Last updated on January 16th, 2026 at 08:30 am
SimCity BuildIt – Simulation Game Review
SimCity BuildIt is a Simulation/Strategy game from EA Swiss Sarl, first launched in 17th December 2014.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 75,595+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes SimCity BuildIt Stand Out
Welcome, Mayor, to the city builder and simulator! Be the hero of your very own city metropolis. This is the city-building game to design and create a beautiful, bustling town or metropolis. Every decision is yours as your city simulation grows larger and more intricate. You need to make smart building choices as a city builder to keep your citizens happy and your skyline growing. Then build, trade, chat, compete, and join clubs with fellow city-building Mayors. The city game that lets you build your city, your way!
BRING YOUR CITY METROPOLIS TO LIFE
Build your metropolis with skyscrapers, parks, bridges, and much more! Place buildings strategically to keep your taxes flowing and your city growing. Solve real-life city-building challenges like traffic and pollution. Provide your town and city services like power plants and police departments. Strategize, build and keep traffic moving with grand avenues and streetcars in this fun city builder and simulator.
PUT YOUR IMAGINATION AND CITY ON THE MAP
The possibilities are endless in this town and city-building simulator! A worldwide city game, build Tokyo-, London-, or Paris-style neighborhoods, and unlock exclusive city landmarks like the Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty. Make building rewarding and discover new technologies with the Future Cities while getting athletic with sports stadiums to become a pro city builder. Build and decorate your town or city with rivers, lakes, forests, and expand along the beach or mountain slopes. Unlock your city-builder strategies with new geographic regions for your metropolis, such as the Sunny Isles or Frosty Fjords, each with a unique architectural style. The city-building game where there’s always something new and different to make your city simulation unique.
BUILD AND BATTLE YOUR WAY TO VICTORY
The city-building game that lets you defend your city metropolis against monsters or compete against other mayors in Club Wars. Plot winning city-builder strategies with your Club mates and declare war on other cities. Once the battle simulation is on, unleash crazy disasters like the Disco Twister and Plant Monster on your opponents. Earn valuable rewards to use in battle, in building or to improve your city. In addition, take on other players in the Contest of Mayors, where you can complete weekly challenges and climb the League ranks toward the top of this city game. Each contest season brings unique rewards to build and beautify your city or town!
BUILD A BETTER CITY WITH TRAINS
The city-building game to improve as a city builder with unlockable and upgradeable trains. Discover new trains and train stations for your dream metropolis! Build, expand and customize your rail network to fit your unique city simulation.
BUILD, CONNECT AND TEAM UP
Join a Mayor’s Club to trade city supplies with other members who love and chat about city-building strategies and available resources. Collaborate with other town and city builders to help someone complete their personal vision as well as get support to complete yours. Build big, work together, lead other Mayors, and watch your city simulation come to life in this city-building game and simulator!
Important Consumer Information. This app:
Requires a persistent Internet connection (network fees may apply). Requires acceptance of EA’s Privacy & Cookie Policy and User Agreement. Includes in-game advertising. Contains direct links to the Internet and social networking sites intended for an audience over 13. The app uses Game Center. Log out of Game Center before installation if you don’t want to share your game play with friends.
User Agreement: http://terms.ea.com
Privacy and Cookie Policy: http://privacy.ea.com
Visit https://help.ea.com/en/ for assistance or inquiries.
EA may retire online features after 30 days’ notice posted on www.ea.com/service-updates.
This Simulation game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, SimCity BuildIt is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 5th January 2026
Recent improvements include:
Pack your bags, Mayor – we’re headed to exotic Costa Rica for a warm & sunny getaway!
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Join the Contest of Mayors and cruise through the Mayor’s Pass to unlock iconic Costa Rican landmarks like Castillo Del Moro and the mighty Irazu Volcano
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Collect Coffee Coins and trade them in for bright builds such as Cahuita Beach and La Casona
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Plus, use those Coffee Coins to upgrade your very own sustainable Coffee Farm! Watch it grow from a tiny sprout into stunning land with powerful boosts.
Download & Availability
SimCity BuildIt is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get SimCity BuildIt 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:
Simcity is one game we have been playing for years right since 2016 but one major upgrade we are currently demanding for is one in which, players can get to zoom the game clearly with experiencing a better visual presentation of how sims go about there usually, through the lanes of the roads to and from. We need extra zoom effect on the games please.
At first, we hated SimCity build it because we never got tax but now that Im getting tax this is the game we were born to do.
Have no more space to build. Loosing interest, Ive played since day 1.
Use to be a fun game.you have made it nearly impossible to compete mc or to get buildings from album. Without spending money. We completely understand your views on making money but this has turned into a huge money grab and its taking the fun out of the game and turning it into a full time job plus you will not address the problem with hackers and the clubs are filling up with players that have quit shame on you.
Grate game 100%. Love everything about it,download it NOW.
This is a really fun game! The only criticism we have is that the Four-Lane road is kind of buggy.
We like that you dont have to pay, but can still build a good city with some creativity.
Great way to be entertained. Thank you.
We came back to the game and love it again. Is a great challenge of logistics and design.
We had this game waaaaaay back when Razor phones where the phones to have! Lol no joke.
We play SimCitys cities of tomorrow on our Mac but we cannot get it on our iPad. So we played SimCity building to compensate, its not bad its not tomorrow, but its not bad.
Fun interesting! We love how you can continue to build and play not just create your city and be done with it and theres nothing else to do. Ive been playing this game for almost 8 years and its our favorite game ever.
Okay so we need help with getting nails and we dont know have to get them we are level five and we have small factory .so can you help us? Please reply. But thanks for making this game and thanks Thanks again.
This is a good game for 9 & up but there are a few glitches like sometimes when we try to build a (factory residence) the game screen turns purple and stops working & we need to reset our iPad. Sometimes when we pay for materials we pay but we do not get it, otherwise this is a great game and we highly recommend it. Ps: when screen time limits start when we are playing the game the next day it will not work & EXTREMELY ANNOYING GLITCH: WHEN we SWITCHED TO SOLAR AND WIND we LOST POWER, WHEN we REGAINED POWER AND we HAD DOUBLE POWER IT WILL STILL SAY THAT we NEED MORE POWER EVEN IF we DID NOT SO WHAT we DID WAS RESET MY IPAD AND THAT DID NOT WORK.
Might be the best game we have ever played. So addictive and limitless, perfect if you enjoy routine.
Just like SimCity on computer this is way more interactive and engaging.
Great game. Started playing on our first Mac. Just as fun to play on the phone.
Great game!!! Build up your storage first.
Downloaded many games and deleted this is a keeper.
We're happy with it. We enjoy watching our city grow, we enjoy participating in the contest of mayors. We just think there are a few updates that should be made. 1. We need more land to expand to. Once you've run out of land, that's it (push the mountains back & open more land space). 2. Allow lakes that have been placed together to form a river to also be placed on the beach to connect the water to the sea. 3. Allow bridges to span (1) square of lake space instead of minimum being (2) squares of space. 4. Allow Epic bldg upgrades to be chosen or regifted after a waiting period because it gets frustrating you keep getting the exact same model of epic skyscraper after all of the work you've put in trying to meet the epic requirements & all of the time spent waiting on your surprise skyscraper. Very disappointing when it's yet another repeat model, but you were hoping for a specific type that you do not yet have. 5. Allow users to sell gold keys!!! We have so many now that we don't know what to do with them, but others could use them (for a nice price).
The game would be more fun if the financial growth were easier to obtain.
Been playing it for several years.
Best game out there. Takes a bit to get it set up. You must be strategic and thoughtful, but you can also make your cities visually pleasing (the creative/artistic part). Then theres many different parts to this game, from wars with groups, to competing in design cities. We love the graphics in this as well. Classic.
Good game just some stuff costs to much.
This game is one of the best mobile city planning games out there! You have to deal with real-world problems like funding departments, designating parks and natural areas, and time schedules on shipments and air deliveries. With a little bit of problem solving and a lot of fun, we would recommend this game to anyone looking for a challenge or interested in urban planning.
One of the best simulation games ever.
This game is magnificent and fun. We give it a 5 star rating for the game. We hope you enjoy it too.
It much good game but pay to win.
We have been a sim city fan since the days of playing it on the Nintendo. And we have been playing it until now. We love this buildit version. We have played the other iPhone/iPad version but this buildit is very enjoyable. One improvement is to make it more attainable to expand the size of the city. Its better now than it used to be to expand. The latest version has so many different things to do now that there is an airport. We love the new managers challenge. There are so many different goals to work on. We have been involved in the wars. We love them.
Its a really great game we love making our dream citys we would like though a camera where you can walk on the streets. But over all great game.
This game is very good but we wish there was a Weather forecast office we could put in cities Kinda like the NWS.
The graphics are great and the game is really fun. We would recommend this game to people who like slow games because this one takes some time for levels, especially when you are waiting for your materials to be ready in the stores.
When going to see what new task are available it is an endless wait. Needs update. It tells you at the end of the weight that it was a problem code 17.
Have been playing for years – they keep adding stuff to make it interesting.
Look to micromanage the game has many opportunities to win some bucks and lots of bonus prizes.
Been playing for years and having a blast. Even buy sim cash once in a while. Think it's only fair they make some dough for a game we love to play. Changes are good and bad. But it still goes on.
We like this formulation of the city better. The city services dont make our city easily go bankrupt.
It's a great to enjoy managing your own city and creating something that no other player has because your city is unique to you and when you travel to other players city you see how no two cities are alike. Only wish the new addition of mass transit would be the same as or combined with roads so we dont have to lose a good percentage of population to give our residents of any region.
Buildit focuses on a couple of commodities that strain capability. But whats really amazing is this games ability to keep us coming back. As you continue playing, you find new ways to advance ahead. We guess Ive been at it nearly two years now.
We were an early pioneer! We still have fun playing with our team! This is a great game.
We believe that this is a very educational game that helps with mayor engagement.
Main region would be nice if it counted to open all other regions.
Thanks for kicking the cheaters out it was no fun playing when we get koed in 20 minutes and they score 200k in that short period of .keep up the great work.
We have been playing for 4 years there is nothing wrong about the game its wonderful.
We truly enjoy all the time we get to play! Met some wonderful players who have become friends over the years! Thanks.
Our cities are beautiful- the developers always come up with new buildings and challenges a team game thats a lot of fun.
Unos de los mejores Juego si no es el mejor y entretenido con variedades de cosas que hacer y disfrutar.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.73.1
- Size: 279.49 MB
- iOS: 13.0 or later
- Languages: AR, NL, EN, FI, FR, DE, ID, IT, JA, KO, PL, PT, RU, ZH, ES, ZH, TR
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Loot Boxes
- Developer: EA Swiss Sarl
Last updated: 5th January 2026 | Genre: Simulation, Strategy | Developer: EA Swiss Sarl