Overview

Micropolis is an open-ended city-building video game based on the original code for SimCity designed by Will Wright.

Gameplay

In Micropolis, the player develops a city from a patch of undeveloped land. The player controls where to place development zones, infrastructure like roads and power plants, landmarks, and public services such as schools, parks, hospitals and fire stations. The player also determines the tax rate, the budget, and social policy. The city is populated by "Sims", simulated persons, who live in the city created by the player. The three development zone types are the major areas in which Sims inhabit: residential zones for Sims to live in; commercial zones for Sims to shop and have offices within; industrial zones where Sims find work in factories, laboratories and farms.

When playing Micropolis with a randomly generated terrain, there are no specific goals other than not running out of money. The objective is to build, design, and operate a city. The player can mark land as being zoned for a specific type, add buildings, change the tax rate, build a power grid, build transportation systems and take many other actions, in order to enhance the city.

Once able to construct buildings in a particular area, the tiny Sims may choose to construct and upgrade houses, apartment blocks, light or heavy industrial buildings, commercial buildings, hospitals, churches, and other structures. The Sims make these choices based on such factors as traffic levels, adequate electrical power, crime levels, and proximity to other types of buildings—for example, residential areas next to a power plan will seldom appreciate to the highest grade of housing.

Pre-Built Cities

Micropolis ships with a collection of pre-built city save files that can be loaded at startup. These cities come in various states of advancement and provide a jumping point to getting started in a city without building everything from scratch.

Scenarios

Micropolis includes goal-centered, timed scenarios that could be won or lost depending on the performance of the player. Most scenarios either take place in a fictional timeline or have a city under siege by a fictional disaster, a handful of available scenarios are based on actual historical events.

Tilesets

Micropolis uses a fixed tileset to display grass, water, roads, zones, buildings, traffic, fires, and any other tile you see on the map (excluding sprites like planes). These 960 tiles can be swapped out as desired to give the city a different look and feel. The original Micropolis system included the graphics from the X11 version. This version restores the original tileset graphics that were available with SimCity. These include the following graphics that can be switched by the player at any time:

• Ancient Asia
• Classic (DOS)
• Classic (Windows)
• Future Europe
• Future USA
• Medieval Times
• Moon Colony
• Wild West
• X11