Virtual City Playground: Build

I’ve been playing Virtual City Playground for a while now, and it’s a surprisingly addictive and well-made city-building game. The graphics are colorful and charming, and I love the variety of buildings, transport routes, and upgrades you can unlock as your city grows. There’s always a new goal to reach or event to participate in, which keeps things interesting. What really stands out is how detailed the logistics system is — managing cargo between buildings and figuring out efficient routes adds a layer of strategy you don’t usually see in mobile games. The only reason I’m giving it 4 stars instead of 5 is because progress can feel a bit slow at times unless you’re willing to make in-app purchases. Some buildings take a long time to build, and energy runs out pretty quickly, which can interrupt gameplay. Still, if you’re patient and enjoy city simulators, Virtual City Playground is definitely worth checking out. It’s one of the better free-to-play games in this genre!

I really enjoy playing this game but it’s so hard to get diamonds which are needed for expansion. I have 24 million dollars but I can’t spend it on more land to build more buildings because I do not have diamonds. Even the in game rewards system doesn’t give them often, and watching the videos to get diamonds requires watching 10 videos to get one diamond. And as each subsequent expansion requires more diamonds, in game progress is slow. And even when I do purchase land expansions, most of them come with an obstacle you have to remove with diamonds. It’s designed to force you to pay real money for diamond packs which is very irritating. I like this game but I am so fed up with not having enough diamonds to improve my city.

I used to really enjoy this game. But there are many issues with it: 1. Not optimized for full-screen iPhones. I have the 11 Pro, and there are half-inch borders on either side of the screen. It looks like the developers simply did not care to make this game enjoyable on the new device. 2. Excruciating load time!! When I had the 8+, I thought the game loaded slow, but thought it would be better with a newer device nope. Still takes at least three ministers for this game to load. 3. Gameplay. The later objectives are impossible to reach because doing so required in-game purchases, and there is no way around that for a number of tasks. Meaning, you wind up in a dead-end game, unable to expand (which costs diamonds which you have to buy with real money), and likewise unable to complete the tasks. It even costs diamonds (again, real money) if you want to destroy a building you previously purchased! 4. Redundancy. Sooner or later, you’ll end up just watching traffic and the looking at the recycling plant. It gets real boring real fast. 5. Developer abandonment. This is probably the worse thing. The devs are unresponsive to my emails, and this game is definitely hasn’t been update in at least two years. With all of this, I guess it’s time for me to abandon the app as well. Too bad.