Metropolis 1998 is an impressive isometric mashup of SimCity and The Sims with customizable home interiors

According to certain Terran traditions, God created the universe in seven days. I got up this morning and built a small suburban village with a hospital, a school, a police station. And A cafe within 20 minutes. This is the country town of Edwitherington. Population: 8 – one for every non-residential building in the town. Major imports: decorative lampposts, because I like to cherish the old-time atmosphere. Major exports: traffic jams, because I've laid out my village in a little crescent shape backing onto the motorway, which means there are two traffic light junctions about 100 metres apart.

That highway used to be virtually traffic-free, a pristine patch of asphalt against a seething, seething woodland. Cars? They were almost fairytales, the occasional sight. Thanks to my failed attempts at urban planning, the highway has become a diabolical map-length sardine can of isometric roadsters struggling to pass each other. Meanwhile, the eight residents of Edwitherington are being swept from one frighteningly empty council house to the next. Please stay away from the hospital: I forgot to open the toilet doors and the beds are covered in brush.

The game I played was a demo of Metropolis 1998, and it's not as hellish as I'd heard it would be. It's a colourful throwback city-building game with lots of clever little touches, the most important of which is probably the ability to view and tinker with interior layouts. You can choose from ready-made offices, grocers and the like, but true craftsmen will of course want to build a special building and turn the game into a Simmish penal colony if the situation warrants it.

Solo developer YesBox (collaborating with two external pixel artists) is at pains to point out that “this isn't a real game yet” and that it's “just a bit of a gameplay loop.” As of June, the demo only lets you place and tinker with a small number of buildings, pops buy houses and commute to work during the week, but there's no economy to speak of. It's no Cities Skylines. But there's plenty of charm in the prototype, and there's some real Grand Design in YesBox. These include more developed interior lives for your citizens (including choosing a religion), city councils with roles like mayor of education and chief firefighter, celebrity visits and parades, individual citizen bank accounts, and disasters like hurricanes and devastating monopolies.

Post-1.0 release expectations include a zombie apocalypse button, visible crime, and a Sims-like mode that lets you live in a dysfunctional suburban slum you’ve cobbled together from mismatched wallpaper patterns. Maybe this should be every town architect’s final punishment, like those certain Dwarf Fortress Let’s Plays. If there’s any justice in the universe, I’ll be residing in Edwitherington soon. Metropolis 1998 has been in development since November 2021, and doesn’t yet have a final release date.

Leave a Comment