Market City is a social simulation game available on vk.com where players run a market, fill the racks with all kinds of goods, serve customers, put everything in order, develop the whole district and eventually turn the whole city into a shopping paradise.
The game is developed by Plarium behind social games such as Stormfall: Age of War and Pirates: Tides Of Fortune.
Review:
Starting from scratch, players sell the small bucket filled with miscellaneous items so as to make enough money for ordering goods. After delivery and unloading, the goods will be ready for sale. One places them upon a display, and waits for customers to pick them up when they visit. Players are involved in every detail of the management rather than simply giving a few orders and having everything done by restless employees, though they do need to hire personnel once the market is too big for them to run on their own.
It might not be surprising to choose your favorite wall paper and tile, pick up the litter or unlock and deploy new displays and items as you level up, but it definitely is a fresh new experience to catch the shoplifters, remove the shopping cart from the parking lot, and even repair the benches nearby to enhance your reputation.
There is no energy system in Market City. A star system took its place and actually plays a much more important role. Players must have enough stars before purchase a tile, buy a wall sconce, or construct a warehouse. The stars you possess determine how many more items you can still put in or outside your market. With the game’s intense reliance on the star system and the latter’s slow refill rate, Market City involves players in more and longer waits than most social games do.
But waiting doesn’t necessarily lead to payment or quitting. Players can still enjoy running the market during the waits. For example, they could offer advice for customers and offer 50-percent-off discounts when necessary and even catch the shoplifters before they slip out by the front door. Actually, that would be an intriguing episode since once they’ve got something in hand, they walk quickly towards the door and if you don’t act quickly, you will lose the stolen stuff for good.
Unfortunately, it can take a while before one gets any idea of how to play the game. The tutorial doesn’t go into enough details and even the tips in quests prove to be of no help in some cases. There are no moving, rotating or recycling buttons available on the interface. If you would like to sell, move or do anything with an item in the market, say, a display, you have to open the Displays and Cash Desks tab page before you mouse over the very display and the performable actions are shown on buttons that appear above the display. Therefore, when it comes to rearranging the market, it concerns more steps than necessary.
Market City injects a load of fun into social simulation gaming experience and manages to extend the management in every possible facet. And the outcome is overwhelming, despite the insufficient tutorial and tips as well as the awkward controls in some cases.
MMORPG, MMO, Online Games for free
