My Country is a vast simulation game that essentially puts you in charge of your own country. From the makers of the successful Paradise Island, My Country allows you to build up your very own land, full of buildings, people, taxi companies and loads more! If you’re a fan of games like Cityville and Farmville, this could well have a special place on your Android.
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC Desire HD
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros
Truly vast game with hundreds of tasks and ventures to complete.Nice graphics.Ideal for fans of simulation games.Lots of detail, you really seem to have control over everything.Takes an positive interest in the ecology of your country.
Cons
No true autonomy, you just complete the tasks. It’s all about accumulating more money and items to complete task A, then task B and so on.Some of the on-screen options are tiny and are therefore very difficult to touch… and I was testing this on a 4.3? inch screen!
My Country is an immense and immersive simulation game where players build and manage their own country. Starting small intially, you must construct buildings; a post office and a taxi company seem to be the early priorities, and so forth building your little town into a huge and functioning empire.
The length the game goes to include as much detail as possible is pretty impressive. You have similar levels of immersion on the Facebook game Cityville, of which I was once mildly addicted to. My Country appears to be a touch screen Android version of this highly successful game. Created on the back of the also popular Paradise Island, My Country gives a more corporate edge where you must regularly organize service contracts and employ a range of city workers to run the growing number of businesses in your country.
Each new task is called a ‘Venture’. So, step one is to build a post office, step two is to employ a postal worker. Before you can do that however you have to collect a variety of items and these can only be collected by completing other little tasks like building a windmill or upgrading a building. Once you have employed a postal worker you have to arrange a contract and collect money on a regular basis. Bus driving is also an early gap in the My Country employment market and various things have to be accomplished in order to organize a transit system for your country. Players of various online games; like the aforementioned Cityville and Farmville, will probably be automatically familiar with the gameplay. There is also a real-world fiscal element to the game where you can purchase ‘Game Dollars’ and ‘Country Bucks’. These can ultimately be used to do anything you like in a game, from immediately employing someone or speeding up the construction of a building.
The graphics and sound are quite functional without being amazing, again very similar to the bigger online games of similar ilk. A genuinely nice touch in all this building is the fact you have to keep a mind on the ecology of your city. You cannot just build a skyscraper without giving something back to nature first. Like an English Garden or an Eco Park. I though this was a pretty nice touch for a game which pursues capitalist growth with such fervour. Fans of the genre should be rightly thrilled with the depth the game goes to to deliver an immersive and comprehensive gaming experience, there is lots of detail here, from employing swathes of different workers to ensuring contracts are kept up to date with… the game essentially has no end and you could be committing a vast number of hours to this. Squeezing all this into an Android game is quite an achievement.
I think the only issue I have with this, and to be honest the ‘genre’ rather than just My Country is the fact that it becomes quite systematic. The country is supposedly your ‘very own’ but in truth you don’t have much autonomy. It is about the perpetual accumulation of cash and assets to achieve a certain goal, regardless of how you actually might want to run a country. You don’t really have much in the way of choice beyond perhaps completing tasks in the order you choose. Many, many gamers see this as a challenge and will commit a lot of time in creating a huge country of efficient and functional metropolises, and for those the game will be massively rewarding. For others, especially if you have perhaps been turned off by the monotony of similar games, might not have such drive to play the game. However, as a newcomer to the genre, My Country is a fantastic addition and fans of simulation games should be thrilled that games of such depth have made it onto the Android platform.
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Games such as My Country draw a line in the sand in that you’ll either love it or hate it. People who like games like Cityville and Farmville will adore this game and find it huge amounts of fun. For those people that don’t this is probably worth avoiding!
Games like My Country a incredibly addictive if you fall into the ‘love’ camp and you may well devote many hours to this as you build you country up.
The graphics are quite nice considering there is so much detail in this game. Bright, functional and nice details like moving cars and the ability to zoom in and out seamlessly.
The sound is quite basic, city sounds, sounds of coins when you collect money, etc. All very immersive and suitable for the game. The music in the background is quite dry, very much ‘background’ music rather than anything exciting!
