How to play & controls SimWorld
SimWorld is a city builder on one shared planet. The globe is 1,000 km around and built from real Earth elevation data at a single 1:40 scale, with no vertical exaggeration: Everest rises 221 m and Seoul to Jeju is 11.3 km. It is divided into 124,416 plots, each 200 × 200 tiles of about 8 m, roughly 1.6 km a side. Sea and rivers can't be filled; hills can be levelled for a price.
You never place houses. You draw roads, paint zones and place facilities, and buildings rise by themselves where a road is close enough and there is demand. When demand falls they stand empty instead of disappearing, and fill again when it returns. There are no pedestrians: buildings and cars move the city, and the cars are drawn from traffic flows the server calculates per road segment.
Every player shares one clock: growth is continuous, taxes and upkeep are settled at fixed intervals, and other people's cities grow on the same globe. You can go down into them, leave a guestbook note, and see from orbit which of the 20 one-of-a-kind landmarks each city has built.
Goal
Pick your own plot on a 1,000 km globe and grow a city with roads, zones and public services. Enough residents opens a neighbouring plot.
How it works
- The city grows continuously. The guide card on screen shows what to do next.
Modes
Found it here
Logged in with GameNow, pick empty land that is at least 60% dry ground and name it. The city is saved and keeps settling while you are away; neighbouring plots open at 10,000, 26,000 and 45,000 total residents, up to four in a 2×2 block.
Build a practice city here
Without logging in, build on any empty land. The browser runs the same rule functions as the server, so the numbers match a real city, but there are no neighbours, expansions or landmarks, and closing the window discards it.
Visit
Go down into anyone's city from the globe or the 'Visit cities' list, even when the owner is offline. Brushes are disabled; logged-in visitors can leave one guestbook note of up to 120 characters per city and edit it later.
Controls
| Action | Mouse & keyboard | Touch | Gamepad |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spin the globe, go down | Drag; wheel to rise and fall | Drag one finger; pinch out to go down | Hold A and move the left stick |
| Pick a tool | 1–2 roads, 3–5 zones, 6 subway line, 7 one way; letters for buildings (I wind, H water, G thermal, J fire, N school, K police, L clinic) | Left bar: Roads, Zones, Build, Decorate, Landmark, Land | Left stick cursor to the left bar, A |
| Draw a road or paint a zone | Left-drag; roads snap to 0°, 45° and 90° | Drag one finger, lift to build | Hold A and steer with the left stick |
| Place a building | Click once | Tap once | A |
| Cancel a stroke, drop the tool | Esc or right-click | Touch with another finger; Hand at the top of the left bar | B |
| Pan | WASD or arrows, middle-drag, or left-drag with no tool | One finger with no tool, or two fingers together | D-pad |
| Rotate | Right-drag or Q/E | Twist two fingers | Hold X and move the left stick |
| Zoom | Wheel, or R in and F out | Pinch | — |
| Undo recent construction | Ctrl/⌘+Z within 1 minute | ↶ Undo at the top | Cursor on Undo, A |
Tips
- Large brushes over 10 tiles ask before charging. A green preview is valid, red is blocked.
Strategy tips
Space your wind turbines
A turbine powers 3,000 people only when the nearest other turbine is 6 or more tiles away; output slides to 50% at 2 tiles. A thermal plant powers 14,000 but costs about three times as much ($157K against $53.6K), and each one adds 2.5 points of citywide pollution.
Appeal is multiplied, not added
Appeal is the product of tax, service quality, pollution, traffic speed and utilities, so one bad factor drags everything down. Below 0.55 it pulls every zone's demand down. Worked out from the growth formula, 9% tax is neutral, and above about 12% appeal falls under that line even if everything else is perfect.
Get out of the red first
With negative funds, services run at 30% whatever the budget slider says, so new facilities won't raise quality. Raise tax a little or demolish facilities that do nothing yet: you get half the cost back, or all but one settlement's upkeep and wear within a minute of placing.
Fix jams by capacity
A street carries 900 vehicles an hour and an avenue 3,600. One-way doubles a segment's capacity in its direction, but 40% of peak trips travel the other way and need a route back. A traffic event clears with an avenue, one-way, a roundabout or subway entrance within 5 tiles, or a subway line within 3.
Parks earlier than the bar asks
Service quality ignores parks until 18,000 residents, but park complaints can start at 3,000 once ten occupied home tiles have no park or sports court within 12 tiles. A park within 8 tiles also ends noise complaints from homes within 3 tiles of factories.
Close events before you log off
New events start only in settlements you spend online, but deadlines run regardless: 4 settlements for a fire, 5 for a blackout, 8 for traffic or noise, 10 for a park. A blackout is solved only when supply reaches 115% of the demand when it began. A missed fire costs more per resident than solving one pays.
Link roads with neighbours
Trade counts only border tiles where both cities have a road, at the narrower road's capacity, so one avenue meeting an avenue equals four streets. Twenty avenue tiles meeting across borders max it out: outside demand for your industry rises from 350 to 3,230 jobs and imports get 37.5% cheaper.
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