At the beginning of Building a city, the game context is explained.
You always wanted to plan villages, towns, cities, etc. But before the planning committee will hire you, they have prepared a number of tests for you! In the first level you can build a small village, only a few questions are asked, and depending on the number of correct answers you can place 1, 2, 3, … small houses. In the next levels, the size of the towns and cities to be built increases, and you can choose different houses, stores, shopping centers, hotels, factories, churches, mosques, temples, etc. – but only if you answer enough questions!
Each level consists of three phases. The first phase, “introduction”, explains what is to be done. It shows an empty rectangle (“the construction site”), and gives a “job description” to the player (e.g. “Your job: Build a small village with at least 3 houses”).
The second phase, “testing”, gives a number of mathematical tasks to the player. Depending on the difficulty, the player gets a certain number of points for a correct answer.
The third phase, “building”, shows the “job description” again, it shows the empty rectangle and a list of buildings.
The player – if he/she has enough points – can drag/drop buildings from the list into the rectangle.