Facebook Game Review: Nightclub City

On Facebook, you’ve been working on your farm, working to keep a Cafe and Restaurant running smoothly and so on and so forth – and you must be getting pretty tired. In that case, the best remedy would be a trip to the nightclub where you could play a few sets as the best DJ on earth, entertain tons of party-minded people like you and forget about working. All this can be done in Nightclub City, an awesome and fun new social game on Facebook.

This title came out of nowhere with next to zero promotion and it already packs in about 90 thousand active monthly users, numbers that are certainly going to grow steadily in the near future. The concept behind Nightclub City is quite simple: management and “cooking” is left aside in running the club, the only aspects that matter being the music YOU play, the celebrities you manage to lure in to increase your club’s popularity and the drinks who should always be aplenty. Apart from that – it’s party time!

This proves that in order to have a successful and fun social game you don’t need too complex gameplay mechanics. When you start the game you are given a little club with one employee: yourself, the club’s DJ. You can choose playing one of the three (for now) sets: Hip Hop, Electronic and Pop and the rest will be history: soon you’ll be able to hire your first bartender, then your club will grow bigger, the first bouncer will be needed and so on to greater glory.

The music is absolutely amazing – probably the best in social games – but unfortunately it is very limited at the moment and after a few hours of playing it gets a bit boring hearing the same beats over and over again. But Nightclub City is a newly launched game and I’m sure that in the future more mixes will be added, alongside a host of other features.

Until then, you will need to raise money in order to build up the luxury of your club – the higher it is, the more successful the club – by purchasing better seats, decorations, Go-Go dancers and other fancy stuff. At the moment the number of decorative items is limited but no game should offer everything from the start and then get updated no more.

Another fine addition is the fact that each employee has a couple of special moves: for example the DJ can Drop the Bass and send everybody to the bar to order drinks or Dedicate Song and cheer up an unhappy guest instantly; the bartenders can do Bar Tricks for bigger tips or Bottoms Up for faster alcohol serving; and finally the Bouncer can be placed in a specific area to look for troublemakers or be instructed manually who to kick out.

Celebrities also pay an important role in the game since they offer a big boos to your club’s popularity: I’ve had Vanilla Rice as a guest and, of course, 55 Cent in the club. Other celebrities you can lure in are Mike Tightson, Britney Smears, Shuck Norris, Oprah Winfreak or even George W. Tush. More celebs with names as funny as the ones mentioned by me are coming and you’ll certainly strive to complete your celebrity wall with all the celebrities on the list!

The people who visit your Nightclub City club themselves act natural enough for a social game: they dance and have fun, they go to the bar to get drinks, they socialize and can even fall in love, they rent a huge couch and wait for the roadies to come in or they simply get drunk and get thrown away. Everything contributing to a very fun and active game even though, paradoxically, you’re not involved too much!

And this could be considered the biggest drawback of the game: you can’t do too much. Except for selecting the DJ’s set, the special moves of the characters and selecting a rude guest to be kicked out by the bouncer, there’s nothing for you to do. The social aspect is also limited for now: you can visit your friends, but you can only play a 2 minutes-long set in their club for some money. And nothing else.

However, the game is still young and I have high hopes that many changes will be made to turn it into a complete, flawless experience. Right now it’s not bad at all and you’ll certainly have tons of fun playing it, but with even more options it would be the next big thing after FarmVille. So head over to Facebook and give Nightclub City a try!