To place a building, tap the + to open the build menu and choose the type of building you would like to place. Move the building to where you would like it to go and tap the ok button.
Note that some buildings will need to be placed by water (e.g. water utilities) and some will need to be place on water (e.g. marinas and ports). Most buildings need to be placed by transportation. Train hubs and stations need to be placed on monorail/next to tracks. This information is provided in the building menu for each building.
Buildings will have a green outline if they can be placed and red if they cannot be placed.
Cloning a building allows you to place another of the same building without having to go through the build menu. Tap the building you would like to clone and tap the + button. Then move the building to where you would like it to go and tap the ok button.
Tap the building you would like to move twice, then you can either drag the building to where you would like it to go or tap the tile you would like it to go on. To rotate a building tap the building twice then tap the rotate button and confirm with the ok button.
To delete a building, tap the building and then the trash button. You can then multi select all of the buildings you wish to remove. Tap the ok button and a window will pop up asking you to confirm this action (if you have selected more than one building).
Tap the hammer button and choose the item you would like to place. Place as many as you like in your city by tapping the map then confirm by tapping the ok button.
Placing a road over water will also build a bridge if there are more than 2 tiles of water and there is not an obstruction in or at the other end of the water. Suspension bridges will be built when there are water tiles in multiples of 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 tiles. Bridges must be started on land and cannot be started in the middle of water.
Tap the hammer button and choose the bulldoze tool. This tool will allow you to quickly rezone an area of your city. This tool will remove everything in the selected area apart from buildings.
Rapid build will enable you to keep building the same building. This can be handy to create a row of houses or a forest area.
Your city starts as a 20x20 grid and can be expanded to 200x200 tiles giving you a total playing area of 40,000 tiles in total to build your city on. You can expand your city by tapping on a locked area and purchasing it.
This may seem strange, however the more buildings you buy the better your city will become. The more you are willing to invest in your city, the more unique and special it will be. As your city grows you will generate sufficient income to cover this cost.
The city advisor is there to help you build a balanced and thriving city. The city advisor gives you a hint every minute, with the most important action that needs to be taken. Should you feel you no longer need the city advisor's help it can be turned off in the settings menu.
The most common messages will be about staffing levels. If your city is "short staffed" that means you do not have enough residents to fill your employment. If your city has "unemployment" this means you have more residents than jobs. Both of these situations will reduce your income until it is fixed. You will get warnings if more than 40 buildings do not have city services coverage, your power or water is low and other problems with your city.
The warehouse is a temporary storage for your buildings. You can use it when you are redesigning your city.
To store a building in your warehouse, tap the building twice then tap the 'box' icon. This will automatically place it in your warehouse. You warehouse can hold up to 150 slots (with each slot holding multiples of the same building) and each additional storage spot needs to be unlocked. To remove a building simply tap it and choose where you would like it to go. Buildings can also be deleted from the warehouse. Tap the delete button and you will be prompted to confirm removal. Be aware that this action cannot be undone.
Please note, the warehouse is available from level 10.
Money and gold are the main currencies in the game. Commercial, industrial and transport buildings will yield in-game money. The exceptions to this are the stock exchange, the gold mine and the launch pads which all yield gold. When you have a stock exchange in your city you can exchange gold for in-game money at any time and exchange in-game money for gold when you reach level 100.
If at anytime you feel you need more in-game money or gold to grow your city quicker, these can be purchased through the app store you downloaded your game from by tapping the + on the currency bar. We advise that you have a stable internet connection when making purchases (WiFi if possible).
Diamonds are the game's premium currency. They can be generated in the launch/space pads, diamond mine and diamond exchange. They can sometimes be earned by completing contracts in your gold transportation and military buildings. Each time you collect your income from these buildings there is a small chance that you will receive a diamond. This is proportional to the buildings initial purchase cost.
Diamonds are also awarded for levelling up when you have reached level 50, some challenges and achievements and as a bonus on most in-app purchases. Watching an advert can also award a diamond.
The launch/space pads, diamond mine and diamond exchange all yield diamonds. The diamond exchange building unlocks the diamond exchange and is available at level 50.
If at anytime you feel you need more diamonds to grow your city quicker, these can be purchased through the app store you downloaded your game from by tapping the + on the currency bar. We advise that you have a stable internet connection when making purchases (WiFi if possible).
Every 24 hours that you log into the game you will get a reward. Prizes will increase in value with every daily bonus.
Please note, this is a game day not a calendar day.
One free gold (or a diamond) can be awarded for watching a short video in the game. As this feature is provided by a third party, sometimes there will not be a video to watch, but please check back later. There is a daily limit on watching ads.
You can also earn free money and gold by visiting other cities and putting out fires. Every 5th fire will award gold, and you will be able to put out 100 fires each day.
In-game Money, Gold and Diamonds can be earned by completing challenges and achievements in the game. Tap the trophy icon to find these.
The bar graph icon on your screen will show you an overview of your city's statistics. You can check your city's finances and service coverage and what your city requirements are. If the graph's bar is to the right this means you have a need for that type of building. If it is to the left, this mean that you too much of that type of building to make a balanced city.
If you have excess power, water, food or trash collection you can trade these for additional income for your city. You can sell a bit, a lot, or all of your excess production. If your city needs more resources these values will be dynamically adjusted to meet demand (if possible).
Power, water and trash services can also be purchased. You can purchase up to 150% of the current demand in your city.
Note: Trading contracts last for 5 minutes and are automatically renewed whilst you are playing the game.
Buildings in the farming category will yield food. Food can either be sold or saved and later, exchanged for diamonds. You will need a diamond exchange in your city to unlock the exchange and have reached player level 50.
Note: If you have sold your food it cannot then be used in the diamond exchange.
One of the main challenges is to manage pollution and keeping ecology high. One of the best ways of boosting ecology is to provide trash services for your city.
Trees and parks will naturally soak up pollution so use these to make your city a happy and healthy place to live.
This function allows you to see the zones in your city. Each building is replaced with a coloured tile indicating what type of building it is. This will also show you the upgrade level of each building.
Buildings can be placed and upgraded when using the eye tool. Trees can also be moved and deleted when using eye tool. This is a useful feature for when a tree is behind a building and you can't get to it normally. You can also build transportation and landscape your city.
If you enable the enhanced eye tool you can cycle through each category of building. For example, you can limit the game to only show your residential buildings.
This function allows you to see a buildings happiness, ecology and city serevices coverage just by tapping on the building.
The ground around the building will also turn red or green showing you how the pollution (red) or ecology (green) is affecting it's surroundings. The darker the shading, the greater the effect.
Tap on your player level to rename your city. In that screen you can also see who has viewed and liked your city, see how other players have rated your city.
GDP (or Gross Domestic Product) is the total value your city will generate in 1 year. GDP per capita is your GDP value divided by how many residents you have. To increase this value you will need more income or less residents.
Residential buildings provide housing for the people living in your city. Residential buildings are greatly affected by pollution and should not be placed too near commercial and industrial buildings. Try and keep residential buildings together and surround them with parks, trees and decorations for maximum happiness.
Commercial buildings provide (medium density) jobs for your residents. Commercial buildings are mildly affected by pollution but should still be kept away from industrial buildings. Commercial provide less income than industrial but will yield quicker. The higher the commercial buildings happiness and the greater the buildings upgrade level the greater the yield will be.
Industrial buildings provide (high density) jobs for your residents. Industrial buildings are not affected by pollution and should be placed with other industrial buildings. Industrial income is higher than commercial but they will yield slower. The higher the industrial buildings happiness and the greater the buildings upgrade level the greater the yield will be.
Community buildings provide (low density) jobs for your residents and boost happiness for surrounding buildings. Community buildings are only mildly affected by pollution and can be placed anywhere. Community employment adds to your commercial employment.
Utility buildings provide (low density) jobs for your residents and provide your city with much needed water and power supply and trash removal. Utility buildings are not affected by pollution and should be placed with other industrial/utility buildings. Some power stations are polluting and should be separated from the rest of your city. Using green energy will actually lower the pollution in your city as they generate clean energy.
Transportation is the key to keeping your city happy by taking the load off of your road network. This will not only reduce pollution but will increase city happiness too. Build bus and railway networks to efficiently move residents around your city. Build seaports to boost your commerce and airports to move people in and out of your thriving city. Airport runways must have a least 3 straight pieces and the correct end pieces.
Farm buildings provide (low density) jobs for your residents and provide your city with food. Food can be traded for money or collected and exchanged for diamonds in the diamond exchange. Note: you will need the diamond exchange in your city for this to function.
To build subway, select the subway tool from the road menu. This will open a new layer, tap where you would like your subway to go and when finished, tap the green check mark. Subway stations can be found in the transport menu and will show on the subway layer when placed. We would advise putting the subway stations in first for ease of building.
Decorations provide a boost for both happiness and ecology. Increase city happiness by liberally decorating your city with as many parks and trees as you can. Neutralise pollution by placing lots of trees near polluting buildings.
Special buildings can only be purchased with diamonds as they are exclusive buildings to add to your city. They can be residential, commercial, industrial or decorations. Because they are exclusive buildings they will have the greatest capacity for population, employment and/or happiness.
Most buildings will reduce city happiness, add pollution and consume resources. To counter this, add community buildings, decorations and utilities as your city grows.
Buildings are happiest when they have police, fire, education and health coverage. The higher the coverage, the larger the happiness boost they will receive. Tap the STATS button on the building info screen to see how much coverage the building has.
Buildings that cost gold/diamonds to purchase will provide much more population, employment or happiness. They will also have free upgrades and place much lower demands on city services than normal buildings.
Piers will spawn ships only if the exit is facing open water.
Buildings on water do not need city services coverage.
Airports (civillian and military) will need at least 3 straight pieces and the correct end pieces for planes to land.
You can place as many of each building as you like, but be aware that the cost of each building increases the more you add. Building lots of the same building will affect your DC rank.
Buildings can be upgraded to level 10. Upgrading buildings increases their residential capacity, employment, happiness and/or ecology. Upgrading city services increases their area of effect and they will provide cover to more surrounding buildings. You can see the "area of effect" of a building by selecting it.
When you select a building it will draw a circle on ground showing the "area of effect". A white circle show city services coverage, as you upgrade your city services this area will increase.
You can visit other cities by opening the leader board. Simply tap the visit button next to the city you wish to visit. When visiting a city you can like it (and optionally add your rating) to show your appreciation and you have the option to add it to your friends list to enable you to find it easily next time if you want to watch their city's progress. The friends list is located in the leader board. You can also put out fires in the cities that you visit to earn free in game money and gold. If you would like to see who has visited your city and visit them back, you can do this in your city progress window. This can be found by tapping on your player level.
Sometimes it will not be possible to visit other cities, this will either be because you are playing offline or the city you are trying to visit is running a later version of Designer City and you may need to update your game.
If your purchase wasn't credited to your city instantly, log out and log back in again. A new connection may speed up the process. If this did not work it may just be slightly delayed.
If your purchase hasn't appeared after 24 hours, please contact support via email, with your payment receipt attached, and we will be able to investigate this for you.
Designer City is free to download and play, however the game also offers entirely optional "In-App Purchases". Purchases are not required to play the game, but can be used to speed up some elements of game-play and unlock some elements early.
In-app purchases are paid for with real money, and are clearly labelled as such. They are accessible in the game.
You may wish to turn this option of to avoid accidental purchases or if your device is being used by someone else.
If you tried to make a purchase and the purchase was cancelled, you will not be charged for that purchase.
Cancelled purchases could be because your billing address and/or the name registered with Google Play, Apple or Amazon is different to the one on your credit card or you have insufficient funds to make the purchase.
Make sure that your device settings are properly configured before making a purchase. If you purchase has been processing for more than 24 hours please contact support at Apple, Google Play or Amazon.
For reasons of user security, some app stores may deem certain purchases out of the ordinary. This automatically prevents unwanted charges to your device. For some reason the system has determined that your purchase was 'high risk' and therefore cancelling it. This may mean that you cannot make any purchases for 30 minutes (sometimes longer).
While you are waiting, it may be a good idea to check that your billing details are up to date and match those on your credit card.
You will need to log into the app store you downloaded the game from and you will be able to view your purchase history from there.
Third party sites that promise you enhancements for our game may collect your personal information, money or both, and often never deliver the promised in-game products.
We strongly advise that if you wish to make an in-app purchase that you make it through the game itself on your mobile device.
Yes you can. This can be done by using your your Google Play account (Android and iOS) or your Apple account (iOS only). To transfer your city please follow the following instructions.
Please always ensure your close and save your city on one device before opening the game on another device to avoid overwriting any progress.
No. We can only support one saved game per device.
Yes you can. Designer City can be played both offline and online. However, if you play offline, your city will only be saved locally (to your device). This means that if anything should happen to your device we will not have your city backed up on our servers. Playing offline will also disable all internet features in the game.
As soon as you play on an internet connection, make sure you save your game and it will automatically be backed up to our servers
The game settings allows you to customise your game play. Within this window you can choose how you would like your game to run. You can use this menu to turn on or off - the game sounds, the city advisor and the weather. You can change your game detail level which will modify the game animations (or disable them completely). You can connect your game to Google Play/Apple from this window, which is essential should you wish to play your game on another device.
Designer City is available in 11 different languages. If your game does not automatically load in your language, this can be changed in the settings menu.
You can also reset your city. To reset your city choose 'reset now'. This will give you the option of an easy or hard reset.
If you choose an easy reset you will keep all of your in-game money, gold and diamonds, everything that you had unlocked and your expansions will remain. Any buildings in your warehouse will also remain. You will be able to continue building on a new blank world. A hard reset will completely restart your game again. You will have your original amount of in-game money, gold and diamonds, and previously unlocked buildings will be locked again. This will effectively set the game back to the state when you first installed.
Android - tap the back button and a pop up window will let you know that your city is saving and backing up to our servers (if your device is connected to the internet).
iOS - press the home button. A notification cannot be displayed for this due to how iOS works.
We strongly advise you DO NOT "force close" your game as you may close in the middle of a save and your progress may be lost. Force closing is closing the game from your app manager.
Being connected to an external service will mean
Designer City has a PEGI 3 rating which means it is appropriate for children from three years of age. The game contains no violence or mature themes.
Designer City is free to download and play, however the game also offers entirely optional "In-App Purchases". These purchases are never required to play the game, but can be used to enhance some elements of game-play.
In-app purchases are paid for with real money, and are clearly labelled as such. They are accessible in the game.
You may wish to turn this option off to avoid accidental purchases or if your device is being used by someone else.
Sphere Game Studios do not process payments for in-app purchases or have access to any of your credit card information. The payments themselves are completed through the app store you downloaded the game from.
Receipts for your transactions are emailed to you by the relevant app store after each purchase.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.
Email us at parents@spheregamestudios.com. Please try to include any specific details regarding your query that might be useful, like what happened and when, relevant transaction ID receipts, screenshots etc.
Sometimes to facilitate optimum game-play performance for Designer City, you must close out of the game and then reload.
On Android, tap the back button at the bottom of your screen to save your city and close your game. Then tap the app manager and end task on the game (by swiping up or left, depending on your device). Then reload your game.
On iOS, tap the home button twice and stop the app from running. Then reload your game.
This may be necessary if you have been playing for long periods of time on some devices.
Sometimes, especially for older devices with small amounts of memory, it may also be necessary to close other apps before running the game. The game can use a lot of memory when running, and other apps may stop the game running efficiently.
Having high details on will turn on the animations in your city - wind turbines, cars, boats, planes, helicopters and trains. For older devices to run smoothly, you may want to turn this off. This can be done in the settings menu.
This can be done in the settings menu.
Connecting your city to Google Play or Apple will give you the option to load your game on another device. This can be done in the settings menu.
The game can only support one city per account and will be permanently attached to the city they are assigned to. For this reason we advise that you only play one city per device, do not log onto someone else's device to open Designer City and do not let others use your device to log into theirs. This may cause you to lose your city.
Make sure you have downloaded your game through a recognised and trusted app store (e.g. Google Play and Apple). We cannot support or verify games downloaded from other app download sites. Free up memory by closing any unused apps running in the background, clearing cache (especially for your internet browsers and social media apps) and restarting your device.
Increase storage memory by uninstalling apps you no longer need, and transferring pictures and videos from your device to a laptop or cloud storage.
Please note, the game runs best on devices that meet the following (minimum) specifications:
- 2GB of free RAM (more than this is preferable)
- Android 8 / iOS 13 or higher
- 800 x 1280px minimum screen resolution
Our games store data locally on your device(s) and they also store a backup on our servers if you are playing online. We do not store any personally identifiable information either on your device(s) or online and do not require any user names, email addresses or passwords to play our games.
Our games use a unique identifier (known as a game ID) and this is used to tie your local game save to your internet game save. This allows our games to automatically restore your data in the event that your local data is removed. All connections between your device and our servers are fully encrypted.
We reserve the right to remove any dormant accounts or accounts that have had no activity for a minimum period of 180 days. At which point you will no longer have any access to your account nor any history and/or purchases associated with that account. No refund will be applicable in such event.
We use some third-parties to provide a better experience and additional content for you. These are all GDPR compliant and are as follows
Our games provide opt-in reward ads in exchange for virtual currency. When you first view an ad you will asked for your permission to opt-in to personalized ads. You can change this, if you wish to opt-out, by tapping the settings button when an ad is displayed.
We allow players to connect their games to their Google Play account. This allows players to sync their games across multiple devices. We do not request any personal information whatsoever from Google and the only data we receive is a token that enables our games to sync.
We allow players to connect their games to their Apple account. This allows players to sync their games across multiple devices. We do not request any personal information whatsoever from Apple and the only data we receive is a token that enables our games to sync.
We will only share the data we hold when we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, protect your safety or the safety of others, investigate fraud, or respond to a government request.
Please note: We do not store any personally identifiable information about you online. If you would like to request a manual deletion of your game data stored online please contact us via email at gdpr@spheregamestudios.com.