Caitlyn+Education



Get ready to be the mayor of your own city! Kind of. Here is a game for you to learn important things like resource management, and electricity is made, used, and how to preserve it, and that's about it. It gets a little tedious after about 30 minutes, making it a good game for classrooms, and then moving to a conversation about it.



You get to name your city, and then you are responsible for raising money, population, and electricity. You raise population by raising happiness, building farms/attractions, and lowering taxes (see Local Body Rates). You can measure the population happiness via smiley faces in the population box. You control taxes via the slider. Each square represents different opportunities for your town’s growth.

Every plot except for mountains, and rivers, you can check for coal or gas, plant forest or farms, make campgrounds etc. You have to balance your green space, and lumber, farms, and other things that bring tourist and jobs. On hills you can build wind farms. At river's you can build campgrounds, processing plants to turn gas/coal into electricity (or you can even buy and sell coal and gas), and at the beach you can build beaches, underwater generation, and even whale watching. Your goal is to promote town growth, and build efficient electricity for 150 turns, even if that means buying the electricity. You can change taxes, institute programs, and sell and buy goods, but everything costs, money and electricity every turn, though many can produce more the resources they use. You lose when you’re out of cash, or electricity. When (if) you win you get this screen, (not my game).



You can play and learn about how electricity is used, and ways to conserve energy (via town programs) and the cost to environment to do so. The only problem is you learn through game exploration with minimal guidance. The game shows you very little, with loading screen hints, and help if you actively look for it. With guidance, like in a classroom setting, or follow up you could learn a great deal. However I on 3 separate occasions played for half an hour and only this last time did I win, and that was through sheer determination!

While the game is great in educational ability (electricity, tourism, resource management) is frustrating to fail multiple times without a real understanding why. I would recommend it as a guided excersize, or to teach rewards through perseverance and determination, but as a send home assignment all students are going to learn is frustration.