The finalists at the Independent Games Festival student awards were recently announced and one of the titles caught my eye. City Rain - Building Sustainability is an interdisciplinary project developed at Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) in Brazil. Emerging from the collaboration of computer science, design, and radio/television students, the project applies the blue sky urbanism of SimCity towards explicitly environment-focused ends.

In addition the altruistic goal of promoting sustainable development and ecology, the game also boasts a playful interface. Martin Wisniowski is on point in noting the influence of Tetris on the City Rain UI as there is something quite strange about watching buildings and infrastructural elements descend from the sky. Is it too easy to call this out as an example of top-down design thinking? Furthermore, is the act of rotating proposed buildings in midair to create an optimal fit with existing urban fabric even more obsessed with modularity than the "plug and play" approach to erecting structures in most god games?

At the end of the demo video above the narrator implores (with a chuckle) "the city has become so violent that even the cops are afraid to go out a night" - clearly the offending neighbourhoods need to have a few community centres and police stations dropped on them. With my facetiousness I'm hoping to highlight the Modernist subtext that is always present in city building games. In their best moments urban simulations represent cities as ecosystems and in their worst, merely as scale models.

To step aside from my crankiness, the optimism that drives City Rain is commendable - I think the game could be a valuable educational tool for young students. You can download the game at the project website and also donate to support further development. Now excuse me while I go cruise Liberty City while listening to The Beat to banish that sucrose-y City Rain soundtrack from my memory.