If you like Farmville, you’ll love City Story. You are the mayor of your own city. You have all the power! You decide the layout of the land. You get about 100,000 coins to start, and use that money to build the city. There is a menu feature that allows you to receive messages, connect to Facebook, and also connect with your friends and the community. I strongly recommend you check out the FAQ/help area first. You’ll get all the rules of the game and advice on how to use your cash the most efficiently. The key to the game is to have more happiness points than people. You earn happiness points by “enhancing your city.” This is done by adding parks, baseball fields or buildings.
The idea of the game is to create wealth, increase your population, and bring happiness to your citizens. Just like any city, people need parks and recreational sites to bring happiness. You increase buying power when you reach a certain level. And you do this by buying more properties so people can live in your city. You’re building factories and selling products to help pay for new businesses and residential areas. The way you earn coins is to start contracts at your factories, but the key is to go back to your factory and pick up your coins to collect them. If you don’t, you’ll forfeit your coins. However, you can also instantly complete your contracts by tapping on any busy factory to bring up the Manage Factory menu, but again, it will cost you in real dollars to do so. I believe that’s where this free app gets its money. Like Farmville, you’re encouraged to tell your friends, and you can also reach out to the community. In fact you can earn more coins, by cleaning another city’s buildings. It takes a little getting used to, but in time you’ll get the hang of it.
You can even buy more coins by ponying up more money of your own to make your city larger. Whereas Farmville asks you for a credit card, City Story is tied into your iTunes account. These games start out as free but can become addicting and can get a little out of hand. Especially when you start using your own money to buy more coins.
