Holyday City: Reloaded

Although any game can be reduced to a system of points, the truth is that modern video games are much too complex to think of them like that. Even if the underlying goal of an RPG is to gain experience and find items, the story, the combat system and everything else is designed to help with immersion. However, there are still games out there that do not try very hard to hide the fact that you are basically chasing virtual points.

Holyday City: Reloaded is a clicker game with basic gameplay mechanics, in which the ultimate goal is to make as much money as you can while keeping the inhabitants of a city as happy as possible. You start with a simple burger joint and some coffee shops, but soon you move on to factories, nuclear power plants and many other structures that generate a lot more money and resources.

The way you advance is extremely simple, since there’s not even that much clicking involved. Instead, the structures generate cash for you, and all you have to do is build more of them when you have enough cash. The profits increase the more buildings of one type you have, and you actually get to double them once you reach milestone numbers like 25, 50, 100 and so on.

While the first types of structures only generate cash, factories, farms and power plants produce their own types of resources, albeit much slower. These can be used to purchase certain upgrades and boost your production even further, but they take a long time to get. In fact, everything after the introductory buildings takes a long time, and there doesn’t seem to be possible to speed up the production times.

There are other issues as well, such as the fact that after the first half an hour or so you really need to put the game in the taskbar and wait, because getting more than 200 of a particular structure is pretty much a waste of money.

As a side note, every time a new structure becomes available, a large tooltip is displayed on the screen telling you that you can now build it. In fact, you are pretty much forced to do it, because it blocks most of the interface and there’s no way to get rid of it until you build the structure in question.

Holyday City: Reloaded is still a game that’s meant to be played every once in a while, but it’s still annoying that you are left without other options after the 30-minute mark. Hence, don’t expect this to keep you glued to the screen for hours on end.