My Country Review: Let's see whose is bigger, mine or yours?

Currently one of the top grossing games on the Android Market is My Country published by Cooper Media Corp but developed by Game Insight. After playing it for a few weeks, I can see why. The sky's the limit with My Country!

Title: My Country | Developer: Game Insight | Genre: Arcade & Action | Players: 1 | Version: 2.1 | Size: 26 MB | Price: Free |

If you enjoy SIM type games, you will want to download this game. Overall the game is easy to pick up and learn but does have quite of bit of detail to it. That is one thing I liked about the game. It is open ended but you must take into account numerous factors as you build your country.

When you start, Mary will guide you through the early stages of building.  Your first job is to pick what your headquarters will look like. Next you build a taxi stand and then an apartment and so on. The game provides you with a large number of options, such as delete buildings, adding landscape, painting building, building roads and water bodies, even rotating your buildings.

In the game, you will be given a series of tasks to complete, which will help you level up. As you build up you will earn game dollars and/or country bucks which can be used for a number of items. As I mentioned the game is open ended so you are free to experiment and build as you like.

Some key points to My Country:

• Earn daily bonuses for checking in
• Can accelerate building times with game dollars or country bucks
• Can upgrade your buildings to increase property profits
• Button to remove building so you can see what you have on the board
• Invite friends via Facebook or Twitter and get a reward
• Playing with friends is a coming soon feature!
• Game is being updated frequently
• Graphics and music are nicely done
• Interface easy to use and organized well
• Pitch to zoom allows you to see your country better

So where does the details come in? Within the game, you can build the following types of buildings - residential, business, industry, ecology, energy, seasonal, letter and symbols, and transit system. When you select a building to construct, click the view info tab. There you will see what the building provides you and what is required to build it.

Each building requires ecology, energy, workers, plus a specialized professional. So if you do not have enough energy, then you will need to build an energy creating unit first. If you ecology is low, then plant some trees. So it is not just build and go!

The specialized professional (there are 55+ of them) is available after you collect or purchase the requirements for them. For example, a postal clerk needs a packing tag, package, and a box cutter. Each of these items can be purchased with country bucks or found randomly when you collect your income from various buildings. So again it can take some time to collect the required items.

Finally there are two areas of growth or progress measured in the game: levels and eras.
Levels- You move up levels as you fulfill XP (experience points requirements)
Eras- You change eras as you fulfill population, environmental, and building/landscape requirements

As you move up in both levels and eras, new tasks and building will appear. Am getting tired writing all of this. Hopefully it shows you the amount of detail in the game! This a fun game and I like it but there are three items which I want to mention.

1. There is no multiple games option, which I think would be awesome to add.
2. There are no notifications (outside of the game) when buildings are done and ready to be collected.
3. The game is free but really, really pushes you to purchase country bucks. I do not mind spending money on a game but when doing reviews and in general, I challenge myself to see how far I can go without spending any real cash. Well I am not 100% stuck right now but definitely close. It took me days of playing regularly to find that one item I needed to create the professional I needed to complete the building, which when done would complete the task. Yes I was getting frustrated. Some items are rarer than others and can take days to acquire (if at all). Now you can of course purchase anything you need via country bucks. I am not surprised that this one of the top grossing games. This is a freemium game, and a very good one, but I think a better balance could be struck. What you think?

The take away message-- My Country is a huge SIM type game that has a ton of detail and lots of replay value. It is a game that you can really go all out and build a country to your liking. Be aware though, it could cost you some real bucks in the end. Despite my frustrations I look forward to the upcoming updates and building up my empire even further!