Crowd City

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Crowd City is an Arcade-style game released on mobile devices in 2018, ported to Nintendo Switch in 2023, then ported to PlayStation 4 in 2024. In this game, players control a crowd of people (or animals, or aliens, or whatever) running through a location collecting other people to add to your group as you compete against multiple computer-controlled opponents doing the same thing, and players or opponents who are larger in size can absorb members of the opposing group as well. After a limited amount of time, whatever group has the most people when that time limit is up is declared the winner.

The gameplay concept here is really similar to Hole io, with the main difference being that Hole io has you growing an expanding hole and swallowing up everything that can fit in its maw, while Crowd City just has you absorbing people. And unfortunately for Crowd City, Hole io is a better game in virtually every way.

First and foremost, there’s just a lot more variety and satisfaction to Hole io, where you can potentially swallow up anything you see, but you need to be smart about what you think you can take given your current size. By comparison, in Crowd City you’re only ever absorbing people or opponents’ crowds, and there’s little thought required – just go where you see the most people, and if you see an opposing group, go towards it if it’s smaller, and run away from it if it’s bigger. No need to actually think about anything.

What’s more, compared to Hole io, your field of view is extremely limited here, meaning that even with what little strategy there is here, it’s difficult to make any sort of intelligent plan for where to go next. Not that you’ll need any sort of strategy – just approach levels with a modicum of intelligence and you’ll breeze through them, easily. As such, there seems little point to progression through the game’s maps, as they’re all just different varieties of easy. And you might hope that multiplayer would provide a decent challenge here, but there is no multiplayer.

At the very least, the presentation here is decent enough, featuring simple 3D visuals depicting the locations, with people represented by simple 3D stick figures. This is backed by an upbeat soundtrack that works well to back up the whimsical gameplay.

Unfortunately, even though Crowd City is enjoyable in short bursts, it’s just too shallow, too repetitive, and too easy to keep anyone playing for very long without multiplayer to back it up. And thanks to Hole io, a much better game with similar gameplay already exists, and at the same low price, no less. Go play that game instead.

tl;dr – Crowd City is an Arcade-style game where players control a crowd of people running around collecting others to add to your group, trying to have the largest group when the time limit is up. The core gameplay here is decent, but there’s no depth, it’s too repetitive, and too easy, with no multiplayer to keep you playing. You are much better off getting Hole io, which plays similarly but is much better in numerous ways.

Grade: D+

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