Game review
micropolisJS
3 / 10
- Developer
- Graeme McCutcheon and contributors
- Publisher
- Graeme McCutcheon
- Released
- 1 January 2013
- Platforms
- Web browser (desktop only)
- Genre
- City builder / Simulation
- Monetisation
- Free, open source, no ads and no in-game purchases
- Players
- Single-player only
The short version
micropolisJS is a genuinely well-built, faithful port of the original open-sourced Micropolis — city creation, zoning tools, a live budget and an RCI demand graph were all confirmed working correctly with a mouse on desktop. It never gets the chance to prove any of that on a phone. The game ships its own explicit screen-size gate, and testing it directly at two different phone orientations — a 390x844 portrait viewport and an 844x390 landscape one — hit the same "Uh-oh! This screen is too small" message both times, because the check requires at least 590px of width and 582px of height simultaneously, a combination no real phone screen provides in either orientation. This isn't an inference about awkward touch controls; the game will not load at all.
Biggest strengths
- A complete, working simulation confirmed directly: naming a city, choosing a difficulty, and starting a game all worked correctly, and placing a Residential zone with the mouse immediately deducted the correct $100 cost and placed the zone marker on the map
- The classic Micropolis interface is intact and functional — a live funds/score/population panel, a full tool palette (zones, roads, rail, power plants, services), an RCI demand graph, and budget/evaluation screens, all tested and rendering correctly
- A well-regarded, actively maintained open-source project in its own right, independently sitting at 723 GitHub stars and 119 forks
Biggest weaknesses
- The game will not load at all on any phone-compatible screen size. This was confirmed directly in two separate tests — a 390x844 portrait viewport and an 844x390 landscape viewport — and both were blocked by the same built-in warning screen. Reading the shipped CSS confirms why: the warning displays whenever the viewport is narrower than 590px or shorter than 582px, and no realistic phone screen clears both thresholds at once in either orientation
- Because the game cannot be reached on a phone at all, none of its touch-specific behavior could be evaluated — there is nothing to test past the warning screen
- It's a direct, faithful port of a 1989 game rather than a new design, which is exactly the point of the project but keeps originality low on its own terms
Who it's for: Desktop players who want a real, faithful browser port of classic Micropolis/SimCity
Our recommendation: A strong desktop city builder that is not currently reachable on a phone at all
3 / 10
micropolisJS sets out to be exactly what its name says: a faithful JavaScript/HTML5 port of the original open-sourced Micropolis (the codebase Electronic Arts released as free software, the same engine behind the original SimCity), and on desktop it delivers on that completely. Starting a new game, naming a city, and picking a difficulty all worked cleanly in testing, dropping straight into the familiar interface: a funds and population readout, a full palette of zoning and infrastructure tools, and a live RCI (residential/commercial/industrial) demand graph. Placing a Residential zone with the mouse was confirmed directly — the correct $100 cost was deducted immediately and a zone marker appeared exactly where clicked. This is a real, working simulation, not a tech demo.
It never reaches a phone at all
That's as far as this review can honestly go, because the one thing this shelf is built to test — whether a game can be played on a phone — fails before any gameplay is even reachable. The game ships its own screen-size check, and visiting it on a simulated phone produces an "Uh-oh! This screen is too small — I won't be able to fit in all the controls, buttons and gizmos! Sorry!" message instead of the game. That was tested twice, deliberately choosing two different phone orientations to rule out a simple portrait-vs-landscape mismatch: a 390x844 portrait viewport and an 844x390 landscape viewport both hit the same wall. Reading the shipped CSS explains exactly why neither works — the warning is shown below 590px of width or 582px of height, and satisfying both thresholds at once needs a screen wider than most phones are tall and taller than most phones are wide. There is no smaller or simplified layout behind that gate to fall back to; it is a hard stop.
Verdict
This is a well-made, actively-loved piece of software with real depth once you're past the front door, and none of that is in question. But it is currently a desktop-only project by its own explicit design, and a shelf built around phone playability has to judge it on the door it actually opens, not the game behind it.
Pros and cons
Pros
- A complete, working simulation confirmed directly: naming a city, choosing a difficulty, and starting a game all worked correctly, and placing a Residential zone with the mouse immediately deducted the correct $100 cost and placed the zone marker on the map
- The classic Micropolis interface is intact and functional — a live funds/score/population panel, a full tool palette (zones, roads, rail, power plants, services), an RCI demand graph, and budget/evaluation screens, all tested and rendering correctly
- A well-regarded, actively maintained open-source project in its own right, independently sitting at 723 GitHub stars and 119 forks
- Licensing is unusually well handled: GPL-3.0 for the code (verified directly against the shipped LICENSE and COPYING files) plus a separate, honored trademark license for use of the "Micropolis" name, with proper attribution already built into the game's own footer
- No analytics found anywhere in the shipped build
Cons
- The game will not load at all on any phone-compatible screen size. This was confirmed directly in two separate tests — a 390x844 portrait viewport and an 844x390 landscape viewport — and both were blocked by the same built-in warning screen. Reading the shipped CSS confirms why: the warning displays whenever the viewport is narrower than 590px or shorter than 582px, and no realistic phone screen clears both thresholds at once in either orientation
- Because the game cannot be reached on a phone at all, none of its touch-specific behavior could be evaluated — there is nothing to test past the warning screen
- It's a direct, faithful port of a 1989 game rather than a new design, which is exactly the point of the project but keeps originality low on its own terms
- Sound was not verified either way in this environment; headless testing has no audio output