Previous Simcity games have concentrated on the mayoral aspect of city building - the idea being that the player would put together a city from scratch, including roads, buildings, power generation and other objects.

Once the city was built, though, keeping it going involved delving into taxation, city budgets and similar, largely fiscal, aspects.

The new edition, Simcity Societies, takes things in a different direction. Essentially, it’s the game’s answer to virtual worlds such as Second Life. The city-building is still here, but there’s not much talk of taxation or money-making.

Although you still need an income to make the city work, it’s more about balancing the citizens’ happiness and productivity than about balancing the books. In the Second Life vein, the buildings are all customisable, so players can have control over how the city looks.

It’s true that, played this way, the game loses much of its interest for older players, and much of its difficulty; in fact, it can be quite easy to build a huge city. But what makes it a dead loss for adults can make this game interesting for older children.

The game’s developers have gone out of their way to make it child-friendly. You can pick from several kinds of city at the outset, one of which is a Fun one, ideal for teaching kids about how modern towns and cities work. There’s a definite environmentalist slant, with benefits available for building wind farms rather than coal power plants, but then that’s been there since the first Simcity game back in 1989.

The ease of play will make Simcity Societies quite dull for a lot of adult players, particularly experienced gamers, but those who haven’t played this kind of game before might find that it’s an excellent introduction to God games.