March 28th, 2020 at 11:44 AM
I'm unsure, but I can see the argument that it is.
On the surface, it does indeed look more like an empire management game than a city-builder. However, the area of play is quite small (certainly no larger than the area in Cities: Skylines), so it often tends to play out like a city-builder in practice. So, it definitely has strong elements of city-building, but it also has elements of empire management (even of those are more superficial). I guess the question of whether or not you classify it as a "city-builder" just comes down to a philosophical question of "Lumpers vs. Splitters": lumpers would classify it as one, and splitters would not.
(As for the fact that it's tongue-in-cheek: it is, but I don't think that really matters. There's nothing in the definition of "city-builder" to exclude tongue-in-cheek games
!)
On the surface, it does indeed look more like an empire management game than a city-builder. However, the area of play is quite small (certainly no larger than the area in Cities: Skylines), so it often tends to play out like a city-builder in practice. So, it definitely has strong elements of city-building, but it also has elements of empire management (even of those are more superficial). I guess the question of whether or not you classify it as a "city-builder" just comes down to a philosophical question of "Lumpers vs. Splitters": lumpers would classify it as one, and splitters would not.
(As for the fact that it's tongue-in-cheek: it is, but I don't think that really matters. There's nothing in the definition of "city-builder" to exclude tongue-in-cheek games
!)
