SimCity coming to Mac on August 29

The OS X version of notorious city-building game by Maxis and EA—SimCity—has been available for purchase for quite some time now, but there hasn’t been any word of a release date. EA has finally announced that Mac gamers will be able to play SimCity from August 29 onwards. The game is still available to purchase on EA’s Origin store for Rs 1,499.

The Mac version of SimCity will feature cross-platform multiplayer with gamers on the Windows version of the game. This means that you can share a region with a friend who is playing the game on their Mac, complete with interconnected cities. Those who already own a copy of SimCity will get the Mac version of the game for free.

Finally coming to Mac

SimCity is the latest game in the popular city-building franchise and is meant to be a reboot of the series. The game goes back to its roots, streamlining the gameplay while leaving behind some of the arbitrary complexities that the previous games had, such as the difficulty in laying down underground things like subway systems and water systems.

A major new feature in SimCity is the game’s unique take on multiplayer. Multiplayer in itself is a new feature to the franchise. When you play a game, you have to first pick a region to build a city. Other players can join your region and take to building cities on the empty city slots. The game is balanced around co-operation between the different cities in a region.

SimCity has been bathed in quite a bit of controversy ever since its launch. The game has been heavily criticised for its insistence on players being connected to an online service, even if they want to play the game alone. This has mostly been because of Maxis’ vision of players having interconnected cities that depend on each other to survive and even thrive.

Check out our review of SimCity.