SimCity Social begins open beta on Facebook

Initially announced at E3 this year, the social-friendly city builder SimCity Social has now opened its doors for an open beta on Facebook.

Fans of the series are advised to steer clear, lest their blood boils beyond safe temperatures, for while SimCity Social certainly looks like a normal entry in the series, the gameplay is far more akin to that of The Sims Social than SimCity.

So, that means you'll be completing missions for a variety of chirpy characters (like building 'x' amount of houses), and collecting resources from factories after waiting a specific amount of time. You should know the drill by now.

Another feature it shares with The Sims Social, however, is that everything is very slickly put together. Icons and bonuses bounce out under your mouse pointer with abandon, and the game itself - complete with little animations of your real-life friends moving into your empty houses - is very attractive.

Like in Sims Social, you can also do both good and bad things to your friends' towns, although these don't seem to serve any real gameplay purpose other than to build up a specific type of special resource needed for certain buildings.

A warning before you jump in feetfirst: the game is incredibly crafty when it comes to sharing news with friends.

Just remember to untick the 'share this' box when levelling-up (it's tiny, so easy to miss) and not to fall into the trap of thinking that the friends in your city are actually playing the game. It may say 'add', but it means 'invite'.