Last updated on January 15th, 2026 at 02:31 am
Pocket City – Strategy Game Review
Pocket City is a Strategy/Simulation game from Codebrew Games Inc., first launched in 7th August 2018.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 5,063+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Pocket City Stand Out
Build your own city as the new mayor. Create residential, commercial, and industrial zones. Build parks and recreation spots. Respond to crime and disasters. Watch your city come alive!
No microtransactions or long wait times! Everything is unlocked and rewarded through gameplay.
Pocket City re-imagines classic city building simulation gameplay for iOS devices.
Note: Landscape and portrait mode can be toggled in the settings menu during gameplay, or by tapping the icon at the top right of the start screen.
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Pocket City is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 12th November 2022
Recent improvements include:
- Adjust UI to allow for Dynamic Island on iPhone 14
- Minor UI fixes
Download & Availability
Pocket City is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
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:
This game exactly scratches that old city builder itch. Its very well executed on the phone and so nice to pickup and play when you have a few minutes. Progress can be fast or slow depending on how you want to play. If you just want a zen garden experience of laying out streets and parks this game can do it. If you want a bit of challenge it can do that too. Recently we handt played it in a little while and pulled it up on our phone and our 9 year old and 14 year old kids were instantly drawn in! Given how much time we spent as a kid building cities in early PC city simulators Im excited that this developer can bring that fun forward. No ads in the game, you just buy it and play. Theres also a good set of handy features like sharing your city with friends (without having to use social media, its just a code), running many different cities at a time and auto saving. Its always been stable and performant for us on Android and iPhone.
This game is a lot of fun. It. The last honest city building game.
We wanted a new game and asked AI to recommend one. It suggested this game and we havent stopped playing. Cant wait to try the second one! We have a few small critiques of this game but we wont even enumerate them because its just such a blast to play. Highly recommended, even though its old. We love the SimCity-esque layout. Great quest system and the ability to craft the landscape is a lovely addition! Thank you for the game.
We have always been obsessed with building thing but the thing is most of the apps are way to complicated our dad showed us this one we love it. We were a little unsure about this game but we spent the money totally love it but some of the quest we cannot beat we did what one of the quests wanted it never said it was completed but other than that we love it.
Cool graphics, reminds of earlier versions of Sim City.
If you miss classic games that are actually fun and don't try to bore or annoy you for money, this is what you want. It's simply fun and relaxing. No ads, no IAPs. You just pay for a game and you play it. All we want is more stuff like this.
It is SimCity for the phone and it is a great deal. Im very satisfied with our purchase.
TL;DR its an easier, more enjoyable imo, Cities Skyline experience. We 100% recommend for the price. We just wish there were some QoL features to make building cities more seamless. Pros: + Fun talent points/perks by playing into xp gains. + Unique buildings with passives. + Each Region/save file allows for 5 total cities (we think, currently Im at 3) that can benefit off of each other. + Beginner Friendly. + Directly rewarded for dealing with traffic/crime/fires. + No bugs encountered with ~8hrs played. Cons: – Miss click the starting position of your road/rail/bridge? Have fun clicking through the menus again, because you cant shift the starting position unlike with zoning – Placing buildings on a large city is somewhat annoying because you cant zoom the camera while in the build menu – No apparent mass upgrade button for safety services, roads, zoos, or zones. Makes progression more tedious than it has to be – Unlike power, water, and trafficother systems do not have a visible range indicator (unless we did not see it in ~8hrs of gameplay) Only writing up the specifics of the cons because the game is exceedingly fun! Getting a similar experience on PC costs exponentially more.
This game is amazing, and we love it! The only problem is that you cant really build skyscrapers. We think many people would love it too. Another thing is that you could upgrade buildings more than once. This would allow people to grow their city.
Take our money, please. We would rather pay a flat fee up front. This isnt a PtW money machine for the dev so if you like city building even a little bit, support them by taking a chance on this. You wont be sorry. This a quality builder that we go back to a lot. Way worth every penny. So worth it, we are now buying version 2 as well just to say thanks.
This game is worth the small fee great idea game no ads or in app purchases great design play is fun and you have a little city in your pocket.
CODEBREW CREW, we'd pay a one time fee (up to $10) for you to expand the POCKET universe, like POCKET FARMS, POCKET RESTAURANTS, POCKET GARDENS, POCKET FASHION, POCKET HOMES, POCKET AQUARIUMS, an entire POCKET world, universe, covering entire eras and civilizations that are customizable, imaginative AND can offer historically accurate components. Please kindly consider creating customizable apps mentioned that allow a broad spectrum of shapes, colors, environments, furniture, foods, plants, an entire wardrobe, face shape, hairstyles, makeup components. We love sim type apps but in-app purchases are a BIG PAIN. Megapolis has in-app purchases. Farm whatever, fashion whatever, restaurant whatever, city whatever, garden whatever and for 99% of build your own apps have tons of ads and in-app purchases. POCKET CITY IS A WINNER! DOWNLOAD AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS.
Its convenient, easily saved. You can adjust the difficulty easily. Im at enforced inactivity so something to keep us busy when Ive read everything and other games get old.
Got us stuck making towns only wish we could make them a little bigger.
So much fun and no greed just sit back and enjoy a great time killer thanks for this gem.
We loathe pay to play games where you run out of money or energy. We hate waiting on materials, things to finish, or having to get exponential amounts of XP to level up. We got this game like 2 days ago & im already level 78. Someone wanted to have it continue to run in the back ground but if you do your stuff right you basically have enough money to do whatever you want while you play. We LOVE THIS GAME. It is so worth the 2.99. The fact that you can demolish everything & start over or move on to other islands/regions is cool. Its really endless. We wish there were different landmark options but im not sure how that would change with the other regions as im not fully through the game yet. Super fun, cant wait to see other updates.
We hate the pay to play games, especially the city building ones like Sims. Everything takes too long to build, and the process becomes boring and tedious. In this game, theres no need to wait around for a day for a building to finish up. Theres also world events, crimes, disasters, etc. We bought this game a week ago, and it has been the only thing that we have played since.
We have sunk so many hours into this game and not once been bored of it. We purchased pocket city 1 and 2 but have played very little of 2 because we cant stop playing the first one. Similar to old sim cities minus water pipes and power lines. Connect something to a road and youre good to go. Your main city is the center of the region and you can build other supporting cities in the region each with different pros and cons baked into their areas and a portion of their income supports the main city. We use this to charge main city citizens almost no tax to keep them happy. One gripe, the nuclear power plant adds pollution to the environment map. Very easy to deal with, however, thats not how nuclear power works.
Bobby knows how to make a good mobile city builder sim, in fact, hes made two! Love the no tracking, no IAP, and the thoughtfulness of the game.
We play this game both on our ipad and at school and at school its free. Its free because we cant purchase anything but we dont get the full version. We think there should be an option for a large plot on your first city and the rest of the game is perfect.
You can build your city without the block of micro transactions. Elegant and simple graphics.
We cant believe how much this game offers for only $4.99. Theres no need for an app purchases. The way they built this game you make your own money. We absolutely love it. Its fun and easy to learn the economics that drive the game. If you like these types of game, this one is well worth it. They didnt even prompt us to leave a review until we had built up most of our first region. They definitely deserve the praise.
This is one of the best implementations of a city based game on iPhone. You get your moneys worth in the first hour. It needs minimal skills to start, it is extremely rewarding, and it teaches you as you go without interrupting the game play. For developers, we found a bug in the game. You can name your city with an emoji in it. However, city upload will fail if you do that. You can rename the city with just text and upload will work again.
Everyone should play this game to learn city resource management.
No in app purchases means this developer made a great game and is willing to make more money by having more players. If you like sim city – this game is for you. This game gets a 10/10 from us.
This game is an awesome time waster. No pay walls, no Skinner box timing techniques, just fun.
While other city building games have diverged to super sophisticated mechanics and/or content overload, this has turned out to be one of the best successors to the city building games of our childhood. There is a nice difficulty curve without getting too in the weeds of traffic mechanics or micromanagement. We cant believe such a great game is not only playable on our iPhone, but also totally free of MTX and at a reasonable price.
We were looking for a good easy city build game, Im glad we discovered this game, Im loving sandbox mode because theres no stress you can build and you get unlimited resources and money, recommend this game to all ages. Im definitely going to buy Pocket city two when it comes out next month.
We've been searching for a game like this. A relaxed, no-time-locks city-building game. It's so fun to play, try to make the most efficient (ir inefficient) city you can.
Super fun and lots of playability! Highly recommended.
Only thing we wish is they added more content, buildings, etc.
Once you unlock another region and industrialize it the game becomes very open, although the unlocks are slow.
Cant wait to play Pocket City 2.
Its not a pay to play platform. Much better than its original grandfather from the 20th century. Its a fun game.
This is it, the one Ive been wishing existed for a long time. No in-app crap soiling the experience! Just fun city building. We really love it. Its not perfect, there are little things that could be improved but they are small compared to the frustrations of the other city builders Ive played.
Please add more content so we have a reason to grind! Also add events to get special city skins/ buildings / etc.
We were reluctant to purchase this game, but Im so glad we did! There are no in game purchases which is amazing. You are able to build multiple cities, adjust taxes, and even create policys later in the game. There is also a sandbox mode and goals.
We appreciate that this game still works on modern phones. Im excited for Pocket City 2, but this is keeping us happy for the time being.
Pocket City is an incredible building game that is fun and actually (sometimes) very simple. It has simple, but not bad, graphics. A few years ago we started playing SimCity and got annoyed with having your city storage full and the pushy SimCash purchases. Pocket city solves all that. Add quests to level up your city and get some cash, and events and disasters, it is perfect for someone looking for a fun, easy city game.
This game is amazing! There is tuns to do with quests, events, and even natural disasters that can cause pure chaos 100/10.
Im picky and this game is pretty legit. We just need more. More building styles in each zone, more special buildings, more nature & decor. More interaction or detailed building interiors in free roam would be cool. Decorating your house and that whole thing needs work.
Ok we paid 3 dollars for this why doesnt it collect money while im offline.
This game is a nice and simple city builder. We like the simplicity of having just your basic resources, but if its not about running a fine tuned machine, it should have far more decorations. We kind of just end up focusing on making as much money as possible and then loose steam after we deem our cities pretty. More decorations, and more building varieties. Perhaps a stock market would be fun.
Let us just start off by saying how much we appreciate the work put into this game. We had a blast building our first city and couldnt look away. The game design is just perfect for a mobile app. There are no micro transactions and you can freely progress throughout the game. Now, heres the biggest downside: the game is only fun for about a day. After building our first region, everything seemed repetitive and pointless with the amount of money we were getting. The developers actually made it too easy to progress; once youre done with one city, continuing is essentially pointless, and you cannot keep growing the current city. It would be better if more upgrades were possible to densify the city or more difficult challenges arose.
Its fun but we just felt like there wasnt much to do after we reached level 100 Either that or we just sucked at the game and didn't want to play it anymore.
We love this game but we think after level 30 we shouldnt have to keep confirming subsequent level increases and we would like to be able to disable the annoying confirmation prompts after we purchase zones, etc.
This game is fun! But its very easy. We played it for a total of maybe 8 hours and our city was already as big as it could get, and we consistently had $1M+ in money. Natural disasters arent really disasters. You get relief money for it and are able to immediately rebuild. Its pretty easy to keep your citizens happy. A but where it sometimes wont let us place a building unless Im in multi build mode. Thats about it. Great game, just not very challenging.
Great game that should be updated more often.
This is similar to the old version of SimCity. It has a focus on city building rather than on acquiring points and buying tokens. Our main complaint is that it is a bit too simple it could use more city building features. We would like to see things like a limited third upgrade level to luxury residences and stores; advanced options for fire, police, and hospital; upgradable airports and the lake.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.41
- Size: 64.18 MB
- iOS: 9.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Codebrew Games Inc.
Last updated: 12th November 2022 | Genre: Strategy, Simulation | Developer: Codebrew Games Inc.