The mobile, casual game Citalis, is a city simulation game that requires the player to manage commercial, residential and park land plots to achieve a healthy balance of commerce, beauty and happiness of the simulation citizens. There are options to build commercial businesses, and then upgrade them so that they generate more revenue. Your residents populate the jobs at these businesses, and also demand a certain amount of city beauty so that they stay happy. If you build a new business, a new park may be necessary to maintain the same level of citizen happiness. If happiness is left unaddressed, crime rises and business’ may close. The objective of the game is to pay off your $10,000,000 loan eventually, without going bankrupt.
There is a sense that algorithms drive the processes behind the profit generation, beauty, crime and happiness. While playing the game, the proper ratio of houses, businesses and parks contribute to generating the happiness value. Once achieving a ratio that leads to a 100% happiness rating, if you take no actions (building or updating new buildings) then happiness stays at 100%. The function that calculates happiness takes into account the ratio of the building to park ratio, but there is no decay factor. Unlike other simulation games, the ratios that determine the game factors that demand player action are not a function of time. I suspect the formula looks something like this:
The happiness in the next period is a product of the current period’s happiness and the ratio between parks and other buildings. As long as this ratio is above one, happiness will not change, (and remain at 100%) in the next period. There are certain types of parks that are more successful at increasing happiness than others, and accounts for this factor. Other processes, like crime are a simple function of Happiness.
Anytime Happiness drops below 100 percent, the Crime rate increases in the next period.
The algorithmic processes of the game are simple enough that they are obvious in gameplay. They allow the environment to process like a normal city, but the simple nature of the algorithms also take away from some of the gameplay. The player does not need to actively participate in the environment overtime if they have already reached 100 percent happiness. As businesses generate money in this environment, all one would have to do is wait until enough money is generated to payoff the loan. While this wouldn’t be an exciting way to play the game, the game does not demand active participation, and takes away from the overall experience of the game.
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