It’s pretty much impossible to discuss RamaCity without mentioning CityVille. While there are a number of differences, including the fact that RamaCity isn’t on Facebook, the games are incredibly similar. Both are city building sims. Both have you collecting rent, supplying businesses with goods, and accomplishing various goals. At a glance the games are the same. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find some key differences that make RamaCity a different, but not necessarily better, experience.
It’s pretty much impossible to discuss RamaCity without mentioning CityVille. While there are a number of differences, including the fact that RamaCity isn’t on Facebook, the games are incredibly similar. Both are city building sims. Both have you collecting rent, supplying businesses with goods, and accomplishing various goals. At a glance the games are the same. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find some key differences that make RamaCity a different, but not necessarily better, experience.
The main goal, of course, is to simply build up a increasingly large city. You can place residences and businesses, as well as decorations to keep everyone happy. As you gain experience new types of buildings and items will become available for purchase, and you’ll earn money by selling goods and collecting rent. In a nice change, you don’t need to purchase expansions for your city. Instead, it simply gets a bit bigger each time you gain an experience level.
A Facebook-style energy system is in place, which goes down by one each time you complete an action. The bar refills over time and you can speed this process up by purchasing a better power plant, some of which are greener than others.
One of the drawbacks of CityVille is that in order to get very far you need either a lot of friends or a lot of money to make up the difference. But RamaCity is much more inviting for a solo player. There are no gifted items or jobs that need to be occupied by friends necessary to complete a building. In fact, there are no holdups at all. Once something has unlocked and you can afford it, it’s all yours.
The businesses work slightly different as well. Instead of farming for goods, you’ll have factories that can produce specific goods like dog toys or shoes. Once they’re complete you can then supply a store, which will temporarily change its appearance to match whatever it’s selling. What’s nice about this system is that there’s a sense of progression. Once you sell enough of one type of good you’ll unlock a better, more lucrative one, encouraging you to constantly be making new stuff.
Not all of the changes are for the better, though. The mission system in particular feels pretty lackluster. Not only are the missions lacking in personality, with no real characters in the game, but you also only have one at a time. And you don’t take on missions automatically. Instead, you’ll have to remember to head into the mission menu to both accept a new mission and to claim your rewards. And it’s pretty easy to forget all about it. Overall the game just feels like it has less content: fewer things to buy and build and less variety with what’s there.
But as an alternative to CityVille, RamaCity is strong competition. Actually, with some added content and an enhanced mission structure it could be even better. It’s a better solo experience, it features a more in-depth business management system, and it even looks better, with bouncy and inviting 3D visuals. If you feel like building a city somewhere other than Facebook, there are few better places to head than RamaCity.
