Benerits City: Kentsel Dönüşüm

Benerits City: Kentsel Dönüşüm is a city builder about urban renewal, known in Turkish as kentsel dönüşüm: tearing down ageing apartment buildings and putting new ones up in their place. You play the contractor. The city is shown in 3D from an isometric angle, and every plot with a tired old building on it is a possible project.

Each project follows the real order of a building site. You acquire the property either by paying cash, so every new flat is yours, or through a flat-for-land deal, where the owners pay nothing and take a share of the new flats. The old building is demolished and the scrap sold, a soil survey is drilled, a design that fits the zoning is chosen from a catalogue and a permit is issued. Bored piles go into the ground, then floor by floor you order rebar, formwork and concrete, followed by brickwork, electrics, plumbing, the facade and the roof. Every step is animated: excavators arrive on low-loaders, pile rigs drill, concrete pumps and mixers pour each slab, and the scaffolding comes down at handover.

The central decision is quality. The plan specifies how much steel and which concrete grade to use, and you can use less to save money. Every shortcut raises the chance of a building inspection. Pass and your reputation rises; get caught and you pay a heavy fine, and three or more violations force you to tear down two floors. Quality also sets flat prices, so short-term profit and long-term reputation pull against each other.

Finished flats are sold to buyers who come with offers, or let out for monthly rent. A game month lasts two minutes, and rent, salaries, loan instalments and mortgage interest are settled every month. Business loans and mortgages against your properties fund bigger projects. You can hire a site chief, a civil engineer and a senior project manager who run sites on their own, and a sales manager who accepts offers within a price limit you set. Experience from finished work raises your contractor level, which opens new neighbourhoods, more floors and large facilities such as shopping malls, hotels, hospitals and a stadium. Merging neighbouring plots into one block also raises the number of floors you may build.

Some practical tips: buy neighbouring plots before a big project next door is finished, because completed projects push nearby land prices up. Keep an eye on cash, since staff salaries are paid every month whether or not a site is busy. Repeated shortcuts are what lead to demolished floors. The game is free in the browser, needs no sign-up and plays in 12 languages.