PC Game Review Sims Carnival SnapCity

Mix a little Tetris with some Sim City and bake for an hour to produce Sims Carnival SnapCity. Chicken Little will think, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” This time the little chicken is right as blocks fall down on your city of which you’re the mayor. Like Tetris, you can rotate the blocks before they land.

The “Carnival” in the title misleads as the only time the game comes close to a carnival is having a circus as one of its buildings. Electronic Arts calls a series of games “Sims Carnival,” which currently only contains this and Sims Carnival Bumper Blast. They don’t share anything except their names and their publisher.

The Sim City part enters in building roads, neighborhoods, and buildings; fighting fires, tornadoes, and epidemics; and reaching goals for every level. As the mayor, I grow the city while fulfilling goals and following requests from the Chamber of Commerce. Somehow I manage to keep crime, fires, and disasters under control doing all of this.

A big job to be sure and it takes time to get the hang of the game with so much going on. While I’m sweating bullets in protecting the city, a CNN-style news ticker scrolls along the bottom of the screen with the goings on in the city. It’s not critical to read the ticker — kind of tough when multitasking — but it has entertaining headlines such as “Local teen wins at contact origami,” “Spelling bee winners poetry collection to include anacreontic,” and “Local marathon runner runs away from fire.”

Most of the grids in the city take on a specific color with yellow representing industrial regions, blue indicating commercial districts, and green designating residential areas. When the blocks completely fill a colored grid, the grid turns into buildings. Also build roads, destroy buildings and roads, and construct different buildings.

While building the city, suddenly I notice half my buildings burning down. Oi! My eyes can only look at so many things at once and watching for disasters proves tricky. So prepare for a fire breaking out, a robber breaking in, or an earthquake breaking down buildings.

The game is less about winning and more about having fun building a city and meeting its needs. Some special buildings have cool animations to bring them to life. When you put in an airport, planes start flying across the city. Install a subway and escalators move. It’s a shame all of the buildings don’t come to life as it’s one of the best features.

Replay any level by clicking on the Welcome screen containing buildings of all completed levels. This game has a high replayability factor. While levels require putting in a specific building, Sims Carnival SnapCity gives players room to choose what buildings to add.

Another clever feature comes in puzzle zones. Most levels require building at least three of these, which turn into a building of the player’s choice. Puzzle zone grids contain stars to set them apart from a standard grid. After filling the squares in a puzzle zone, I get to pick a building from a list of three to construct.

Moving around, placing parts, and paving roads don’t work the way I want at times. I like to think I’m good with my mouse, but the game tries to debate that. At least, the buildings “disappear” when the mouse moves nearby to make it easier to find empty grids.

Adventure modecontains five levels with five rounds each for a total of 25. Skimpy. Reaching level 5-5 is such a non-event that I thought I didn’t finish the level fast enough. But the game doesn’t have a time limit. Despite the not having a time limit, accomplishing all the goals in the latter levels doesn’t come easy — it’s hard multitasking work.

Adventure mode presents goals and titles for every level while Creativity mode lets players build a city from scratch including naming the city. It starts slow, but as the city grows — it’s better than having a dollhouse come to life. Personally, I hated playing with dolls and dollhouses, but not SnapCity.

Many of the menu items and icons don’t have labels. Move the mouse pointer over them for a few seconds — like a tooltip — to see their labels. This creates unneeded barriers. Looking at the icons alone doesn’t clearly give away what the button or menu item does.

Sims Carnival SnapCitycould be Puzzle City’s fraternal twin. “A fun twist and change of pace for Tetris fans without Sim City’s complexity” describes both games, but the quote comes from my Puzzle City review.

It’s disappointing the adventure mode ends after just 25 levels, which doesn’t take long to reach. Perhaps, Electronic Arts will provide add-ons to enhance the game and its animations. After all, the company provides many add-ons for its Sim series.

Though it takes a few levels to get the hang of the game and its controls, once it does — Sims Carnival SnapCity easily captivates and makes it hard to stop playing. The sky can’t fall as there are no skies, so Chicken Little would be happy here in SnapCity.