Destructoid:
As Nick said way back in August of last year when he played City Rain, mashing the two distinct concepts together is "ridiculous enough that it actually works." The 2009 Independent Games Festival Student Finalist is finally playable for the rest of us lowly peons; the demo and full $9.95 download can be found here.
Since the screenshot above doesn't particularly explain the Sim City/Tetris comparison, here's how City Rain works in a nutshell. Falling blocks (buildings) can be placed anywhere on the tile-based map. To upgrade existing buildings, you simply drop the same structure type on it. And, that's mostly it.
Of course, you are building a city here, so there are meters you have to worry about. Whatever you do, don't make the meters angry. It's worth noting that City Rain is also being brought to Xbox LIVE Indie Games and "other casual game platforms."
For most people, Sim City is considered to be a pretty good game. Same goes for Tetris. So, if one was to put them together one would get one heck of a game, right? Well, somewhat. Ovolo Corporation's CityRain is billed as a combination of the two aforementioned games and truly does play as both at once (with a Greenpeace feel).
City RAIN is a cross between a city simulator and a puzzle game in which the player is recruited to be an officer of RAIN (Rescue And Intervention Non-profit), an organization committed to raising environmental awareness, and fighting the corruption of politicians and big business. Small towns all over the world are being taken advantage of by a large corporation that bribes the local politicians to let them do their harmful business in town. RAIN travels from town to town and, with your help, strives to get the city off of the WEPA blacklist.
The indie puzzler/city-sim City RAIN is fun, quirky, and worth the low cost if you can just get past some minor annoyances and preachy environmental message.
Out of Eight writes: "With the high level of success shown by the SimCity series of games, I'm frankly surprised there isn't a proliferation of city builders on the market. Sure, there's the City Life/Cities XL games and Haemimont's series of historical titles, but other than those examples, the genre has largely been played out: how many different ways can you zone roads and residential sectors? Using the city builder game as a base is City Rain, which infuses the extreme excitement of placing houses with puzzle games like Tetris. That's the kind of out-of-the-box thinking we appreciate here at Out of Eight, and it deserves some reviewingness! Take that, spell checker!"
