When in Toronto, I’ve been wasting some time playing LinCity-NG. It is a city building game similar to Simcity, built off the free but ancient LinCity with a new 3D engine and available for Linux and Windows.

I keep alternating about whether this game is fun or not. When I first started, I didn’t understand the relationship between all the different types of structures, nor how to tech (you start off with village technology). Eventually, I started figuring out the intricacies of the game and it started getting fun.

I played for 500 years or so (I set it to super fast forward when I play) and everything was going pretty well. As these games are pretty open ended, there’s no real way to win the game. However, there is the concept of rocket ships which you can build to evacuate your population from your (supposedly) pollution stricken city.

So i finally reached the tech where I could build a rocket and I thought cool, let’s try it out. Here’s a tip: don’t bother building a rocket unless your economy is hugely profitable! My rocket building experiment ended up putting my city $17 million in the hole in addition to burning up part of my downtown (it crashed).

I started producing like mad to make my city sustainable again, but I was making really small dents in the debt each year (the interest payments were killing me) so I said forget it and started a new game. Now this time, I could use my newfound insight and make a better city. I created a better suited layout but of course, no one showed up to live in it.

As you can guess, I don’t think this game is very fun right now, maybe I just need to play it more.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: games