City Life takes the city builder sim one step further by introducing the concept of cultures, which represent different socioeconomic groups of people. There are six different cultures in the game: Blue Collar, Fringe, Suits, Have Nots, Elite, and Radical Chic. Each culture has its own type of businesses and recreational activities, and its own preference for other cultures. For example, Blue Collar and Fringe groups do not play well together. To make things interesting, it’s not possible to only have one group in your city, because all types of people are needed to fill jobs, so there is a very real possibility of culture clash.

You start with the ability to build Have Not, Blue Collar and Fringe businesses, which draws those populations to your city. As your city gets larger, distinct neighborhoods develop and you have to tend to the needs of each neighborhood, providing housing, health care, shopping, and leisure activities. Over time, as your city grows, more cultures will be interested in living there. Careful planning is needed if you want to minimize cultural strife - if that’s what you want to do, of course!

Once you load the game, you have to choose to start in either scenario or free mode. The scenario mode provides some goals to achieve in order to unlock new maps. These goals include meeting targets for household income, total population, or cultural mix, and there are three achievement levels (bronze, silver, and gold) for each scenario. I’ve found that the goals provide a real challenge and take some time to achieve, but since there’s no storyline to go with the scenarios, there’s little point in playing that mode unless you are really motivated by winning something.

To start your city, you next choose a map to play. Each map is divided into sections, so you can start in one part of the map and eventually buy the surrounding land when your city gets larger. In scenario mode, you have a few maps to choose from at the start, and you can unlock the more advanced maps by successfully completing scenarios.

After you’ve decided on a mode and a map, you actually start your city by building a City Hall. This serves as the central point of your city. As the city grows, so does City Hall, which becomes larger and more palatial. Then comes the fun part (for us Sim City fans, at least) – designing business, industrial, and residential districts. Necessary services like medical care and shopping districts must be placed so that all residents have access to them. The game uses a glowing circle to show you the area of influence for a particular building. Some buildings can have negative impacts, like factories and waste treatment plants, so you usually want to make sure the circle doesn’t hit your best neighborhoods, for example.

As the city grows, your residents’ need change and more options become available. Small and large apartment buildings and larger businesses are some of the first new options, but parks, city services, schools, and recreational activities all get unlocked eventually. As I mentioned before, this is where culture clash can really begin. You can’t grow your city by keeping all of the cultures totally separated – it’s not an efficient use of the space. Plus, each group has a different set of needs that you have to meet. The real art to City Life is finding the magic in keeping the city balanced, the people happy, and the coffers full. This was the most difficult part of the game for me. I began quite a few cities and did great for awhile, keeping up with housing and job demand. But a satisfied, small population of two cultural groups isn’t enough in City Life. If the city doesn’t grow, it just sort of fades away. There’s a secret to keeping the city growing and prosperous that I haven’t yet mastered, but it’s intriguing enough that I want to keep playing rather than give up.

So, how do you keep your finger on the pulse of the city? There are plenty of charts and graphics to let you know how well you’re doing. The percentage breakdown by culture is displayed at the top of the screen, which is nice because you don’t have to go hunting for it in some menu. In addition to these traditional elements, the game prompts you to address issues via a message window. You’ll be alerted when cultures clash, when more housing is needed, and when the populace is unhappy with job prospects or the availability of services. Sometimes these messages are cryptic, like when I’m told that the Blue Collars lack job advancement opportunities, but it’s not clear what I need to do to fix the problem. I wonder if some of that confusion is due to some kind of translation issue, given that Monte Cristo is a French game company.

My recently upgraded video card had no trouble handling City Life’s slick 3D graphics. There’s even a “man on the street” mode that allows you to zoom in on residents going about their lives. I thought the game looked great, but I turned off the soundtrack immediately. It was too repetitious for my tastes.

The game’s user interface is well thought out and intuitive. As mentioned above, many elements are on the screen already and provide good feedback. However, sometimes the game would tell me that I unlocked a new building, and I wouldn’t be able to figure out which building it was from the image in the video window. A more descriptive message would be helpful there. Also, sometimes I found building placement to be a little fidgety with my mouse, and I would accidentally place buildings while trying to maneuver around the screen. I just found I had to be more careful than usual while placing things.

City Life certainly brings some new challenges to the city building genre of games. Whether you’re new to this type of game, or you’ve been playing since Sim City days, I think you’ll find plenty to enjoy here. The key seems to be in carefully planning the layout of your city to minimize clashes. If you start out with the tutorial, and fight the urge to build too much too soon, you will be able to manage your city’s cultural groups effectively and make everyone happy. It may take a few tries, but you’ll build that Metropolis.