Hello City plots a spot in Facebook's crowded city-building game space

It'd be easy to argue that city building games have reached a saturation point on Facebook. With Social City, My Empire, My Town and Towner, we're involved in more urban planning than the average municipal government.

Now Happy Aquarium creator Crowdstar has decided to enter the fray with its own city-builder called Hello City. Like the other games in this genre, Hello City starts out with a small, sparsely populated town, and it's your job -- as overseer -- to build new properties and transform your space into a bustling urban center. That involves building homes and businesses, and then returning to harvest them for cash.

Keeping the town's coffers full, however, involves a little more manual labor than other city building games. You set the operational hours for the various businesses, opening them with the click of a button and then paying a certain number of coins to keep it open for a set period of time. The longer you want to keep your business open, the most virtual coin you'll have to spend. Of course, this will be balanced out by the rewards collected in the end, in theory, at least.

Right now this game is in its early stages, so it's difficult to give Hello City a fair assessment, other than the fact that the overall vibe is friendly and charming, and the play experience seems a little too familiar.

See for yourself: Play Hello City on Facebook >

[Via Inside Social Games]