Zynga’s CityVille Wants to Take Down SimCity

It’s time to get social once again, but this time in an entire city with Zynga’s CityVille.

For its latest game, Zynga has unsurprisingly retained the suffix of “Ville” and added a new prefix to create its latest game: CityVille. CityVille is another social game just like YoVille, FishVille, FarmVille, and FrontierVille, but players must focus on building an entire city instead of decorating one small area.

CityVille, which should go live later this month in five languages for Zynga’s first international launch, seems inspired by SimCity. Zynga calls CityVille its “most social game to date,” giving players the ability to interact with each other in ways not seen before.

In CityVille, players must build their own city from the ground up. Homes, businesses, restaurants, schools, fire departments, post offices, and even roads must be placed so that the city’s residents are happy. Players will earn money depending on how many citizens go out to eat or go shopping.

Residents themselves will change appearances depending on how their city is run, which will be one of CityVille‘s badges of honor that keeps players engaged, similar to how a pink cow in FarmVille was way cooler than a normal cow. Further, running a city properly unlocks rare buildings and decorations. Players will also be able to buy and sell goods from each other that they grow on farms or import from cities such as Rome or London. Visiting other players’ cities will help them build or import faster, while you can additionally own property or run businesses in neighboring areas.

CityVille hasn’t launched yet, so I can’t tell if the game is deeper than previous Zynga offerings, but it certainly seems like it. However, Zynga’s games usually have a way of sounding more in-depth than they actually are, so we’ll have to wait and see until it’s released. Still, I was impressed with Zynga’s additions to FrontierVille, so if Zynga follows it up with even more gameplay mechanics in CityVille it could be on its way towards creating more engaging social experiences than seen from the company in the past.