The Urbz: Sims in the City is a Sims-esque RPG. You play as an Urb, a citizen of the sprawling metropolis of Miniopolis. Throughout the city, your Urb makes friends, joins cliques, rouses rabble, and even sparks protests, all to spit in the face of the richest man in town, Daddy Bigbucks.
This game has a lot of mechanics going on. Here's a brief sample of all of them.
As a Sims game, it's expected that your character has certain needs that need to be tended to. When a need becomes too urgent, your Urb will produce a thought bubble (and a somewhat annoying animation) to inform you.
If your Urb has a need in the urgent range, they will be prevented from using certain items or having conversations.
The needs are as follows:
Your Urb is a social butterfly, and Miniopolis is a veritable prairie for them to flutter through. They can talk to the dozens of citizens in town, developing a relationship with each one. In practical terms, this means you are presented with a small handful of conversation topics, you choose one, and your social adversary responds either positively or negatively depending on the topic. This affects their relationship score, which ranges from -100 to 100. Each character responds differently to different topics, so it pays to get a feel for what topics each character likes and dislikes, as well as noting which topics tend to get a positive response if you're less familiar with the person in question.
As well, your Urb has a popularity score, which is the average of all relationship scores with all characters. This does not have an effect on its own as far as I'm aware, but reaching a certain popularity is necessary at a couple points in the game.
Your Urb wants to fit in, they want to find their crowd. Miniopolis is home to four cliques, those being the Streeties, Artsies, Richies, and Nerdies. These groups each house four members of the city, with one of these four being the leader. Your Urb will start in one of these groups based on your answers to the pre-game quiz, but with enough effort they can pledge allegiance to a different rep group.
Your Urb is an entrepeneur, making money wherever they can. This is achieved through working jobs, which are minigames that award your Urb with Simoleons.
Upon completion of a job, your Urb may advance a level in that job depending on their performance and skills, up to level 5. Jobs introduce new gameplay mechanics and increase difficulty as levels progress, but they also greatly increase the payout.
I won't be listing the jobs here, as I believe that would technically spoil some of the plot.
Your Urb is bursting with talent, waiting for any opportunity to express and refine themselves. This is portrayed through their skills, which serve various purposes throughout the game. Some story missions require skills to be at a certain level. Jobs each have some skill requirement for progression to each level. Some appliances in an Urb's home use skills as well.
Your Urb needs some time to themselves. After all, one of their needs is to be at home. Your Urb can live in one of several different locations around the city, some even hosting a second floor. An Urb may also upgrade their home with better security to prevent robberies, fire suppression systems, and better HVAC to lower rent somehow.
Your Urb doesn't know what Club Xizzle is. They also don't know that Club Xizzle sells Xizzles, which are mysterious augments providing bonuses like reducing need decay speed, adding one point to every interaction with the opposite gender, or providing a new conversation option. They definitely don't know that each Xizzle costs three Xizzle Beads, which are received for reaching 75 relationship with each character. Maybe they know that Xizzle Beads can also be found hidden throughout the city. But that's unlikely.
Your Urb wants to keep Miniopolis clean. As such, they can pick up random bits of trash off the ground and turn it in at the police station for a recycling reward. This refuse includes a generic pile of trash, an aluminum can, a discarded license plate, a nuclear fuel rod (?), and a three-eyed bog frog (???). I'll just tell you now, if you're playing this game, DO NOT sell any piles of trash, fuel rods, or three-eyed bog frogs until you've completed the missions which require those items.