From Zero to Hero: Cityman Wiki

Reviews talking about how you can’t progress are inaccurate. I didn’t spend a dime and made it to the level 3 of the business track. You have to play at the casino or do stocks to progress, plain and simple. The later stages get very tedious as you have to have large chunks of money to progress through the businesses. Like a lot of $$$. If I hadn’t gotten lucky twice and went all-in on “0” at the casino and won the $400,000 jackpot it would have taken ages to progress as you need several $100k each time you buy a business and you usually have to upgrade your car. I eventually got bored, bought the max house, food, and family and just went all in at the casino until I went bankrupt. From there you get kicked out of your house, loose your job and family and have to restart. A month later, my character hung him self. Decent game for killing some time.

First deal I got was $11 off a $99 deal of limited time. Take a lesson from other apps. Deals on apps are suppose to be at buy me prices or regret it prices because it’s a digital free game on a mobile platform that’s hackable/modded. Plus the prices of the housing omg are expensive, their expensive as much as Seattle prices. Lol. I’d pay max $10 for the best house because it’s just an app and we’re not made of money. Lol. I want my money to make me want it so bad. I don’t care even if it is just wasting money on a game that could become unusable from phone getting lost or cloud wiped. I personally never spend over $20 on an app for permanent or worse semi permanent upgrades. I do blow money for great deals like half off or 75% of in game currency because then it’s really a great deal for me and I regret it when I get low on funds. Lol.

It’s so not fun and it’s very boring, you can’t do anything but wait until you have enough money to do things but I lost all my money in the trade exchange which was really stupid of me. But the game forces you to wait for atleast 5 minutes just for you to get paid and do things. This is a waste of storage and time. Do not download it’s terrible you’ll soon get hooked and gamble all your money away and you’ll lose all your money and you can’t do anything but watch videos which is very boring and another way for this game to make money. I’m telling you, don’t download this game is boring and has no lead and fun in its content, I would rather play BitLife then this garbage. And you have to wait for you to age too. While in BitLife you can age when you want to. Overall this game is bad do not download. If I could give zero stars, I would quickly press the button and be happy with my rating.

I love this game, or the concept of it anyway. I actually put it away for 2 years because it was frustrating that the expenses were hire than the income. But I decided to try again. This time I spent about $6 of my real money to try to get ahead. But then I got to the point where I’m losing $5k a month because of the mandatory items needed to advance my career. I’ve tried the “side jobs” but I don’t see where that does anything but lower my health and happiness. I’ve been reading the reviews and the developer responses saying it’s meant to be hard and based on decisions but the only decision you can make is whether to stay at a profitable job (which there seems to be only one or two) for a significant amount of time or advance. What I would like to see is being able to choose your food/car/clothing/relationship be an actual choice and not requirements for job (except maybe basic food & clothing choices), but that can affect your health and happiness so that’s where you need to determine your risk level. Sure we can watch ads, play the casino & stock market etc., but aside from the ads those are “luck” based so not really reliable for income.

So at the beginning of the game, it’s relatively easy, and it seems the whole point of the game is to slowly move up in your career. To do this you have to have a certain car, house, clothes, etc to take on new jobs. I expect the game to get increasingly difficult, but after having to go through the game 4 times, where my character died each time before, I finally got the business section but I’ve decided its next to impossible to advance further than that. Once you have higher jobs, you have almost no extra money coming in. You could have 4K in expense but you could only be making 3K and you’re supposed to move onto the next job, but can’t because there’s no way to keep increasing when you aren’t at least breaking even. Again, the idea of the game is great, but the only way I’ve found that you can kind of make it through the first half of the game is where you sit at the most profitable job at the beginning and keep saving your money for literal years of the game, and then continuing. Otherwise you can’t afford your expenses, and you ultimately lose.

I very rarely write reviews for games, but this game is an exception. It starts off pretty good and you are able to advance your career pretty quickly; and then you notice that not only are you earning less then you are spending BUT you actually HAVE TO PAY EVEN MORE to advance your career which- news flash still puts you in a deficit. Don’t be fooled by the other scam which is actually spending your money. Unless you’re prepared to spend over $60, spending money just bides you time, it dosent give you enough to actually make it until the end. What’s most disappointing about this game though is that it actually can be good, if the developers weren’t so hungry for money. I see the developers saying it takes strategy but I consider myself pretty good with these types of games, so like I said before, unless your prepared to spend over $60 on the game IT IS IMPOSSIBLE without incredible luck at the casino or waiting years (real life) to accumulate the money. To the developers: this can be a great game and people would pay for things if they thought it was worth it; you just can’t make it impossible for the people that won’t pay and it’s incredibly frustrating that people have been complaining about this forever and you don't do anything. Anyone able to complete this without spending money or waiting for ages is smarter then Einstein.

I see all these other great reviews and wonder if I even got the same game? It’s not even possible to move further in the game without using real money. This game is a scam that draws you in and makes you need to pay to continue. I thought I was doing something wrong but no matter what eventually it comes to a point where the income is less then what your expenses are. Simple solution for the user would be to drop some expenses or increase income. But it just can’t happen. If you drop expenses you lose your job and have to completely restart the game because you will then run out of money. And you can’t increase your income without increasing expenses. The concept for this game had me really excited but the execution of the game was horrible. I think the biggest problem I had overall was not even how the game wasn’t possible to win without paying money, but the fact that if you do pay money it costs $8 (real money) to increase skill in stocks. $4 (real money) to buy a car that the character can only use until a certain point. And a lot more high rates with terrible returns. It’s a major scam ran by the company. They have a wonderful concept though so I hope they fix the game.

Much like the other low reviews, I will note that the game seems designed to push you to spend real money because of the unrealistic setup. Th main character is ambitious to the point of pushing the player into getting the most expensive option they can, often pushing the monthly expenses beyond the income level. The only real way to earn enough money to reach the highest levels is to play the stock markets or in the casino, both of which are essentially luck based unless you spend real money to increase the invisible “skill” associated with each. But what I really found that I loathed is that once the main character hits 60 his health tanks in unrealistic amounts each month. As in you lose 40-50 health each month from 60 on. Which is not realistic - people do not suddenly become decrepit upon reaching seniority. The only way to fix this is to get a 5k coin surgery each month, but if you’re in the casino or the stock exchange a window will pop up complaining about being a living corpse and can result in lost bets. The idea of this game is very fun, but it seems like a get rich quick scheme for the developers more than an actual idle strategy game. I do not recommend downloading it.

I love the concept but The expenses are almost always more than the income and you can’t increase your income without increasing spending. For example they force you to get better house and car to get a better job but the job but you get can never cover the cost of the house, car, meal plan, and RELATIONSHIP STATUS. Yes they force you to get a spouse, kids, a side chick, and grandkids just to get a job and you have to pay a monthly fee for these as well. If you try to reduce your expenses then they make you start from the beginning because they fire you! The only way to possibly win is by gambling or the stock market which are both chance based. And luckily I didn’t fall into the trap of buying anything in game; however my friend bought the $10 car and it was helpful at first but when he finally ran out of money and lost his job it forced him to get rid of the car he PAID REAL MONEY FOR and the only way he was able to get the car back was to pay about 40k or so in game cash which he couldn’t achieve because they forced him into bankruptcy. The game has a great concept but it is broken. It seems too hard to win even if you do pay.

The game is about surviving in the world. Getting a job, home, food, transportation and a family. You can play roulette or bet on the market. You also get certain situations that you have to make decisions for. The game is relatively slow, since time doesn’t pass when your not playing the game. I can sit there for 5 minutes waiting for something to happen. You can bet by a casino or the market but neither of those games I like to play. Personally I don’t know how to play roulette or bet on the market. They don’t clearly explain anything. Since they don’t explain how you play and the tutorial is vague, you have no idea if you win or lose. The market and roulette also seem to be rigged. The market skyrockets when you are trying to buy and crashes when you are trying to sell. Of course you can watch an ad to fix this but don’t depend on the ad because it doesn’t tend to help. Every decision you make has a cost, weather it’s your happiness, health, or money. This is the one thing that makes me hate this game. No matter what you do, to have fun, to have a little happiness you lose something in the end. Unless, of course, you watch the provided advertisements.

I can see why some would rate it 5 stars, but I was never able to get into it. First off is that, for a game meant to be a life simulator, it isn't very realistic. Sure, a lot of it makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but the job requirements become ridiculous really quickly. What company looks at a person's marital status and says "Uhp, you don't have a spouse, you can't work here"? Not to mention that the expenses to get new jobs (including the aforementioned spouse, food, clothes, housing, and keeping your character happy and healthy) pile up really quickly until your expenses constantly outweigh your income, forcing you to gamble or trade stocks just to keep food on the table (which, while probably realistic in some cases, is frustrating beyond belief) and leading to the next major problem. It's virtually, if not literally, impossible to complete the game without opening your real-life wallet, something that is inexcusable for a non-demo free-to-play game. I just uninstalled this game in favor of something more enjoyable, and don't plan on ever reinstalling again.

Okay so I really really like the concept of this game it’s just after a while I’m the game you can’t continue like literally it turns impossible unless you do nothing but watch ads for hours on end or spend like 50 bucks in real cash. There comes to a point in the game where you slowly start making less money than you are spending which means you will eventually be kicked out of your apartment/house and your wife takes the kids and disappears of the face of the earth you lose your job and start back at square one the only thing was at that point i was 40 years old and I was on the street and I had to take the first job again and also my guy was so depressed from losing his job that I wasn’t making enough money to make this snobby piece for garbage happy enough to get the next job to keep progressing. I’ve restarted nearly 20 times to try different strategies like doing college as fast as possible (which what got me to age 40 then I hit that brick wall). With all that said I love the idea of the game but very poorly executed

I love the idea and it’s amazing, but it reaches a point where you can’t progress unless you use real money. I’ve tried several times because I thought it was something that I must have done wrong, but always at the beginning of the IT work thing the expenses are higher than the income, and the character wants things that he can’t have at the moment so he becomes unhappy, looses his job, becomes depressed (while I try to get him back where he was before) and hangs himself. At the same time, they (the developers) force you to pay to continue, as they make you run out of money without providing you the option of watching videos to get money. I just deleted the game because it’s unplayable this way. I’m tired of hopelessly trying to play this, because I would love to. If they could just change this do that this could be played without being forced to pay to continue the storyline. Just then I would download it again, and I’m pretty sure everyone who has tried it would agree that it would make it a great game

This game has the potential to be really fun. HOWEVER this was obviously made to farm customers for money. The game is built so that you have to use your own money to buy in game currency or watch literally hundreds of ads for currency to win the game. The purpose of the game is to become president by meeting educational and professional goals. To get better jobs, you have to upgrade your character with better clothes, cars, apartments, etc. Each of these cost more money per month. This means that most of time, your character is losing money each month. There are options to win money at the casino or the stock market, but, as in real life, it’s rigged so that you lose more money than you gain. Half the time the stock market will actually start going down literally the second you buy stock. This game is just one big example of everything that is wrong with mobile gaming today. Don’t buy unless you want to waste your life watching ads or you’re a millionaire who has a few hundred dollars to throw away.