I know this came up briefly in another thread, but I’ve been impressed enough with this game that it really deserves its own thread. It’s a very smart city-building, deck-building, puzzle game. Apparently, an expanded version of a previous game he did(MegaCity), but a brand new experience for me. A great example of theme and game mechanics married almost perfectly. Your decisions seem to make sense from both a gameplay perspective and a city planning perspective, and I love that.
The game takes place on an X by Y grid(5x6 and 6x7 are what I’ve seen so far) where you try to get enough points to clear the bottom row which adds another row on top. Residential buildings collect points, but generally require other adjacent buildings to provide those points. For example, a library boosts(+1 point) four specific adjacent squares and a green lets you choose one adjacent square to boost. Industrial buildings usually put negative points on neighboring tiles but are useful for boosting your economy. Economic points are what allow you to either add new cards to your deck(choose one of four random) or select a skill from the skill tree. As you add cards to your deck, your tech increases which unlocks more advanced cards.
That’s the basics, but add in the fact that each card also has a cost that eventually causes each column to require additional points to clear, the various obstacles on the map, cards that act on contiguous blocks of card types, one-time use cards, and various other special abilities, and you have a game with lots of interesting(tough) decisions that so far hasn’t come anywhere devolving into samey builds. At this point I haven’t gotten into much figuring out the various specialized decks but a farm deck seems like one of the most basic to try.
Anyone else playing this? Having as much fun with it as I am?
I just played an hour of the campaign and I’m disappointed because it wasn’t what I was expecting (which is totally my fault for not doing more research). I didn’t realize I’d be building on a shifting grid and that whole element of the game feels weird to me. The experience is a lot like the board game Suburbia where you purchase hexes for victory points (residences) or money (factories / commerical) to buy better hexes and try and build out your suburb better then other players. It’s weird that building a factory at the end of the grid in Concrete Jungle nullifies those negative squares. You can place a residence right next to the factory with no problem once the grid gets there. In Suburbia, adjacency bonuses / deficits apply for every tile placed for the rest of the game. I also think some of the tiles abilities feel not very thematic. Why does the “Green” tile only affect one adjacent tile? Shops are nice to live near even if their front isn’t facing you. I’m not sure any of this would bother me if the tiles weren’t all reminding me of tiles from Suburbia with better theme integration.
Early complaints aside, it’s a relaxing puzzle experience with some really fantastic aesthetics. It also seems like it has some cool mechanics of its own to explore. I’m trying to make a heavy farming deck strategy work in the campaign missions but it hasn’t clicked in yet. Are you mostly playing the campaign abrandt? Or maybe the game opens up in a cool way outside that? I haven’t gotten to a skill tree in the game yet, so obviously tons more to explore, and I’m excited to do that.
I’ve just been playing the campaign so far. So far I’ve enjoyed the variety with each new campaign map and the challenge is certainly growing. I do concede that if you stop and think about individual buildings they aren’t realistic but I still think it works out pretty well.
There is also an option to show the cleared columns if you feel like your city is just disappearing behind you.
I kickstarted this because I was a fan of Megacity. Have only played a few levels of the campaign, but my first impressions are pretty good. Just hoping the deck-building stuff (which wasn’t in Megacity) pays off and doesn’t complicate the game unnecessarily.
I unlocked Giles who is all about building a farm deck. Haven’t tried him yet, but it has made me realize that you’d be stupid to focus on farm cards without him. Appropriately, his skills are all front loaded in the tech tree with very little in the late game. Now I’m curious to actually play a longer game and see if he’d be in any way viable in one.
You have to play characters in VS mode in the campaign in order to unlock them. The couple maps it has had me play in VS mode makes me really wish this wasn’t local multiplayer only. The game changes dramatically when screwing over your opponent becomes a thing.
I just played my first vs. campaign mission and it really changes how you play. I focused a +3 in one of my spots and my opponent used an invert on it (turning it into a -3). At first I was frustrated because how the heck can you use an invert in someone else’s spot? Then I realized I could tank that neighborhood and foot my opponent with the bill. I got it down to -5 before he won the column, netting him a -2 score.
Ponds are my current favorite tool. With the default character I’m playing, the skills make it really easy to get a bunch of yellow cards in your deck and then a pond can add +5 to locations. The deckbuilding, skills, and placement puzzle all work really well together. Playing well is a satisfying challenge.
Dropping your own residences way negative becomes even more interesting since it’s a gamble. If the column fills up instead of your opponent actually hitting their point target on it, you’ll get the negative points and screw yourself over. So you may get to the point where both players are trying to decrease the point value of their own buildings on a column. That dynamic plus the fact that you have to take into account being able to build in any part of the front column(meaning you have to think about protecting residences in upcoming columns before they get near the front) is even more proof that this thing needs online multiplayer. VS mode is just incredibly interesting and tense.
I’ll probably get this at some point. Is anyone able to compare this to the free web-based game this is an evolution of? The free one was OK but I don’t think it would hold my interest. This may be a bundle purchase, along with mini metro. It is rare I don’t buy something that I want before it hits bundle status, so it will be good to actually have something left for one.
I got this awhile ago on sale and have been playing the campaign. I made it to the militant lady who reduces the land value of everything. It has been pretty easy up until now, but this one is tough. I haven’t even been able to come close winning this one.
I definitely will check it out at some point. I’m hesitant to buy anything right now because Dark Souls III will be out on Tuesday. That’s probably going to suck up a lot of time.
There was something about this game that pushed me on until I finished the campaign. Two of the missions were very tough (at least for me), but man was I satisfied beating the last mission. I failed my first attempt, then tried a different character. After falling behind I clawed my way back and evened it up with the final column in sight. I thought I was doomed as my opponent built up around 16 points in one of the last columns, but with the right combination of cards and abilities I was able to steal the points from her build area and put them in mine. I also demolished a column to take away another set of points.
There is quite a bit of luck involved as it depends on card draws, and you still may lose even if you play pretty well just due to circumstances, but I feel you have enough control to have a large affect on the outcome. It got somewhat repetitive, but some of the missions change up the build areas and opponents enough to have to think differently sometimes. Not a great game, but easy to get into while still requiring some brain usage.
Boy, I loved his original mobile game, MegaCity, which had the core puzzle gameplay of Concrete Jungle without the deckbuilding part. I Kickstarted Concrete Jungle. And when I got it, it just fell flat for me. I need to revisit it to figure out why and whether I just need to give it a little more time to see the joy in it. But it worked way better for me as a casual mobile timewaster than as a card game/strategy game.
I think getting through the campaign is worth it as it has the variety of sometimes playing solo, sometimes against the AI, and different AI opponents with different abilities. When playing against the AI the area is split up into areas where you both can build, or only one of you can build - and it isn’t always uniform. This can make you mix up your strategy somewhat.
The custom game where you just play for X columns is very repetitive and only good for an occasional play. I did just get #30 on the leaderboard for the default length custom game, woo-hoo :-)
Because of how sexy it looks I’ve wanted to play this game since release, but only recently got around to buying and playing it.
And yesterday I got the last achievement 100%.
Good game. It’s an odd combination of super slick presentation yet still a little rough around the edges. I had a VSYNC option and didn’t bother posting on the Steam forums as it looks like the developer has stopped replying there. So I sleuthed a bit and figured out his reddit account and sent him a bug report, to which he replied. After a few exchanged messages he said this:
There’s a lot of stuff in Concrete Jungle that I would definitely do differently if I were to re-make it. It was a bit too much of a ‘put all these ideas into a game’ kinda thing! I’m happy with it don’t get me wrong, but it’s not a refined game. It was a great learning experience though, and most seem to enjoy it despite the issues :)
Really excited about the new project- it’s not related to Concrete Jungle, but I think most fans of it would like it too. I’m going to record a development video demoing the concept soon, hopefully around the end of the month when I have the basics in place. After that I’ll go back to CJ and launch this update.
Was really hoping this thread getting bumped would be an announcement of a Switch version. I really do like this game, but playing it on my phone just isn’t a form factor I enjoy.
