Every game on this desk is free to begin and makes its money from optional in-game purchases, and none of them needs anything installed. What is worth a second thought is how these games fill a day with small finishing times, and how easily a day rearranges itself around four of them without anybody deciding it should.
Your time
- Pick two visiting times and let everything that finishes in between wait; all of these will hold it indefinitely.
- Start one long build deliberately and leave it, because watching a queue is the easiest habit here to pick up.
- Notice whether you are laying the town out or just collecting from it.
What it can cost
- Pick a figure for the month in advance, and treat it as the whole budget rather than a starting point.
- Leave purchase approval enabled on the device, because willpower is not a spending control.
- Ask what a purchase really changes. If the answer is only that something arrives sooner, it will arrive anyway.
Children and teenagers
- The age rating comes from the publisher and sits on their site; read it there.
- Keep the approval for any purchase on a grown-up's phone rather than the child's.
- Try the social features first, and decide about them before the account is made.
When the hours or the money stop feeling like decisions you are making, the practical first steps are your phone's screen-time limits and your bank's controls — and telling somebody.