NimbleBit's Bit City – Retrospective
Although I haven't been writing about it as much, I've still been into older mobile games, and since I was playing so much Tiny Tower and have also checked back on my Pocket Planes and Pocket Trains networks, I remembered that there's another NimbleBit simulator game that I've been ignoring: Bit City. I've brought it up twice recently, but I decided that now's a good time to do a proper review/retrospective.
Bit City came out in March 13, 2017, and despite sharing the same general theme, it's a bit different from NimbleBit's other "business simulators". More than anything, Bit City is closer to an idle game, which NimbleBit's previous simulators weren't, as you couldn't just let them run in the background to progress.
In Bit City you manage a city, which starts out blank, and you progressively build up and populate. When you completely fill a city you get to level up, starting over with a larger blank city to develop, and you accumulate upgrades as you go on, which give you more money and more ways to earn money.
Your buildings generate money, which explains the idle part, but there's also vehicles around the city which you can buy and then click on to earn money. In Level 1 you start out with just a car park, but when you get to Level 4 you get an airport where you can add planes to your city, and in Level 5 you get a seaport where you can add boats, which give even more money.
This game technically features the bitizens, but they only appear in their usual state as icons in the tutorial and some menus. There is no BitBook, and the only actual life in the city are the afformentioned vehicles, though a lot of the buildings do have little figures which I guess are supposed to be the bitizens.
On that note, I do find the buildings very cool! Since the game is 3D they're composed of voxels, and I do think they're all very good, even if they aren't consistent sizes. I'd also love to recreate some of these in Minecraft. I also actually like how the rest of the world is more polygonal, as it creates a contrast I really like!
I do actually find Bit City very fun, but I don't like it as much as NimbleBit's other simulators, even if they aren't completely comparable.
It all comes down to the fact that this is definitely an idle game, which the other games aren't. Even though you can have tasks running in the background in the previous games, you actually had to check in frequently to keep them going, but in this game you can pretty much have it running in the background constantly and keep making progress without checking it — in fact that's pretty much what I've been doing for some weeks now. This makes it much closer to something like Cookie Clicker than to NimbleBit's previous games.
This is probably one of the NimbleBit games that has remained the most untouched, so I do think it has the same amount of quality and polish as it always has, and so I actually really recommend it if you like idle games! If you're directly looking for something in the vein of Tiny Tower, Pocket Planes, or Pocket Trains, this might not be what you're looking for, but it might still be worth checking out if you think you might be interested.
As of writing today, I just completed my Level 8 city! My most upgraded buildings are at Level 249, I have filled every lot, bought every boat, plane, and car (except the tour bus), and have bought every upgrade for the city.
City 8 is Bit City and was originally the last level, but in a later update they actually added eight more cities on The Moon! I think I'll stay here on the Earth for a bit, but very soon I'll be taking a voyage to space, and I might share what I find there.
Also, I did notice that City 6, Empire City, actually looked very similar to New York. River Ridge (City 7) reminded me a lot of London, and I think Bit City is a combination of different Californian cities, as NimbleBit are based in San Diego, but there's a Hollywood-esque "BIT CITY" sign, and a bridge with closely resembles the Golden Gate Bridge. That's fun!
