ElectroCity is a fun little sim game from New Zealand designed to "spark an interest and lay an unbiased foundation for later learning" about the topics of energy policy and environmental impact. It plays like a very simplified version of SimCity, instead oh having to plan out every detail, you just chose how to use a few large squares of land, either for mining, building power plants, or using the land to create jobs, increase tourism, or decrease environmental impact. You have to balance population growth, happiness, and energy use with environmental impact, and the city budget. You get graded in each category at the end with a simple A+ through F scale.

One of the interesting aspects of the ElectroCity website is that you can actually look at the finished cities of other players, including those at the top of the highscore table. Public highscore tables have been used often in these kinds of online games to encourage competetive players to try harder to excel, but by actually showing the city created by the top players, you get a bit of an insight into what strategy the player used to do so well.

The only big thing I didn't like about the game is that you have to stop playing after 150 turns. It would have been nice to enter a "free play" mode to experiment with the game before trying again. On the other hand, forcing the player to try again from the beginning is probably a good way to get them to try many diverse strategies.

Play ElectroCity