New York Nights: Success in the City

New York Nights: Success in the City is Gameloft's take on The Sims with lifestyle elements from The Urbz thrown in. You control a twentysomething dropped in New York with a 40-day lease. During this short period, you have to make a career, meet new people and engage in social activities. After creating a character, you can distribute 20 points over beauty, health, humor and culture; the four main statistics that define a character throughout the game.

There is only a limited amount of time in a day, so actions have to be chosen wisely. By visiting locations such as a sports club, a theater, a style salon, or a club, you can choose which aspects of your personality you want to improve. You also need to eat, sleep and wash up regularly. New people are saved in your cell phone. You can work on your friendship levels with regular talks, gossip, jokes, presents and flirting. Each character has specific interests and the outcome of your choices influences the levels. Friends can introduce you to jobs, where you have to complete mini-games to earn money.

The main storyline follows a quest-based approach. After meeting a few people, you can decide to pursue love. To attract someone's attention, you have to date, buy presents and raise certain levels of your character to impress your future lover, e.g. culture by going to a concert, humor by playing video games (?).

The game is shown through an isometric perspective and you can move around freely. While talking, different topics appear as a circle around your character. New locations are visited through a map. Your cash balance, the time of the day, and the cell phone where friends, quests and messages are stored, are all shown in the corners of the screen.