Last updated on December 11th, 2025 at 05:02 pm
High Rise – A Puzzle Cityscape – Puzzle Game Review
High Rise – A Puzzle Cityscape is a Puzzle/Casual/Entertainment game from Florian Grolig, first launched in 16th May 2020.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 484+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes High Rise – A Puzzle Cityscape Stand Out
High Rise is a innovative take on the match 3 genre. A relaxed casual puzzle experience. Match colourful cubes and watch them merge, grow and your 3D puzzle cityscape rise.
Easily Rotate your 3D city with a swipe of your finger, place cubes with a tap and let them merge and grow higher. And higher. And higher…
Simple and engaging gameplay, that is easy to learn, but leaves a lot of space for your own tactics and personal improvement.
The game is complete in its free version but will show you ads occasionally. Those who prefer an add-free experience can remove them with the cheapest possible In-App-Purchase and also support us updating this game and creating new ones.
No hidden costs or cheap tricks.
• Innovative but easy gameplay
• Simple and fun mechanics
• A relaxed puzzle experience
• Now with alternative color schemes – color-blind and dark
• Challenge yourself and your friends on 5 different sized fields
• See your colorful city grow
• Compare your city score with your friends and the whole world
• Free with ads
• Remove all adds for the price of a cup of coffee
• No hidden costs or cheap tricks
This Puzzle game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, High Rise – A Puzzle Cityscape is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 4th September 2022
Recent improvements include:
- Bug fixes and performance improvements
- The app will now only ask for permission to track once
- Reduced ad frequency for beginners
Download & Availability
High Rise – A Puzzle Cityscape is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get High Rise – A Puzzle Cityscape on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Its so enjoyable to play and plan out our city. Zen Mode forever.
Took us a little to figure out, but now we find ourselves looking several moves ahead and building some cool cities, really fun.
This is our favorite game, especially when we need to zone out. There's no pressure for in app purchases after you pay the initial fee to make it ad free. The game play is easy but still engaging. It's a simple pleasure.
In a sea of ad-laden and substandard mobile games, High Rise is an infinitely playable and enjoyable puzzler. What really sets High Rise apart is its minimally interrupted gameplay experience. Ads occur only after losing the game, so a constant steam of advertising cant interrupt the flow, which is a rare and welcome feature among mobile games. The option to remove ads completely is great but not critical to enjoying the game. The mechanics are simple but take many trials to master. Having refined a reliable strategy, we can play the same round for multiple days, returning to it during a TV commercial break or while commuting. With focus, we regularly score in the hundreds of thousands (resulting in very rare ad plays). A warning: If you download this game, its very possible that you will never remove it from your library. Its a comforting puzzler with just enough complexity to keep you coming back year after year. Its an incredible accomplishment by the game developers to have created a nearly perfect game. The only problem is that not enough people know about it.
We got this game around the time it came out and it has been the best distraction when our health hasnt been great and we can literally spend hours playing with a podcast or something in the background. Its so calming yet puts your brain to work.
This game is a relaxing and fun puzzler. Its our most played game since we got it a couple weeks ago. Definitely worth the price! The dev should create a hex shape version of it! Three years later: we got to a Level 26 building on 5×5 map! A year ago we were struggling to get to 15. But now Ive mastered skills no one else in our life will ever know or understand, so Im bragging to all of you. Peace.
We generally avoid phone games but there are certain scenarios like a doctors office or the airport when we literally have nothing else to do. We read about this game in an Atlantic interview and the description was intriguing, and the aesthetic looked appealing. Its a phenomenal game experience. Simple, elegant, and enjoyable. We were dreading the ads but imagine our surprise when we were given the option to choose our personal reasonable payment option to never see an ad again! We continue to learn strategies so its never boring, and there are enough options that we cant imagine getting tired of playing. We find ourselves playing this game instead of getting on Instagram or doomscrolling the news, so thats an unexpected bonus.
Our younger brother introduced us to this game and its sooo fun and complex ^-^.
The recent changes that offer different sized cities is So fantastic we Adore this game. So appreciate all the time and effort into making this possible. {and we enjoy everysized city;-) TySm.
We already wrote a rave review a few weeks ago. Question for the developeris there any way you can move the Construction Complete screen to the bottom instead of the top, and possibly make it a little bit smaller? All the fun things are happening at the tops of the buildings, and Id like to look at them when Im done. The large screen at the top blocks that, since the buildings are tall. Youve done such marvelous, creative work (Hello, King Kong, helicopter, UFO, and dirigible!) and Id love to be able to view these things at the end. Thanks.
We play this for a while every night. Clever, sleek and fun.
In the tutorial just place an alternating pattern of yellow in the middle purple on the 1st nubs away so on so we just wanted to say.
This is the only game we keep on our phone!! It is the best.
We always find ourselves going back to this game, time and time again no matter how many other games Ive downloaded and deleted in the last two years or so. Absolute fantastic concept, simplistic yet complex, and strangely addictive. We paid to remove the ads, but its not too intrusive with them in the game either. We really cant say enough about the game; get it.
We absolutely love this game! Ive probably played it for 2 years now. The updates have been amazing. It gets better with each update.
Im usually not a fan of puzzles but love this app. Price to remove ads is very reasonable. Would love to see more gameplay features, but appreciate its simplicity.
Our go-to game for months! One suggestion: Make it impossible to use the destruction arrow on an empty space Sometimes we accidentally tap and waste it.
This is one of the most engaging/ addicting games we have played in years. We cant get over 4000 points but we still keep trying to figure it out. We just wanted to ask: why are there different tiers of add removal? Is it just a way of letting the customer chose an amount to donate to the developer? Thanks.
Absolutely love this game! Been playing for a while and just paid to have ads removed. It is definitely worth the money. The design is so clean and the overall game is addictive. Just noticed that there are little animations when your buildings get to heights of 8 and above. Is this a new thing? We love it.
It took us a while to become good at this game. But we kept coming back to it and playing. It takes a while to get used to how the bricks will perform when placed. Each time we play, we try to beat a score of 3000, but our highest score is 9855. It takes a while to learn the ins and outs but Ive been playing consistently for almost a year. The devs continue to enhance the game too. The undo feature is a big improvement as we sometimes inadvertently fumble a placement.
This game is really fun, but some feedback for the devs: it runs really slowly. There's lag in every movement and animation, which makes it basically unplayable. We hope there's an update soon to fix it, because we love it (and also we paid to remove ads and we'd like to be able to actually play it ).
We love this game so much but Im giving it 4 stars because the rules are complicated without any explanation and Ill barely manage to merge taller buildings.
We wish it kept high score so theres a goa to the game.
We enjoy this game. We feel like the game does a mediocre job of explaining the mechanics, what the game fails to explain has to be learned through playing. The ad frequency is obnoxious to say the least, didn't take long to figure out you can just force close the app and you can avoid the ads. If that's ever fixed, we can see ourselves easily uninstalling.
This is a very fun and unique game. Building, strategy, and a whiff of Tetris all rolled together. Just dont expect to play very long without a handy plug, because this game is a total power hog.
We love this game. The spatial gameplay is right up our alley, the concept is simple but engaging, with that easy to learn, hard to master vibe. Im trying not to rage after accidentally quitting a session Ive been playing for weeks off & on. Was looking forward to posting our 2mil+ points score on the leaderboard but we hit quit instead of quit and save by accident. Maybe add a confirmation screen to the quit without saving option.
As a game, we are in love. We love casual puzzle games, and this is one we want to play this game all the time. However, the app is basically unusable for us most of the time. We have an iPhone 12 Pro on the latest OS, and the game is SO. SLOW. It varies each time we open the app, but it is often slow enough that theres a 2-3 second delay on every interaction and animation. We tried all the things we can think of, including paying to remove ads, to improve the performance, and am at a total loss. Hoping someone can help us so we can give this the 5 stars it otherwise deserves.
Ultimately you cannot control what colors appear, but once youve lasted above 3000 it just gives wrong color after wrong color until youre stuck. We wish it was more honest.
Ok, we downloaded the game started playing then an add appeared about how to remove ads but we watched an ad then we played again and it SHOWED UP AGAIN maybe can you please fix it.
We usually delete games Ive downloaded after a few weeks. Ive had high rise now going on two years and am still yet to get bored with it. It is also the only game we have ever paid for; while we dont even mind ads, we figured Id throw our support behind these devs. Best game on here.
Updating our review- the old version of the app really ate up our battery but this is fixed in the newest version. This game is really fun and really addictive. We can play it for hours listening to podcasts. It still has a few rough edges, like not liking to eliminate buildings when viewing from the top.
This is a wonderfully fun game with a simple concept that has kept us entertained for months now. We hope that in time some sort of free build mode is added or perhaps a bigger grid so that we can see just how high these scyscrapers can go.
A game you werent expecting to find. This is that game. A true make you think game with a cool concept, graphics, and an almost Phillip Glass-y minimalist soundtrack. Well done! We cant stop playing it.
Highrise is a legitimately genius puzzle game, worthy of study alongside the likes of Go and Chess. Deceptively simple, there are always new ways to improve your strategy. Ive gone from struggling to break 3k, to scoring 31k in a single game. Additionally, its minimalistic style is totally unobtrusive and non-condescending, making it a great game to play while listening to music or podcasts, on a commute or anywhere else. So refreshing to find a game that actually challenges our brain as a 24-year-old lifelong gamer.
Great game to pass the time and unwind!! It also helps to easy our anxiety when we're feeling overwhelmed.
Im addicted. Love the graphics. Easy to learn. Ive resorted to playing this around an hour a day and love it. Wish there was a readerboard to see how you rank.
This game is beautifully simple and (for us) the sweet spot of mentally stimulating. Its our go to for when we want to self soothe :).
This might be the greatest game ever. Its so simple but yet so complicated. We really like the basic design with different colors. Not to mention the variety and awesome colors. Thanks for making this game you guys should keep going in the gaming world. We really look forward to sharing this with friends and beating our high score! Thank you again so much.
After a little practice we found the game can be played a long long time over couple hours. We hope adding another raking way: Raking by highest floor. For now we succeed stack 28 floors and we feel more challenge than score high.
This is NOT a simple game. Theres a lot of complex rules that dictate movement, just like chess. Youll spend some time getting beaten by those rules before you can even begin to strategize, which will present you with a whole new level of game play. And then youll realize your strategy is kindergarten level thinking. Pretty soon youll find yourself coming up with strategies in your mind as you go about your day. At that point, your games could take several hours (nights) to complete, so youre definitely getting your moneys worth. If you like puzzles, and have the patience to learn the rules, youll be rewarded.
Ive been looking for ages for something that we can pick up and put down that is challenging enough to be engaging without having a frustrating lives system. Its so cute, has great sound design and music, and it is our favorite game on the App Store. No this is not sponsored we just genuinely enjoy the game and want the developers to be appreciated.
Comparing to other games now this game is out standing, its Fun, challenging, brain practice, feels good, not to waist your time on Ads or ransom on your money, its just for simply fun sake. Also IMO we believe that the tutorial hints are just about enough. Its better to find more advanced techniques on your own. Saying all that we still need an UNDO option folks! Sometimes we get confused between current block and next block so we misplace it. In more other times we touch the screen by mistake and yep! It just place a block in the middle of NO F Way! With no turning back. So Most of the time we have to restart.
We have been coming back to this game several times and always thoroughly enjoy it like when we first bought it. We are addicted to this game. Our highest score was over 4000 and another time we reached a level 7 building! This game is extremely polished, high high high replay ability. Simple to learn and fun to get better and advance! We really hope you can make a sequel to this game. One way the game can get better is if there were a multiplayer where you simultaneously build against an opponent and every time one gets a the tallest building taller, a random 1-piece block will be added to the opponents city! See who can get the most points or the tallest building! Either against a person or against a bot. We just absolutely love this game for its succinct size, and all we mentioned above. Thank you for this game.
This game looks great and has a really intuitive feel to it. Its also got strategy, that you can use to keep it fun for many hours. Really like the color options too. GREAT WORK, looking forward to more games from this developer.
This game is a relaxing and fun puzzler. Its our most played game since we got it a couple weeks ago. Definitely worth the price! The dev should create a hex shape version of it.
We love this but theres no way to expand the grid size for the potential of bigger buildings. Is this coming.
Perfect game for a frustration-free casual playing. We really enjoy the aesthetics and the navigation. Very well implemented. Our only complaint is that our phone warms up very quickly – within a few minutes – to the point that the display dims automatically. We also have a few suggestions. None of these are obviously needed. They are just to improve replayability. – Perhaps a few board sizes? Or a customizable x,y size? – A perspective view toggle/option? – Customizable color schemes? – Customizable number of colors? (3,4, and 5, perhaps?) – In addition to the current remove building every 500 pts., maybe other Random actions, such as delete one level, or color-specific removal? – Additional building decorations. Even for the one-level blocks. Excellent job, though.
We absolutely love this game when we have a few extra minutes to kill, but ofc every game can improve. One thing that frustrates us from time to time is the fact that there is no undo button. Adding an undo feature (& maybe having the player watch an ad to get 5 undos) would majorly benefit the game. Another suggestion is unlocking different themes along with the color options to spice up the game a little. Either way, your game is awesome & really brightens our day.
Lots of fun with some depth to the game mechanics. Art style and animations are beautiful. Only complaint is how easy it is to accidentally place a block while panning, has messed us up several times (which can pretty much end a game when youre far into it). Makes you wanna throw your phone against a wall.
This game is amazing. It is puzzly, and has us at the edge of our seat. We only wish it had multiplayer, where each person places one block in turns; also you can both see all four blocks. Thank you for making this. -Hank.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.6.1
- Size: 83.35 MB
- iOS: 11.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Florian Grolig
Last updated: 4th September 2022 | Genre: Puzzle, Casual | Developer: Florian Grolig