City Limits from JanduSoft and SpaceMyFriend is a chill and cozy city-building experience on PlayStation 5. Check out our City Limits review!
City Limits from JanduSoft and SpaceMyFriend is a chill and cozy city-building experience on PlayStation 5. This publisher and indie dev combo previously gave us roguelike toothpunk bullet hell Cavity Busters on Sony’s console, so this one is certainly a very different type of game. In this tile-based puzzler, you’ll be building cities as you strategically place tiles to be as efficient as possible during each of your runs.
This is a soothing city-building experience that offers some depth beyond what is first apparent, but it’s not going to have you micromanaging resources or having to keep the city going by carefully planning every single building placement. Building placement is important for scoring as many points as possible while also trying to complete as many combos as possible to boost your score and keep your run going.
You’ll learn all of the basics during the initial tutorial. On the left side of the screen, you’ll have a guide for what buildings placed in specific patterns will allow you to fuse them into new buildings while also gaining extra points. On the right side of the screen, you’ll be able to select from the available buildings by pressing the X button, moving a cursor over the available open slots, and then pressing the X button again to place that building. You can press the Triangle button to separate the tiles a bit so that you can get a better view of things. After you can’t place any more buildings, the buildings you’ve placed will be tallied up, and you’ll be rewarded with some bonus points.
Once you have completed the tutorial, you’ll unlock additional modes in which to play City Limits. You can continue to play in Classic Mode, which features the basic gameplay mechanics and 4 buildings to use. Switch into Advanced Mode, and you’ll take on extra gameplay mechanics and have 12 buildings to use. You can also choose if there will be spikes spreading around the grid if they spread on a timer, or if there will be no spikes. The last option is for the island shape, changing between a basic square, a shaped island, or a randomized pattern.
Once you progress further into a run, you’ll be able to select special buildings to add to the mix. You could get a wild card building to use in most potential combos, an airport that will allow you to send away requested buildings within its displayed parameter, or a special building that can clear any tile around it, including spikes. That last one can be very useful to clear up spaces so that you can extend your run by opening up new spots for potential combos.
And now, let’s talk about the trophies! But before that, it’s time to mention that this is a Cross-Buy title. What this means is that when buying the game, you can download both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions of the game, and each one will have its own trophy list for you to work on. Said lists will have 2 Bronze trophies, a single Silver trophy, and 11 Gold trophies. To add this Platinum to your collection, you’ll need to play the game, complete the tutorial, complete 10 rounds, score 10,000, 40,000, 80,000, and 100,000 points, get 100, 1,000, 5,000, and 10,000 combos, end a level with no water tiles on an advanced random island, and consume an island.
City Limits is a chill and cozy city-building experience that is fun on Sony’s consoles. The gameplay mechanics are simple and to the point, and you can keep playing this one over and over again as you perfect your strategy and make the most of the buildings at your disposal. You can play in Classic Mode with 4 buildings, go into Advanced Mode to play around with 12 buildings and change the layout of the island you’ll be playing on. City Limits is available as a Cross-Buy title, so your $4.99 purchase will give you access to both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions of the game at no extra cost.
Disclaimer
This City Limits review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by JanduSoft.
