Game review: National Geographic Plan It Green - iPhone / iPod Touch

It’s therefore not surprising to see video games with an environmental message starting to appear.

Thankfully National Geographic Plan It Green steers clear of being too preachy.

Instead it tries to encourage players to use eco thinking to succeed in the game.

If you’ve played games such as Build-a-lot on PC or iPhone then you’ll be familiar with the objective-based property development elements here. The main difference is Plan It Green has more of an ecological theme.

In this game you’ll play as the new mayor of Greenville, a town with less than impressive green credentials.

It’s your job to turn things around and give the town an environment more befitting of its name.

I’m not particularly fanatical about green issues, but I thought the concept of this game was interesting.

I’m a big fan of strategy/tycoon games and was looking forward to a Build-a-lot-like game or a mini Sim City.

I’ve found Plan It Green to be a good game but it doesn’t fulfil its promise thanks to a disjointed structure.

It contains a campaign mode which spends more time teaching the game than actually letting you play it. It also features a challenge mode which offers disappointingly small segments of free play.

The combination of these two modes means Plan It Green never manages to deliver a coherent or ultimately rewarding experience.

In campaign mode the player is faced with the job of improving Greenville’s eight districts across 45 levels.

At the start of each level you are given a set of goals to complete. The game then provides a tutorial of sorts telling you how to succeed, although it didn’t quite provide enough guidance to prevent me having some frustrating moments early on as I struggled with how to do certain things or more precisely why I couldn’t do some things which I wanted to.

The objectives you are tasked with range from building new environmentally friendly homes to upgrading houses and businesses with green add-ons such as solar panels.

Other times you’ll adding new parks and power facilities, or developing cleaner industries.

You’ll need to pay close attention to how much money and materials you have available for carrying out your missions. You also have to monitor your residents’ happiness and the environmental health of each district.

One of the frustrating moments I alluded to above came when I needed to build a certain type of shop. For some reason I wasn’t able to do it, even though I seemed to have everything required for the construction. It was almost definitely down to me missing something but the game didn’t say what. Eventually in desperation I restarted the level I was on.

The game mechanics revolve around a touch screen interface, where tapping on different locations and menu icons brings up development options and other information.

Unfortunately it’s not the most user-friendly interface I’ve seen. Some of the menu items can be tricky to tap on and some of the text is hard to read.

Once I’d worked through the early frustrating incidences and got into the swing of it, the campaign mode was easy to play although working through it started to get tedious after a while.

Each level only lasts a few minutes but the goals are very rigid and you are given very little freedom to do your own thing or explore all the regeneration possibilities available for transforming the town.

The campaign held my interest for the first couple of dozen levels but after that I just wanted to get each one out the way as quickly as possible to move closer towards the end.

The challenge mode is much less restrictive and therefore more enjoyable.

In this mode you are given 20 game days in which to spruce up a district as much as possible. You’re given some money and materials, then it’s down to you what improvements are made.

A score is given based on how well you do. You can submit this to a leaderboard to compare with other players around the world.

Also in challenge mode you can go head-to-head with a friend to see who does best.

Challenge mode is definitely better than campaign and is ideal for short and fast-paced gaming sessions. But it still doesn’t go far enough.

I would much prefer to see a complete free play or sandbox mode in which I can start a town from scratch and gradually design a green haven how I want it to look.

Overall, Plan It Green is a worthy game for encouraging players to think about environmental issues and improving their surroundings, but some people will grow of having their hand held too tightly throughout the game.

Verdict: 7 out of 10 – A decent real estate / property development sim which never allows players to fully spread their wings.