Zone and grow
Zone homes, shops and factories, then watch them grow through five stages as your city meets their needs.
A city simulation for iPhone & iPad
EGA CITY
Build something wonderful.
You have a plot of wilderness, $20,000 in the treasury and the boundless optimism of people who have never seen you run anything. Lay the roads, string the power lines and zone the land. Watch a village become a town, and a town become a city.
Download on the App StoreC:\> For iPhone and iPad, including iPhone Duo.
PIXELTON.CTY
Your city. Your rules.
Everything you loved about classic city builders, sized for the device in your hand.
Power and water
Build plants, string power lines and raise water towers. Nothing grows without them.
City services
Police, fire and hospitals cover the city in circles of protection. Data maps show every gap.
Two ways to play
Classic brings fire, crime and livability limits. Simple turns them off and rewards good services with a tax bonus.
The Mayor's Advisor
Stuck? Your advisor explains what's holding the city back, and Show Me takes you straight to the problem.
Pure 16-colour EGA
Chunky pixel art, a procedural 8-bit soundtrack and a Customise tab where you can repaint any tile, pixel by pixel.
The Mayor's Handbook
Please read this manual before assuming office. The full handbook is also inside the app.
HANDBOOK.TXT
Getting Started
The app opens on three tabs: Cities, your three save slots; the Handbook; and Customise. Tap an empty slot to found a new city, or a saved one to continue. Swipe a slot left, or touch and hold it, to delete it. Cities save automatically as you play.
Choose a game mode
| Mode | Rules |
|---|---|
| CLASSIC | The full game. Zones can catch fire, crime takes hold where police are thin, and poor police and health coverage limits how big a district grows. |
| SIMPLE | No fires, no crime and no livability limits. Police and hospitals earn a tax bonus instead. |
The mode is fixed for the life of each city. Every city starts in December 1981 with $20,000 and a freshly generated 120 × 100 map of grass, water and forest. Reopen a city and the map is framed just as you left it.
Controls
The status panel shows your treasury, the date, population, the R/C/I demand bars and your current tool and its cost.
Toolbar
- Save & Exit returns to your cities.
- Clock: tap to choose Pause, Slow (a month every 10 s) or Fast (every 5 s), or switch the music off.
- Data Maps tint power, service coverage or crime.
- Budget sets your tax rate.
- Tool menus: Build, Zones, Power, Services and Terrain.
Map
- Drag to pan, pinch to zoom.
- Tap to use your tool. Tapping something you've built selects it first; tap again to overwrite.
- Rotate, resize or unfold iPhone Duo and a bigger screen shows more city.
- The lightbulb opens the Mayor's Advisor, and Show Me glides to the problem.
Taxes, growth and disasters happen only while the clock runs. When in doubt, pause and plan.
The Toolbox
Costs come out the moment you place a tile. If you can't afford it, nothing happens.
| Tool | Cost |
|---|---|
| Bulldoze | $1 |
| Road | $10 |
| Residential, Commercial, Industrial zone | $100 |
| Power Line | $5 |
| Power Plant | $3,000 |
| Land, Water, Forest | Free |
| Service | Cost | Upkeep | Radius |
|---|---|---|---|
| Water Tower | $500 | $40/yr | 9 |
| Police | $500 | $100/yr | 11 |
| Fire Station | $500 | $100/yr | 11 |
| Hospital | $1,000 | $150/yr | 13 |
Zoning only designates land. Buildings appear on their own once their needs are met. Service buildings need power and a road within 3 tiles before they cover anything.
Power & Growth
A zone grows through five stages, from an empty lot to level 4, only when all four of these are true:
- Powered: connected to a working power plant.
- Watered: within range of a Water Tower.
- Road access: a road within 3 tiles.
- Demand: citizens want that kind of zone.
Power
A plant powers up to 350 connected tiles. Power flows through lines, zones, service buildings and plants, but not roads. To cross a road, string a power line over it.
R / C / I demand
Homes want jobs, shops want people, and industry has export demand from day one. Zone industry and homes together to get started.
CLASSIC Districts with poor police and health coverage stop at level 2 until you provide those services.
City Services
Each service covers a circle, strongest at the centre. Pick a service tool or open Data Maps to see coverage: green where covered, red where not.
- Water is required, like power.
- Police and Health lift the level-2 cap in Classic, or earn a tax bonus in Simple. Police also keep crime down.
- Fire protects against disaster.
Connect them, and put them where people are
A service building only works with power and a road within 3 tiles. Until then it covers nothing, but you still pay its upkeep. One with no zones in range flashes a sleepy Zz. Tap a service building to see its status: Working, Idle, No Power or No Road.
Fire & Crime CLASSIC
Fire!
Buildings with weak fire coverage can catch fire. A flame marker gives you about four months to act. Crews put it out automatically where coverage is good, or tap the building twice to extinguish it yourself for $25. Leave it and it burns to rubble.
Crime
Where police coverage is weak, crime builds slowly. With no police at all a building falls in about ten years. Halfway there it flashes a mask; after that it's abandoned and won't rebuild until police bring crime back down.
Open the Crime data map to find trouble spots: green is clean, amber is rising, red is abandoned. Simple mode has no fire or crime.
Money & Taxes
The books are balanced every January, starting once your city is a year old:
Income = Tax rate × (Population + Jobs) × 0.7
× (1 + Service Bonus) <- Simple only
Costs = roads $1 each + plants $100 each
+ service upkeep
Set your tax rate on the Budget screen: 7% by default, up to 20%.
Tax resentment
Up to 9%, nobody minds. Above that, resentment builds month by month and new homes fill more slowly; at 20% for long enough, nobody moves in. Lower taxes and it fades three times as fast. Check Resident Mood on the Budget screen.
Service Bonus SIMPLE
Every building covered by both police and a hospital counts toward coverage. At 100% coverage, tax income rises by 20%; at 50%, by 10%.
Warning Signs
Zones and service buildings flash an icon when something is wrong. If several things are wrong, the marker cycles through them.
| Icon | Meaning | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Lightning bolt | No power | Run a line or build a plant |
| Water drop | No water | Build a Water Tower in range |
| Road badge | No road within 3 tiles | Lay a road nearby |
| Blue shield | No police | Build a Police Station |
| Red cross | No health | Build a Hospital |
| Flames | On fire! | Tap twice, or rely on fire crews |
| Zz | Service with no zones in range | Zone nearby, or bulldoze it |
| Mask | Crime taking hold, or abandoned | Build a Police Station in range |
Tips for the Aspiring Mayor
- Industry first. Zone factories with homes: jobs bring residents.
- Reach the neighbourhood. Power and water spread to neighbours, so you needn't wire every tile.
- Keep roads close. Nothing more than 3 tiles from a road will grow or work.
- Wire up your services. A fire station with no power is just an expensive shed.
- Cover before you build big. Place fire stations and hospitals before a district grows, not after it burns.
- Mind the amber. Patchy police cover means crime in a few years. Check the Police map now and then.
- Watch the demand bars. They tell you what the city wants next.
- Ask your Advisor. The lightbulb explains why buildings aren't growing.
Customising Tiles
Every graphic in EGA City is drawn in code, and the Customise tab lets you repaint any tile, building or warning icon.
- Tap a tile to open the pixel editor.
- Pick a colour: one in the tile, one from the game's palette, any colour at all, or Transparent.
- Tap or drag across the canvas to paint.
Changes save as you paint and show up in every city. Undo steps back a stroke, Reset Tile restores one tile, and Reset All Tiles restores them all. Painted tiles are marked with a yellow brush.
Privacy Policy
Effective 6 November 2026
In short: EGA City doesn't collect, store or share any of your personal data. Your cities and settings stay on your device. There are no accounts, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking.
Who we are
EGA City ("the app", "we", "us") is a city-building game for iPhone and iPad, published by Chris Barker. This policy explains how the app handles information. It applies to the EGA City app and this website.
Information we collect
None. EGA City does not collect personal information. The app doesn't connect to our servers or anyone else's, doesn't require an account or sign-in, and contains no analytics, tracking, crash-reporting or advertising software.
Your cities
- Your cities, their names and the app's settings are stored only on your device, inside the app.
- They may be included in your device's iCloud or computer backups if you've turned those on. Backups are handled by Apple under your own settings.
- We never see, access or receive your cities or anything else you do in the app.
Permissions
EGA City doesn't ask for access to your location, contacts, photos, camera, microphone or any other personal information. Its music and sound effects are generated on your device.
Purchases
If you download or buy EGA City, the transaction is handled by Apple through the App Store. We don't receive your payment details. Apple's handling of your information is covered by Apple's Privacy Policy.
Children
EGA City is suitable for players of all ages. We don't knowingly collect information from anyone, including children.
Deleting your data
Because everything is stored on your device, you're always in control. Delete a city from its slot on the Cities screen, or delete the app to remove everything it stores.
Changes to this policy
If we change how EGA City handles information, we'll update this page and the effective date above.
Contact
Questions about this policy? Get in touch on X at @MrChrisBarker.