14 DAY TRIAL // 
On a building corner, a lady has fallen to the ground and is not moving. I zoom in on my camera, click on her form, pull up her profile, and learn that she is diabetic and prone to medical issues. This is clearly concerning.
I call an ambulance to the scene quickly and designate her as a vulnerable person, making sure that the system sends this info to the first responders. Right next to her, someone is engaging in vandalism, so I get the police on the case fast. I hope that one corner will not have more than two emergencies at a time and switch to another corner’s camera.
Here a fire is burning in a trashcan, which clearly requires the fire department to dispatch their own trucks. Next to the can, there’s one dude whose file says he was in jail for arson, so the police are also needed for this situation, although I did not see him actually light the fire. There’s a ton of crime in this simulated city and I seem to be the only one manning the cameras that can monitor it and guide emergency services.
City Eye is developed and published by SIG Publishing. I played via Steam on the PC. The title asks players to take charge of a complex monitoring system, tackling themes that are relevant to the modern world and the rise of the surveillance state.
Players will become an operator working for the Central Monitoring System, a structure that uses cameras to monitor a city and report problems that range from sick persons to fires or violent crimes. There’s little information about the organization or how it has structured its operations.
The game does not offer details about the character players are inhabiting and the narrative is almost non-existent. I would have appreciated some insight into the wider role that surveillance plays in this society or the way the CMS has been set up to deal with issues like privacy, the rights of citizens, or the way the various emergency services interact with the situations they are called to deal with. There’s a lot of space in the game for commentary but the interest of the development team is on the action.
The gameplay of City Eye is all about using cameras and tagging incidents. Watch the city through the lens, switch from one to the other, and detect incidents that can range from trashcan fires to collapsed citizens to violent crime. When something bad happens clock on the person or the problem and then call in the appropriate emergency service to deal with it.
f a person is involved, you can also quickly check a file on them and tag them if they are suspicious or vulnerable. The aim is to eliminate all the problems that come up during a shift as quickly and smoothly as possible. The incidents themselves are not very varied and the player will quickly learn how to spot them.
Once a shift ends players can use the cash they get based on performance to get more cameras and up the surveillance. And then it’s time to once again watch the city, find signs of trouble, and call in those who can deal with the issues.
City Eye doesn’t manage to be realistic or engaging. Some people do not move for the entire duration of a shift, which makes them, in my book, even more suspicious than the people you tag for actual crimes. Are they aliens? Is this entire city a poorly designed simulation? Is this a big training scenario that no one informed the protagonist about? You cannot do anything about them.
Even weirder is the fact that all emergency vehicles that respond to a tag from the player don’t have any personnel inside. Instead, they reach the place of the incident and then simply poof out of existence, alongside those involved in the emergency, while the player is congratulated on his efforts. These mechanics can make it harder to deal with other incidents at the same location, affecting player performance and pay.
The game fails to add any more structure or context to keep players engaged. The city has too high simulated crime, incidents and involved individuals repeat, pay is way too low even for great performance. The gameplay loop works but it does not evolve or innovate in any way.
The title could have explored some interesting ideas about the power of surveillance, the ability to use data to keep people safe, and the way societies can use cameras to deter problems rather than simply react when they happen. Unfortunately, the developers are uninterested and simply want a create a simulation of constant monitoring.
City Eye doesn’t look especially good, mainly because it chooses to set the action in modern times. If the game decided to work with cameras from 10 years ago it could have used some static or fuzziness to add a layer of realism that would have masked the mediocre nature of its landscape and characters. The repeating nature of all incidents does not help with the presentation. There’s no soundtrack to the action and the sound effects are pretty basic.
The Good
- Surveillance-driven setup
- Potential for commentary about cameras use
- Emergency service vehicle disappearance
The Bad
- No narrative to speak off
- Repetitive gameplay
- Limited presentation
Conclusion
But the game is very basic and direct and fails to offer anything of value other than its setup. Everything happens in the same way, with the same people. There’s no sense of progress. City Eye shows that a decent idea is no guarantee of a good game and the development team should take the concept back to the drawing board and see how they can extract interesting gameplay and stories.
A review code was provided by the publisher.
