micropolisJS

Micropolis was the open-source 1989 release of SimCity, and this is a hand-written HTML5/JavaScript port of it. You start with an empty patch of terrain and a small treasury, and everything after that is up to you: where the roads go, what gets zoned, how much you tax, and whether the city survives the disasters.

It is a slow, systems-driven builder rather than a fast arcade game. There are no tutorials here — just a city and the consequences of every decision you make about it.

How to Play

On the splash screen, you are offered a map to play. You have three choices:

• Play this map — continue with the generated map, and move on to naming your city.
• Generate another — roll a brand-new random map first.
• Load game — pick up a city you saved earlier (greyed out until you have saved one).

Then name your city. Type a name (up to 15 letters), pick a difficulty — Easy, Medium or Hard — and press Play!. A map is generated on this second screen, so expect a moment before the city appears.

To build:

1. Pick a tool from the panel on the right (roads, zones, services, and so on).
2. Click or drag on the map to place it. Zones are three tiles square; roads and wires are one tile.
3. Services need coverage. Police, fire and parks only work within their range of the buildings they protect — build them spread out among your zones, not all in one corner.
4. Power is the prerequisite. Nothing grows without electricity. Run wire from a coal plant and make sure the wires actually touch your zones.
5. Watch the clock. Each tick is a month. Your population and tax income grow over years, so a new city feels slow at first and then suddenly takes off.

Budget and taxes are set from the Budget button. Tax too high and residents leave (and may riot); tax too low and you run out of money. Set how much of the roads/fire/police budgets is actually funded.

The Query tool is your best friend. Click any tile to see its zone type, land value, crime, pollution, growth rate and service coverage — far more informative than guessing.

Controls

Everything else is on screen — the info bar (date, funds, score, population, city class) is top-left, the Budget / Evaluation / Disasters / Save / Settings / Take Picture / Pause buttons are down the left side.

Tools and their running costs

Beginner Tips

1. Lay a road grid first, then zone along it. Zoned land with no road access will never develop.
2. Power before population. A coal plant plus wires early is cheaper than a city that blackouts.
3. Residential low, commercial middle, industrial upwind. The classic layout still works, and industry near coal/rail saves you money.
4. Build two of everything. One fire station leaves half the city unprotected.
5. Keep taxes around 7% to start. You can always raise them when you need cash — raising them too far is the most common way to lose a city.
6. Use Query when something isn't growing. It usually means no road, no power, or no police coverage.
7. Use Take Picture to keep a record of how far you've come.

Open Source & License

micropolisJS was written by Graeme McCutcheon and contributors, and is distributed under the GNU General Public License v3 with additional terms (no trademark or publicity rights are granted).

• Source repository: https://github.com/graememcc/micropolisJS

Micropolis itself is a registered trademark of the Micropolis Corporation (Micropolis GmbH) and is used here as a courtesy under the Micropolis Public Name License. SimCity is a trademark of Electronic Arts; no rights in it are granted.

This integration self-hosts a fresh production build of the port, so it runs entirely in your browser.