DEPTH CITY (DepthCity): Build & Defend — an open-world city building game with an avatar Mayor mode and war, out now for Android, iPhone and iPad (Windows PC coming soon), by HIZARC Games
BUILD • EXPAND • DEFEND • CONQUER
Turn an empty island into a glittering metropolis, then keep it alive. Run its economy, walk its streets as the Mayor, and defend it when rival nations come from the sea.
01 · Foundations
Lay the roads.
Every city starts as an island and a plan. Roads first — the grid decides everything that follows.
02 · Districts
Raise the skyline.
170+ buildings across 11 categories. Power, water, schools, banks, factories, parks, an army — and the landmarks that make a city yours.
03 · Life
Watch it come alive.
Traffic, trains, ships, airliners. Citizens walking home. Smoke over the plant. The city starts to breathe.
04 · Night
Then the night falls.
Moonlit streets, curb lines that glow, a scattering of lit windows — and, some nights, something moving in the woods.
Why “Depth”
More than a city builder.
Most city games stop at the skyline. This one keeps going: into the economy, down to the street, through the seasons, and out to a world map of rivals who want your island.
Build your city
Draw streets, one-way roads, boardwalks, railways, an elevated metro and subways. Drag out zones and watch them fill. Place 170+ buildings across 11 categories, and climb 125 city levels.
Run the economy
Set taxes, pass policies and research new technology. Income follows real demand and costs grow with your city. Overspend and you face austerity, debt and creditors at the door.
Defend your island
Nine rival nations are watching. Arm your city and their invasions land on your beaches. Build defences and missile shields, scramble jets — then raid them back.
Live as the Mayor
Step out of the map and walk your own streets. Drive your cars, walk into shops and homes, find love, hold a wedding, and take the family out.
A world that lives
Day and night, spring blossom, monsoon rain, autumn leaves and winter snow. Traffic, trains, airliners, farms, a zoo and wildlife. Fireworks, concerts, parades — and seven kinds of disaster.
Play your way
Play offline, any time, with no ads and no in-app purchases. Portrait or landscape, on phone or tablet, and soon on Windows PC. Share your city with friends using a City ID.
Real gameplay
Play it in your hand.
Recorded straight off the game's screen, HUD and all. Draw a road, drop a landmark, set the tax rate, raise an army. Portrait or landscape, phone or tablet — and you can play it entirely offline.
Open Build, pick a card and drop it. Construction crews take it from there.
Drag a street across the lot, zone the blocks beside it, and the houses come.
Brush forests, lawns and beaches across the island. Wild animals find them.
Spend policy points on 21 policies, from Low-Interest Loans to a Four-Day Work Week.
Eight city events, from a farmers market to a stadium concert and a fireworks show.
A city that keeps time
Every day has a morning, a golden hour, and a moonlit night.
The sun arcs across the sky, the moon takes over where it set. Ambient light carries the mood — lavender at dawn, pink-purple at dusk, navy after dark. Nothing snaps; it just turns.
Seasons & weather
A year on the island.
A year is 115 game days. Spring blossom, monsoon rain, autumn gold and winter snow come round in turn, and the city changes with them: wet roads, snowplows, grounded planes in a storm.
01 / 04 · Spring
The trees come out in blossom.
Ten days of pink and white along every avenue, with light showers in between. The farms are planting, so food runs slow.
Look up · as the Mayor
Galaxy nights. Aurora nights.
Step out as the Mayor after dark and look up. Every night is one or the other — never both. The decision is made at dusk before anything is visible: a baked Milky Way hangs at one place in the sky, or a green curtain rises a few seconds after full dark and stays until dawn. Twinkle runs on its own clock, so the stars keep blinking while the city is paused.
Live as the Mayor
Step down to the street.
Drop out of the map and into your own city. Walk it, drive it, fly over it, walk into its shops and homes — then find love, hold a wedding and take the family out.
01 / 04 · On foot
Step out of the map and walk your own streets.
Drag the Mayor onto the city — a rooftop, a mountain, even the roof of a moving train — and walk. The city you built is solid all around you.
Zoo & wildlife
The city has a wild side.
Build the Classic Zoo Park and nineteen animals move in. Leave a forest standing and deer, bears, boars and wolves find it on their own. Every animal below was filmed inside the game.
01 / 03 · Classic Zoo Park
A whole zoo, alive in the middle of town.
Elephants, camels, zebras, penguins, a crocodile — nineteen animals in their own enclosures, every one of them moving.
Celebrate
Light up the night.
Eight city events, from a farmers market to a stadium concert. The biggest is the Special Event: the Skyreach Tower's LED skin wakes up and a record-breaking fireworks show climbs to the spire.
01 / 05 · Special Event
Light up the Skyreach Tower.
Start the Special Event and night falls over the city. The tower's LED skin runs through every colour and a record-breaking fireworks show climbs to the spire.
Survive disasters
Then nature fights back.
Fire, tornado, volcano, flood, thunderstorm, earthquake and meteor strike. Start any of them yourself, or switch on Random Disasters for extra city income — and live with what comes.
01 / 03 · Tornado
It tears a path straight through town.
A funnel drops out of a clear sky and walks across the farmland, flinging debris as it goes.
War with consequences
Defend it. Or take theirs.
Nine rival nations on a world map of islands. Recruit soldiers, commandos and special forces, build air bases and missile defence, then raid a rival from the sea — or watch your Intelligence Agency count down the days until they land on your beaches.
01 / 05 · The landing
They come ashore on your beaches.
The siren sounds, the camera punches to the coast, and a wave of infantry charges up the sand with helicopters and jets overhead.
Nine rival nations
Each one is an island on the world map, ranked by military might, with its own treasury, oil, minerals, weapons and an army that rebuilds. They trade, take sides and go to war with each other.
They come from the sea
Arm your city and you are on the world stage. Invaders land on your beaches with helicopters and jets overhead. An Intelligence Agency buys you days of warning to sandbag, hire mercenaries and pick a standing order.
Shields up
Radar, air defence and missile defence batteries, and a Technology Tower whose sky shield vaporises any enemy aircraft that enters it. Your air base scrambles its own interceptors.
Raid them back
Open the world map, tap a rival and land troops on their sand. Send in named jets and bombers, fire a missile — or a nuke. Bring down their Town Hall and half their city and they surrender: make them your colony.
Recruit soldiers, commandos and special forces, set army pay, and deploy helicopters, fighter jets and the B2 bomber.
Space program
Reach for orbit.
Build the Space Research Center, one of the last cards in the game, and its Play button becomes LAUNCH. Engines light, the apron vanishes under an exhaust cloud, and the BADUSHA rocket climbs right out of the top of the sky. Then the pad needs a full week before it can fly again.
Nobody will tell you this
Leave a clearing in the forest — a patch of grass ringed by trees — and you may find a circle already standing in it. Robed. Armed. Facing a fire. They were there before you looked. They will be there tomorrow.
The circle stays as long as the clearing does. Build into it, or cut the ring open, and it melts away.
Figures appear beside a building after dark, stand around a candle for half a minute, then vanish one by one.
“Masked figures were seen gathering near Town Hall after dark…”
Pure mystery set dressing — they never do anything. Probably.
Everything you can build
Landmarks from everywhere. Districts of your own.
The Skyreach Tower, the Iron Lattice Tower, a samurai castle, beach resorts, a shipping dock, a football stadium — and mega projects from a zoo to a billion-dollar games studio. 170+ buildings across 11 categories.
The maker
Built by one engineer, with an unreasonable amount of care.
Shainal Badusha is an IT engineer who wanted a city game with more underneath, and built one: the economy and the war, the seasons and the weather, the Mayor and the family, the trains, the rocket, the robed order in the woods. Every system in DEPTH CITY is there because the city needed it.
“I wanted a city builder that keeps surprising you — the kind where you zoom in at 2 a.m. and find something you were never told about.”
Questions
The open-world city builder, explained.
What is DEPTH CITY?
DEPTH CITY (also written DepthCity) is an open-world city building game by HIZARC Games, out now on Google Play for Android and on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, with a Windows PC version coming soon. You build an island city from bare land, run its economy, step into it as the Mayor to walk, drive and fly through the streets you built, and defend it when rival nations invade from the sea.
Where can I download DEPTH CITY?
DEPTH CITY: Build & Defend is out now. Android phones and tablets: Google Play, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hizarc.depthcity. iPhone and iPad: the App Store, https://apps.apple.com/app/depth-city-build-defend/id6828720246. The Windows PC version is coming soon.
Is DEPTH CITY an open-world city building game?
Yes. You build from above like a classic city builder, then drop the Mayor anywhere in the city — a street, a rooftop, a mountain, even the roof of a moving train — and explore it freely on foot, by car, by helicopter or by plane. Shops, homes, the Town Hall and the Mayor Mansion have interiors you can walk into.
What is the best city building game with an avatar mode and war?
DEPTH CITY is built for exactly that mix. It is a full city builder (170+ buildings in 11 categories, 125 city levels, taxes, policies and research), an avatar game where you live as the Mayor — walk, drive, fly, find love and hold a wedding — and a war game against nine rival nations with invasions, air defence, jets, bombers and missiles. It is out now on Android and iOS, and coming to Windows PC.
Which platforms is DEPTH CITY on?
DEPTH CITY is out on Android phones and tablets (Google Play) and on iPhone and iPad (App Store, iOS 15 or later). A Windows PC version is coming soon. It plays in portrait or landscape, and it plays offline.
Is DEPTH CITY out now?
Yes. DEPTH CITY: Build & Defend is out now on Google Play and the App Store. The Windows PC version is coming soon; leave your email on depthcity.hizarc.com to hear when it is ready.
How much does DEPTH CITY cost?
DEPTH CITY is a premium game: you buy it once (US$4.99 in the United States; Google Play and the App Store show the price in your local currency) and get the whole game, with no ads and no in-app purchases.
How does war work in DEPTH CITY?
Nine rival nations share the world map, each with its own treasury, resources and army. Once you arm your city, invaders land on your beaches with helicopters and jets overhead. You defend with radar, air defence and missile defence batteries and a Technology Tower shield, then raid them back with troops, named jets and bombers, missiles or a nuke. Bring down their Town Hall and half their city and they surrender as your colony.
Can I walk around my own city?
Yes — that is the Mayor mode. Walk your own streets, drive your cars, fly planes and helicopters, ride the metro, walk into shops and homes, buy a house or build the Mayor Mansion, propose, hold a wedding on the plaza and take the family out. The Mayor can even fight alongside your army during an invasion.
Does DEPTH CITY have ads or in-app purchases?
No. DEPTH CITY is a one-time purchase with no ads and no in-app purchases, and it plays fully offline. You can share your city with friends using a City ID.
What else is in the game?
Day and night, four seasons with spring blossom, monsoon rain, autumn leaves and winter snow, traffic, trains, ships and airliners, a zoo with nineteen animals and wildlife in the forests, eight city events from a farmers market to a stadium concert and a fireworks show, and seven kinds of disaster including tornadoes, fires and a volcano.
Who makes DEPTH CITY?
DEPTH CITY is made by Shainal Badusha, a solo developer and IT engineer, at HIZARC Games in Kozhikode (Calicut), Kerala, India. It is built in Unity.
For reviewers & creators
Reviewer & Creator Guide
Everything a reviewer or creator needs in four pages: how the city grows, the army, air force and missiles, the Mayor's life, and what to show in your first 30 minutes. Pick your language to download the PDF.
Get in touch
We'd love your suggestions.
Have an idea for a new landmark? Found a bug? Or just want to say hi? Reach out to us.
Or email us directly at shainal@hizarc.com