20 Minute Metropolis - The Action City Builder

Very simple city building game. Took about 1.5 hours for me to beat the entire game with a few tries. Since there seems to only be a single map, iteration and learning how to optimize the map is possible. So you learn build order, and figure out resource management quickly. It's not bad, but it's not great either, very unpolished.

There is not a lot of game, but it is fun for an hour.

20 Minute Metropolis is an arcade city builder, and, true to its name, each playthrough takes exactly twenty minutes. Within those twenty minutes, the player’s goal is to score as many points as possible. Points are gained through building parks, and so, in essence, the goal is to accumulate as many resources as possible to build as many parks as possible. The player also has to balance having sufficient work, waste transport, and food for this growing city. In my playthroughs, this translated to spending the first fifteen minutes or so of the run building infrastructure, then spamming parks for the last five minutes. However, in adding a time limit, the game ceases to be able to focus on a careful building and perfecting of layouts or balance. It instead becomes a frantic scramble to keep up with rapidly diminishing finite resources and the unceasing demands of a changing landscape. From start to finish, the city in 20 Minute Metropolis never feels controlled. It always feels as though it’s teetering on the edge, even though the edge is meaningless. There is no failstate in 20 Minute Metropolis. You cannot go bankrupt or see your citizens starve. Indeed, you effectively have no …

The gameplay and UX is lacking, but I guess it was a stepping stone into making the (much better) T-minus 30. The UI doesn't fit on ultrawides, or full-height when windowed.

Honestly just boring. You have to build roads (without drag and drop) between buildings and build buildings that generate points. Any management game is better than this, if you want something cheap, buy Vampire Survivors for 3 bucks.

great game, quick and easy to understand