TLDR

Plots is a zoning management game with an emphasis on a basic plot grid system. You can build homes, businesses, and special plots to grow your city toward different objectives.

How to play

Fundamentals

Your objective changes depending on the game mode that you choose, but there are some fundamental mechanics that are always present in Plots.

Plots is all about building a city from nothing. Every city needs people, and people need a reason to live there.

At the top of the screen, you will see metrics or stats. These help you understand the health of your city.

• Population. How many people live in your city. When you add homes, you will increase your max population. The population doesn't always match the max population though if the people are unhappy or unhealthy. Fixing the problem will fill the homes with more people again until population matches the max occupancy available.
• Employees. Every person in your city needs to be working. As more people move in, you will be able to build businesses to hire the employees and fuel the city's economy. If the number of employees is below the max, then that means that businesses don't have enough employees which is terrible for your economy.
• Knowledge. This is a type of currency that is increased over time from libraries, schools, and some plot types. It is used to unlock specific plot types later in the game that require 'brain power'. You need lots of Knowledge to unlock a hospital, for example, which can be very important for improving city health in late-game.
• Gold. Your most important currency for building new plots. You get gold frequently as you increase population, businesses, your tax rate, and your city's happiness. This is highly variable if you don't keep your city healthy and happy.
• Tourism gold. This is a special type of gold that comes from tourists visiting your town. This is primarily generated from the Village Inn plot type. Tourism gold can be generated in very early game, but it can not be converted to regular gold or spent until you have a bank placed.
• Happiness. How happy your town is overall. Happiness is impacted by:
  • Plots. Certain plots make your town trend happier or sadder.
  • Health. If your town is unhealthy, it will be unhappy.
  • Unemployment. If your town has too many people and not enough jobs, it will be unhappy.
  • Tax rate. If your tax rate is too high, your town will be unhappy.
  • Boredom. If the town rarely has changes such as new businesses then people will become exponentially more unhappy.
• Tax rate. This is set by you and can be changed at any time using the slider. Depending on the difficulty of your game, you can set this higher or lower, though every game has a random 'ok' range that people are ok with before getting upset. This changes the percentage of revenue you get from businesses.

Building

There are a few types of plots that you want to have a good mix of:

• Residential. You need these to increase your population.
• Commercial. These are plots that require employees, and generate revenue. Some of these are far better value as they improve the happiness or health, but some also hurt these stats.
• Parks & Recreation. These plots don't make money but they make your town happier or healthier.
• City Services. Schools, Hospitals, Banks. These are advanced plots designed for late game to improve your wealth and unlock other capabilities in game.