The city-building genre has gotten big enough on Facebook that virtually every major and minor developer wants to have one of them own to put out there.Superfun Townis iwi’s city-builder. Graphics and a more measured approach to game design are the main things that set Superfun Town apart from the pack of city-builders. Otherwise, if you’ve spent much time with MyEmperororMillionaire City, you’ll find this game feeling quite familiar (if beautiful).
The city-building genre has gotten big enough on Facebook that virtually every major and minor developer wants to have one of them own to put out there. Superfun Town is iwi’s city-builder. Graphics and a more measured approach to game design are the main things that set Superfun Town apart from the pack of city-builders. Otherwise, if you’ve spent much time with My Empire or Millionaire City, you’ll find this game feeling quite familiar (if beautiful).
As in most basic city-builders, you arrange buildings and over time generate revenue off of them, which you can spend on decorations for your town, better buildings, or other special attractions. You level up as you attract and build housing for more new residents in your town. New residents arrive periodically on a bus and wait at the bus stop until you build housing for them. Housing generates money once per day, while businesses generate money over time. You get the best money yield out of businesses by collecting from them every five minutes, a trick you can use to quickly earn enough money to buy every possible thing available at your experience level. Exploiting this really makes the game unsatisfying by removing all possible elements of strategy or challenge, but the yield for collecting on 3 hour or 8 hour cycles is so much worse it’s hard to imagine why anyone would.
Superfun Town doesn’t make some mistakes you typically see in city-builders, though. In My Empire, for example, it’s possible to gain over 25 experience levels in a day and fill all available land within a week if you play aggressively. Superfun Town sets a limit on how many new residents can arrive at your town per day, which does keep you from blowing through all the content so rapidly that you’re bored with the game in a matter of days. You gain more of an appreciation for the lovely building designs when you’re not rapidly bypassing basic houses and businesses for more advanced ones. If earning money could be balanced so that it followed the same curve as gaining new residents, Superfun Town would have extraordinary stickiness and fun factor.
As it stands, Superfun Town is distinctly okay. Its main appeal lies in its bright and appealing graphics. You can build something really gorgeous in Superfun Town if you’re so inclined. There aren’t many social mechanics beyond gifting and a basic ability to assist friends in earning money, but that’s fine. City-builders work very well as a primarily solitary experience, appealing to the basic human urge to create our own little walled gardens. Superfun Town is not actually superfun as of this writing, but it’s relaxing and has lots of room
