s Social City, Metrogames released its newest game, entitled Towner. The game currently has over 1.7 million monthly active users and this number is expected to increase over the coming days.
Just like the rest of its contemporaries, the player is granted a piece of land where he or she can build a town. In general, the game starts at purchasing a building, placing on the player’s desired location, clicking on its flooring so that the construction may begin, and clicking on the finished structure to inaugurate it. Money for construction can be earned from dues paid by tenants renting the buildings.
However unlike many city building games, Towner requires a lot of interaction with the player. If a building is ready to be inaugurated and the player fails to click on the building within a certain amount of time, the building will be condemned (like farm crops that rot if not harvested in time). In addition, rent paid from tenants will be lost if these are not claimed.
There are also two other important things to maintain in the town: quality and happiness. Quality is maintained whenever buildings are repaired, and these are repaired at regular intervals. If repair is missed, quality will go down and the next repair will be more expensive. To keep happiness among residents, in contrast, the player must have enough fire stations and buildings for jobs, entertainment, security, health, and education.
The game has one unusual feature. This is the player’s inability to lay down roads. Nevertheless, it is easy to be creative in this game since there are weird structures that the player can build including a UFO monument and the Sphinx. (Click HERE to play.)
