Polycorne managed to produce a great hit with the release of Silicon City into early access.
Silicon City is a city builder that brings back a retro yet minimalist look to the genre. It was both developed and published by a French Indipendent Development studio, Polycorne. In 2010 Aurélien Jacquot and Jérémie Darciaux worked on a small project for a car traffic simulator, although it did not see the light of day until 2015. Polycorne was founded in September 2020 by co-founders Aurélien Jacquot and Jérémie Darciaux.
Despite its retro feel and appearance, Silicon City is still a city builder. This is a genre that has been around since the 1960s with the creation of the text-based game The Sumerian Game. Although by 1990, it had become increasingly popular with games like SimTown and SimCity being developed.
Silicon City, much like every other city builder game, has one major goal. Build the best city you can. Unfortunately, you cannot build a city without someone to inhabit it. In Silicon City, your citizens are called Silizens. There are two modes available for play Campaign and Sandbox.
Sandbox mode makes this a little easier as you start with a good chunk of money and can choose your map size as well as the difficulty. Your difficulties are Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard. Each comes with its challenges, such as natural disasters spawning more often or just making winning the election harder. As with any City Builder, you start by creating a power grid, some roads, and your first residential area.
There are three different-sized maps in Sandbox mode. Extra Small or 32×32, Small 64×54, and finally medium 128×128. Hopefully, some larger maps will be added in later updates. You will also get to choose different biomes for your city. Dessert, Island, and mainland. Each has its own appeals and natural disasters.
If you are new to city builders, it’s probably best to jump into the tutorial first. Silicon City has a semi-comprehensive tutorial in its campaign mode which consists of 5 levels. Although some aspects of this city builder are not explained enough in certain aspects and the UI can lead to a bit of confusion.
Such as the different visions when clicking on the top left icon on the UI. However, it is briefly explained in the campaign with one mission needing you to check the flow of electricity going through your city. Each category in this data area shows information about your city, such as the electricity needs, your Silizen’s happiness, and of course, land value.
Land Value is important if you want to attract more Silizens to the city. If a residential area is built near a factory section, then, unfortunately, not many people will move in there. Land Value isn’t the only factor Silizens consider before they move into the city. Green spaces such as Parks and sports areas will both boost Silizen’s happiness and land value. But things such as police stations, hospitals, and fire departments are also needed for a Silizen to consider moving into your new city.
One for them to feel safe to walk the streets as you bring the crime rate down. Another is for any medical emergencies that happen in its zoning. While hospitals affect a large area, there can be some small spaces where they don’t reach, so having a healthy mix of hospitals and clinics are a must.
Unfortunately, with needing to build so many things to keep your city running, you need to keep an eye on your expenses. If it goes into the negative, then unfortunately, you may need to raise taxes or create more jobs for more money to be earned, but there is another way. If you feel truly desperate, you can get a loan from the bank.
This comes with the cost of having to pay it off each month, as well as the fact that if you miss a payment, you still have to pay interest. Unfortunately, raising the taxes is a double edges sword. Raise it too high too fast, and your Silizens will get angry with you. Have the taxes too low, and you may start putting the city in debt.
If your Silizens aren’t happy, you could just ask them what’s wrong using a chat command !help. This is used in the game’s built-in social network Barkr. They will let you know if they are unhappy with, for example, their jobs or maybe with the rate of taxes that have been implemented. Unfortunately, your profit per month doesn’t stay as a solid number and fluctuates often in relationship to new jobs as well as Silzens leaving the city.
One of the biggest surprises with Silicon City is its interface with Twitch. For streamers, your viewers will be able to influence the game a little by moving into the city and getting work as one of the Silizens, and voting if you should stay as the Mayor of the city. This can lead to some hilarious antics and maybe even your chat ending the game on your first election day.
Elections are a huge part of the game, as after every single one, you try to build up for the next one. Unfortunately, if you lose, it is game over, and you will have to start again in a new save or load a previous save of your current city to find out where you went wrong. Your opponent will be a randomly generated NPC depending on your difficulty setting.
Much like the real world, you may have to plan for natural disasters such as tornados. If one goes tearing through your city, you may have a small problem on your hands, depending on what. You may have to rebuild roads, residential areas, and perhaps even your power grid. This can lead to huge financial losses, but many of your Silzens may also leave.
Silicon City brings back the old SimCity 3000 look to video games instead of opting for either a more in-depth appearance like City Skylines or a themed take such as Frostpunk or Surviving Mars. With a grid-like pattern, it has a unique and simplistic style that keeps to the 1990s theme of the game. It is also fitting that your Silizens are small monolithic beings instead of actual humans.
The animations of Silicon City, whether you are running on an X4 speed or just an X1 is smooth. There isn’t any jitter or even any bugs to note that could break the game. It’s also pretty hard to get your Silzens to cause a traffic jam to see if that with cause any issues. They are incredibly efficient when it comes to things like that.
The overall sound of Silicon City is done well. However, going with some classical tunes is a little weird. But it does work well once you buckle down into playing the game, and it, surprisingly, doesn’t get tedious. In the game, you don’t hear any voice acting, but the sound effects work well to emphasize the change as your city becomes busier and your roads become less of a countryside road packed with dirt and becomes the expected tarred roads of a bustling city.
Overall, Silicon City is a surprising gem of a city builder that is going back to the genre’s roots and removing a lot of the more complicated resource management. It’s a great game for someone diving into the City Builder genre for the first time and has plenty of content to keep you coming back.
