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If you've taken a wander around the streets and houses of the ol' hometown recently and figured that, yes, you could do better, actually, well now's your chance to prove it in Urbanitas, a new city-building sim from indie studio The Plush Girls.
Built within the Picotron fantasy workstation, Urbanitas is a compact but surprisingly complex life sim, small in stature but bursting with features, tools, and options to allow would-be visionaries to take a randomly generated landmass and convert it into a living, breathing municipality. Played entirely in itch.io's browser, Urbanitas offers up over 500 buildings, including residential homes, apartments, amenities, services, and entertainment complexes to attract a populace.
Beyond the physicalities of each new 'berg, Urbanitas focuses on the socio-economic elements of the city, with a deep, complex analytics system that studies the wants and needs of the people, allowing creators to best build around the city's necessities. As the city and its populace grow, advances in culture and science will expand the buildings and services available, evolving a simple town into a bustling city and, eventually, a sprawling metropolis.
Of course, none of this success comes for free, and the city's budget must be fairly balanced between housing, transportation, healthcare, and many other expensive but essential services. All this data is delivered via Urbanitas' intricate report system, allowing savvy surveyors a chance to balance the books before municipal problems start piling up en masse. Easier said than done, that's for sure.
Almost unbelievably, The Plush Girls have packed all of this into a staggering 256KB (compressed) so that Urbanitas fits on Picotron cartridges. Thus, outside of the itch.io browser version, the city builder can be played on Picotron Splore, as well as Lexaloffle. Urbanitas follows on from the studio's previous city builders, PicoMayor and Urbanity, showcasing the evolution of The Plush Girls' artistry.
So get out there and get building, because I needed a viable housing market yesterday.