City Island 5: Building Sim Reviews

City Island 5 Reviews

Published by on 2026-06-01

🏷️ About: Build a city, your city “City Island 5 - Tycoon Building Offline Sim Game”, a new city builder game from Sparkling Society, will make you the mayor of small town starting on just one island. Send your airship to explore the world and unlock beautiful new islands to build your new cities on.


       


Is City Island 5 Safe to Use?

We Investigate the app owner's website (Sparklingsociety.net), verify their legitimacy, and uncover hidden scams and complaints.


Overall Customer Experience 😎


😎 Positive experience
60.3%

🤬 Negative experience
39.7%

🫥 Neutral
0.0%

~ from Justuseapp.com NLP analysis of 10,204 combined software reviews.

Is City Island 5 Safe?
City Island 5: Building Sim is very safe to use.
60.3/100

  Safety Analysis »»

Is City Island 5 Legit?
City Island 5: Building Sim looks authentic and legitimate.
60.3/100



Read 20 Customer Service Reviews 😠💢

4.7 out of 5
Sad review

I “work” hard to gather golden keys… because I like to get the reward of a golden chest (2,699 golden keys) which will reward me with properties AnD also give me a Boost property. I see this as a strategy game. However, I am now going to BOYCOTT this GAME (& the rest, which I have been playing for years!!!). I have spent some money with this game... because it has given me some happiness during surgery (many) recovery....BUT they recently offered me, apparently playing off of my trust, an opportunity to exchange my gold keys for (~useless) diamond keys. I, guess :( I fell for it; it seems they take advantage, CLEARLY greedy; now it doesn’t matter if I have the appropriate 2,699 or 5000 or 10,000 or any amount of golden keys- I can no longer open a chest that rewards me with properties and a property that boosts. It is unlike me, I have never ever written a review for any game... but I can’t help it- F these people. BYE BYE

*UPDATE ... Still Frozen

*UPDATE: It works now! Finally. I gave 4 stars because it took over a month and 2 negative reviews before it would open again. Never mind the developers never got back to me nor were the posts ever posted. We’ll see if this one posts. I guess if they want credit for the 4 stars, they’ll post this.😆 Fun game though! If I trusted that it would work consistently or that I’d have contact from the developer, I’d even make some in app purchases. As it is, I don’t trust the stability enough to risk losing $.

HA! Funny how my review keeps disappearing. Here’s another one. Let’s see if they actually post it or delete it.
IPad Pro - game froze on previous update, still stuck on this one. Won’t open. No response from developer. I have spent lots of time to get where I was. I will not re-load and start over. If I have to uninstall, I will forgo these games and this developer. Too much time and $ has been invested for me to go back to ground zero. I am completely disappointed. A look see from the developer would be nice to find out why the game won’t open.

Disappointed

The graphics are great and this game has a lot of potential. Unfortunately it’s takes a lot of money to advance and build. Once a level is reached there are rarely new buildings to add plus having to pay coins for them. The islands’ spaces are extremely expensive and a player pretty much needs to be a billionaire status to buy them plus keep everything else updated. There are very few free things to get.

There’s a great variety of buildings for some surfaces but very few for others. To get the ‘rare’ buildings it either costs coins or a player has to wait forever to get them through the treasure chests.

The islands have limited space to build and the wait time for some structures to finish building or updating is ridiculous and expensive. Even though an island space looks adequate many of the areas aren't available. It makes more space limited since some structures take up a lot of room.

Needs stability

This game is a lot of fun...when it actually works. It’s pretty reasonable to play without spending actual money too. I have bought the silver chest deals when they come up but other than that I’ve already unlocked four islands and almost maxed out my first one in just a few short weeks.

The most frustrating part though is that the game continually freezes at the main launch screen and I cannot get into it. Sometime it will be unavailable for days. Other times I can get in after a few hours. It makes the daily challenges almost impossible to achieve. And I miss out on the daily login rewards. Also since I can’t login all the time I am missing out on collecting money from my commercial businesses.

If the company can fix the login issues I will definitely bump the star rating, because it is a fun casual game to play.

Bad distribution of resources

I’ve been playing for some time but will probably delete game soon. It’s ok in the beginning but once you really start to develop islands, you find that the resources (businesses, houses, etc.) remain skewed towards 1-2 terrains with others not getting any development. It makes it difficult to be fun. For example, I;m on level 77 and for 1 terrain (mud) there is not a single new option for housing until another 30+ levels and this terrain is already short resources with new ones being added to other terrains but not this one. Look at your distribution developers.

Also, the free resources you can win are repetitive, low level resources that you have no way of trading or selling- I have 900+ of these that I never use and they are made up of about only 10-15 different resources ( nor is there any option for buying or trading-nyou can on,y demolish).

The special events are irksome as they do not allow you to skip the tutorials and, guess what, after the first time I figured it out I don’t want to be forced to go through a tutorial for the 14th time or more

I like builder games and this one starts off well and you can play without going broke on in house purchases but length of p,any is limited by some basic fixes the developers continue to ignore.

Without long term players it is difficult to establish a strong online community that would work to further promote the game and your other products as you see with more successful well known games.

Used to be a lot of fun but now.....

I give the game 2 stars, those are for the love of the game, the 3 empty stars are for the following reasons: I loved this game but this last gift game has completely ruined it for me. I’m not one who will spend real money, I work 40+ hours a week so I spend way to much time playing during the weekend to get to the final chest only to have it ripped out from me. I had 8955 tickets, 2 harvesters and I could not get the spinner thing off of the watch a video to finish up the chests. I shut down my iPad so many times to get it to go away and it wouldn’t. That was bad enough but then you didn’t even offer the opportunity to finish the chests by using gold (which I saved for this specific reason)! I have to walk away now and reevaluate whether I wish to continue playing a game with this developer.

Update 1.8.7 Big Failure

This game has potential. I honestly don’t think the developers are greedy at all. Throughout the game, the player has enough opportunities to get coins, keys etc. I invested money in the game because it kept me entertained, and it is a way to reward creativity. The fishing game for instance is a great addition. Unfortunately, the fun is over. Something happens after the latest update that makes the game crash every three to four minutes. I can still do some work, but I have to constantly reload the game. That is frustrating and I play to relax myself. I will give the developers a few more weeks to fix the problem and then I will delete it and forget about it. One star for the idea and one star for the customer service ( I contacted the developers and I got a response from them). Lost a star for entertainment, lost a star for problem solving, lost a star for not reading their blogs.

Great city building game!

Great game! Gold is too expensive, ridiculously expensive that it’s a bit of an insult. Distasteful ads, which don’t comply with it being age 4 and up. 5 stars, if it were not for the gold being too expensive. I agree with “lame”, you should just charge for the game and let us build what we want, however, with a subscription comes some gold to speed up buildings(otherwise you go through game too quickly.) And the sub could be an option, not a requirement. Five dollars for 50 gold coins— too much! 4 stars if it weren’t for the distasteful ads; so I give it three with the potential of being a great game. But rating it 4+ when you have ads showing games with characters in bed
together, how you think that is 4+ age, is beyond me!

Already losing interest

I find this game’s creator’s financial expectations to fall in the excessive greed range. Netflix is only $15 a month and a payer can watch all day 24/7. SimCity doesn’t require so much monitoring or $$. This game requires 24/7 monitoring to be able to “buy” a picture of a house. A house you can only see from one angle, which is blocked by the large and many icons all over the page. While the graphics are attractive, having a 1-angle view reduces the games value into half. I rate this game as being worth about $3-5 a month. As far as patience goes, I think patience in a money grabber game is not about patience, it’s about not letting the game owners squeeze every last dime out of you because that is just stupid. So it’s really about not being stupid and having hours and hours to kill while the wheels spin on top of the roofs.

City Island 5

Like similar games, it can be costly —especially for the gold to be able to buy & build faster when compared with the oftentimes $millions 💴 required otherwise. But, if you don’t mind going
S L O W L Y, you can play & build up without having to spend loads of real money.
One thing that I’ve noticed tho is that the game seems to have a glitch where it sticks, a lot actually. But all you have to do most of the time is just minimize & then pull it back up and in worst case scenarios, close & re-open it.
All the accessories are like $500 or $1000 which is awfully pricey for a doggone bush or flower or tree etc... so Township it is not. If you are expecting it to be more like that, you will be disappointed. But overall it’s a decent game with room for improvement, but fun to play if you like to build & grow towns/cities. IMO, they could lower the costs of about 75% of their stuff, but it is what it is.

Too many ads for me to enjoy

I love playing phone games. I am addicted to playing any moment I have down time. I love achieving goals within a game. That is what keeps me motivated to keep playing. When I first started playing this game, I was able to achieve upgrades and funds very quickly. Then step by step the developers have made this game more difficult. I was okay with that because I am always up for a challenge. Then the developers added commercials. There is no way to ‘opt out’. Every few clicks I am watching another commercial for another game or some such thing. I cannot finish collecting funds from one side of an island before commercial 2 pops up. I am coming to your game to fill down time. Why on EARTH would I want to watch a commercial when I am playing your game during a TV commercial i am trying to avoid!!!! It is really a great game. I will hold on to it to see if my concern can be addressed. BUT I am taking a long break. Good luck!

Seems like they are going backwards

With all the love I have for this series, feels like they are going backward instead of moving forward. When this game launched I had very high expectations. It’s not that the game is bad just he graphics are not as good as expected.
City island 4 looked much more real and sophisticated than Version 5 but agains, version 4 was full with glitches, when version 5 has no such Issues its like playing a game from 2010 instead they could have added much more and much realistic play.
Again I have no idea why they don’t keep on updating and keep changing the versions as a totally new game.
I won’t spend my money on this game cuz next thing you know there would be a version 6 then all the money and time spent on this would be a waste. If they stop bring out new versions as a total new game and keep on simply updating this version like sim city it would be so much better. Developers are good but the team working on the strategy doesn’t seem like to understand what gamers want.

City Island 5

Yeah, what the 1st guy said; patience is key. However, land increases ridiculously in price, & often houses & businesses can’t even be bought because you can only pay by using game coins that can be won or bought with real money. You buy homes & businesses for only certain island land types, & on the snowy island there are no community buildings to purchase at all, yet the red exclamation sign, that travels on your roads, tells you that you need them to boost your city’s happiness through community buildings. The graphic design is incredible, & I like being able to zoom in to make cities bigger to look at. Moving vehicles & people walking makes the cities come alive as do certain animated buildings. I’ve played this game for a long time & purchase what I can when I can with game money & coins. Watch out for the old man sea captain on the volcanic island. He will make great bargaining deals at times & a real con artist at other times. The lady sea captain, on the snowy island, always gives daily awards & they are very nice ones & get better everyday. You just have to visit daily or you have to start over with rewards. Then the game has 7 day long events that you collect traveling gift packages to exchange for game money, keys, tokens, & game coins which help you to collect keys for treasure chests.

Great Game

Overall, I love CityIsland5. It’s fun to play when I have my spare time. BUT. I understand you just made an update but maybe for the next update, do something like a beginners bundle pack with 50 coins 4,000,000 coins, 300 gold keys and 500 silver keys and make it $5.99? The cost you normally want for coins, and cash is a little outrageous. Or add a 25 gold coin pack for 1.99 instead of just making it 4.99 for 50. Also just a suggestion since it is very difficult to get coins, cash, and chips why not a video every 2 hours to get the chest instead of 7-8 hours? I know you need to make money to continue paying for CityIsland5 to make updates or new apps and also a profit for the team, but I feel you’d make more if you lowered the prices a little and also make it a little more fun for those who can’t afford to pay for a game. 🙂

One of the best

I really enjoy playing this game, for the most part. One small thing that does annoy me is that you’re only given 2 ways to turn your buildings... not a huge deal but when you want places to line up and look a certain way, you’re limited to where you can place them. A couple of other “cons”..: 1) you can’t do 360 views of the islands to look at everything once your buildings and decorations are placed. 2) once you place so many homes of a certain kind it makes it to where you can only purchase those homes with coins - which you either have to buy or trade keys for. I don’t mind trading keys but I’m not spending my real money for coins to place houses. Lol. I wish there was more ways to earn the coins OR they didn’t change the only buying option to coins.

Would recommend a few things...

Overall the game is pretty good compared to other city building games such as Simcity and games like that. A thing that i dislike is how slow it is to actually progress, if the game went a little more fast paced i think people would be glued to this game. When building in a certain region the shop should only show the types of stuff that can be built within that region. Also when the thanksgiving event was around you had to pay to actually get things from the quest which was kind of time consuming for me because I thought it would just give it to me. The game just needs to be remodeled to the point where you can access certain things more quicker and only focus on one region when you’re first starting.

Pretty Good Game!

Everybody wants a game where THEY are in control, and that they control what goes where. Well maybe not EVERYBODY, but many people do! This is the game you have been looking for. It is fun! There are rewards you can earn! And different islands you can make a town out of! As a middle schooler, to anyone who is younger, or older than me, I think this is a great game. My only issue is that items like residential buildings get more expensive as the game goes on and citizens want there houses upgraded, and you have to spend a lot of money at points. So if anything… I would keep it not as pricey. But something good and fun is you can be a cop for a minute! Let me explain. So when you get into the game more and more, there’s this icon that shows up and you press it and try to catch like five criminals in some number of seconds and if you succeed at the challenge, you get a price like silver keys or tokens! Finally, my opinion is that I think this is a great game for ALL ages.🙃

Great game

I’ve been playing this game daily for about a month now. I always enjoy building/city games. Plenty of building variety and when you level up there are a lot of building a unlocked. Rating 4 stars for two reasons. Number 1. Spinning the wheel prizes don’t increase with player level, so not really worth my time at level 30. Number 2. Daily quests are often unreachable, and if you do reach them, the reward is 12 silver keys? Seems really low for the hours of work you’d have to put in to achieve daily quests. Also, lost all my friends in the game, I can’t even find the player groups to join anymore.

Great game, but technical problems...

I love this game, and I enjoyed building my city island for the first week I had the game. But as of late I have been problems with the game crashing. I have the latest update of the game and of iOS on my phone. However when I try to log onto my game, it always crashes within 10 seconds of entry. I know this isn’t a connection issue or my phones fault, because it happens only to CityIsland5. I would give this game a higher rating if it weren’t for this issue. I also have some other suggestions for the game, like making the hit box of the money icons (when collecting money) slightly bigger. I often tap on another building on accident while trying to click on a cash icon to collect money. Also, make some more inexpensive buildings for the snow biome. I have to save up so much money just to buy one building there! In addition, I recommend that you allow more of the original houses to be bought with cash. All in all, I wish I could give this game a better rating, but I can’t even play the game due to this issue. I hope you find this feedback helpful!

I have updated my review, because in the latest update, the developers have fixed the issue I was having with the game crashing. I just want to say thank you for fixing the game, and I’m glad I can give this game a better rating!

It’s 99% perfect!

Love it sooo much! ❤️ I just started playing today, and I’m already building 2 islands! I’m Simscity build it, you can’t purchase hardly anything unless you have a ton of in-game-cash. This one, some stuff costs a lot, but most doesn’t. However, once you run out of gold, you can only get more by purchasing it with real life money. 🤑 Which a lot of us don’t want to do. It’s really frustrating because I’m waiting on a shipment to come onto another island and I have to wait over 2 hours. So yeah. But overall, GREAT GAME. 👏would definitely recomend!



Is City Island 5 Safe? 🙏

City Island 5: Building Sim is very safe to use. JustUseApp Safety Score for City Island 5 is 60.3/100.
This assessment is based on our NLP analysis of 10,204 user reviews. Combined with the app store average rating of 4.7/5.


Is City Island 5 Legit? 💯

City Island 5: Building Sim looks authentic and legitimate. Our NLP models processed user feedback to estimate legitimacy. JustUseApp Legitimacy Score for City Island 5 is 60.3/100 .
This conclusion is based on analysis of 10,204 user reviews.




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Features

So this means that you’ll never get bored playing “City Island 5 - Offline Tycoon Building Sim Game”! Next to the hundreds of buildings to unlock, this island city builder games has dozens of quests to earn treasure chests packed with very cool stuff.

In most city building games you are just managing one city, but in “City Island 5 - Offline Tycoon Building Sim Game” you will be expanding your horizon and skylines to new islands, each with a different theme and surface to build a city on.

These casual tycoon simulation games come with a lot of cool buildings and islands to unlock and will definitely make you stick around for long sessions to collect loads of money to make your town and cities grow and design them however you want to build a city.

“City Island 5 - Tycoon Building Offline Sim Game”, a new city builder game from Sparkling Society, will make you the mayor of small town starting on just one island.

Building games in the City Island sim games series are well known for their very rewarding free to play offline games, packed with quests and loads of content, with always something to do.