Developed by Blackstaff Games and published by Merge Games and Maple Whispering Limited, Buildings Have Feelings Too! is a brand-new city builder with a twist. Unlike most of the city-builders where the focus is to create the most sophisticated city possible, here, you have to create a self-sustainable city with buildings that can move around and have feelings as well. One wrong move might break the heart of your building and have an adverse effect on your city’s ranking. Build on this unique concept, Buildings Have Feelings Too! is certainly a unique entry in the city builder genre. This is our review of Buildings Have Feelings Too! in which we create a city full of lively, moving, and somewhat sarcastic buildings.
Right from the start of the game, you will notice one thing if you are playing with a keyboard and mouse. The controls are a little bit clunky. This is because the game feels like it is primarily built for playing with a controller. Although I would have loved a small note at the start of the game that it is best played with a controller as plenty of games do it for giving players a heads up. Nonetheless, even if you are playing with a keyboard or a mouse, the game requires a little practice with its controls, but I just preferred switching to the controller. The problem occurs when most of the people start the game with the traditional mouse controls with point-and-click city builder mechanics however that is not the case here. Buildings Have Feelings Too! features its own unique control scheme and playing the game with a controller is a breeze. If you are finding it hard to play with a mouse and a keyboard, just switch to a controller and you will notice a massive change.
In Buildings Have Feelings Too!, you play as a Mayor building, or at least that is what I liked to call it, complete with a window shade for a mustache. Buildings Have Feelings Too! is in fact a city builder and your main goal is to expand your very own small city into a huge hustling and bustling metropolitan. However, each of the buildings you make in the game is alive and will speak to you in their language which I will call brick language because it sounds like bricks falling down or moving around. There are tons of building types for you to choose and construct in pre-allocated slots in your city. The city expands in a side-scrolling faction. There is no 3D view of the city and you cannot expand forward or backward, only left or right.
You have nine areas in your city and each area comes with its own unique buildings and challenges. There is a main story of the game however it is more of a checklist of objectives. You are presented with a few objectives and when you complete these objectives, you move on to the next set of objectives. This progress also unlocks new buildings and sections of the city for you as well. Each location also has certain locked sections which are unlocked gradually as you expand and increase the ranking of your neighborhood. This ranking depends on how happy your buildings are and not on how advanced they are or how many buildings you own.
Your main goal in the game is not primarily expansion because expansion here comes secondary. Your primary goal here is to make sure that your buildings are happy and content because everything else is connected to their happiness. Happy buildings automatically help in the expansion of your city and ultimately increasing your neighborhood ranking. Each building in Buildings Have Feelings Too! is like a living entity. It will affect buildings around itself and also take influence from its surroundings. Each building has some Appeal Goals that you must meet in order to upgrade it.
Upgrading a building increases its positive or negative influence on its surrounding buildings however it often unlocks new Appeal Goals as well that you must meet in order to upgrade it further. Each building has three levels of upgrades. Each one requires more Appeal goals to complete but also these upgrades are beneficial for its surrounding buildings as well. Certain buildings like industrial buildings are not that welcomed in residential areas so you will need to move them around but there is a catch that these industrial buildings need people to upgrade. So it is really a challenge for you to manage everything in order to keep a balance between upgrading your building, making sure that all buildings are happy, and also completing your story objectives in order to progress further in the game.
The game’s main currency is Gold Bricks and you earn them by completing your main objectives or upgrading your buildings. These Gold Bricks are used to purchase new land for your constructions and constructing new buildings. Before constructing new buildings, you have to clear the debris from the map which requires Gold Bricks as well. If you are story-focused, you will always have plenty of gold because all the upgrades and mission completions will give you plenty of gold to build new structures. I was always loaded on Gold Bricks and hardly remember a point when I had to stop expanding or constructing due to lack of gold.
The story is progressed in the form of in-game cutscenes. These cutscenes are not frequent and are not like proper cutscenes. They are simply in-game dialogue scenes with the camera moving here and there to focus on different things with the dialogue delivery. I absolutely loved that the developer went for its own brick language where the dialogue sounds like bricks moving around or falling around. It is better than having no dialogue at all and sounds extremely fitting for the overall theme of the game. There are some brilliant little things here and there that shows that this is in not a half-baked title. The visuals are great and really capture the early 1900s industrial age vibe. Some of the buildings look eerily familiar as well.
Buildings Have Feelings Too! is a great, challenging city-builder. Blackstaff Games also calls it a puzzle game however there are not many puzzles to solve in the game as your main goal is the little objectives-based task list that you get for each mission. Since everyone will be building the city according to their own taste and design, there are no set rules for puzzles as well so I cannot really relate to Buildings Have Feelings Too! being called a puzzle game. There are multiple ways of solving each objective and every player will try to accomplish them on their own terms and pace which is a great thing about the game.
Final Verdict:
Buildings Have Feelings Too! is certainly a unique concept for a city builder and not a bad one as well. Once you get past the whole controls fiasco, it is a thoroughly enjoyable game and the gameplay has enough humor in it to keep you entertained. If you really want to enjoy Buildings Have Feelings Too!, just pick up a controller and play the game. End of the story. This is a great game that is simply getting overshadowed because of the clunky mouse and keyboard issues however once you pick up a controller, it is a whole other experience. The sound design is brilliant, I loved how the city actually feels alive because of the buildings moving around and talking with you and the level of complexity in managing everything keeps it challenging as well. It is a great city builder, just not your traditional one. Highly recommended for people who love playing city builders. Just make sure to play this one with a controller.
Final Score: 7.5/10
