New York Nights: Success in the City, developed by Gameloft, is a Sims style game for your phone. It's single player. You have 40 days to make it in the big city, making friends, climbing the career ladder, honing your personal traits, and dating. Each day lasts about 5 to 10 minutes.
New York Nights isn't perfect, but it held my attention for 4 or 5 hours until I completed it. It actually made me reflect on my own personal habits. For instance, the game forces you to wake up at noon every day, and every day I felt guilty for getting up so late. Also, the game allows you to take two showers in a row, storing up "health" for later. That's my kind of world.
The friendship and dating systems are pretty shallow. Just figure out what the person you're talking to is interested, and focus the conversation on that to gain friendship points. At one point, the girl I was dating became fed up with me and dumped me. One of my friends in the game told me to try again with another girl, and let me choose which girl I wanted to date. Strangely, the girl who just broke up with me was still in the list. So, I chose her again. She had forgotten entirely that she dumped me minutes before, and we sailed smoothly into a serious relationship.
I liked how the different progression paths in the game are all linked, as with The Sims. For instance, exercising makes you healthier, which helps with certain friendships. Getting a better job is all about networking and being popular, so exercising makes you wealthier, too. And, having a good job gets you further in the dating pool.
The three jobs in the game all get old quickly. The first has you repeating a series of tones, a la Simon. The second job has you doing quick arithmetic calculations, a la Brain Age. And the third job has you beat matching to make music, a la Guitar Hero. The arithmetic game held my attention the longest, but, like the friendship system, none of them worked very well. However, since getting a new job represented success in popularity, which represented success in personal characteristics, they still felt meaningful.
The characters in the game can reach out to you through text messages. These aren't real text messages, just simulated text messages within the game. Since they came so infrequently, I always felt excited to get one. Great advertising for the texting lifestyle.
New York Nights certainly resembles other games that have come before, but it fits cell phones well. You don't have to control the camera. The graphic style effectively recreates city nightlife. The quests drive action in bite-size chunks, from going on dates to improving character traits, so it feels more goal oriented than a sandbox game like The Sims (which can have some goals).
Since forming friendships is the meat of the game, I would love to be able to befriend other players in a multiplayer setting. Also, the best parts about all characters are their short biographies that you see when you meet them. Here are two example biographies. "Ed is a lifelong class clown who is currently enjoying his sixth year at NYU. His career goals include "nothing" and his proudest achievement was getting thrown out of high school for starting 10 simultaneous toilet fires. He is famous for having a smile that can weasel him out of any trouble." And, here's the biography for Lynn, who became my virtual sweetheart. "Lynn is determined to become the next hot young New York comedy writer. She has been working on her autobiography for three years now and likes to fill any positives in conversation by reading aloud from it." Players would probably have a lot of fun writing these about their own characters.
Careers could also involve multiple players, so instead of becoming a solo singer as the ultimate profession, you could become a member of a band where you needed to coordinate your beat matching with other players for the best effect. You could even compete with other bands.
Dating might as well be multiplayer, too. If I had a date with another real player, even if the date was virtual, I would make sure I logged on at the right time. If I forgot and missed the date, I would feel guilty. I even felt guilty when I missed a virtual date with a virtual character. Fortunately, she was very forgiving, and offered to reschedule for the next day. Of course, for all this to work, we'll need the ability to chat and some good two-player activities.
I would also like to see a connection to PCs, allowing players to customize their characters with a more sophisticated interface and then play those characters on their phones. Players can also write their biographies or detailed messages to other players while on PCs, somewhat ameliorating the cumbersome texting interface.
