Games like Car Town: alternatives for garage, customization and neighbor fans

What does Car Town offer, as a yardstick?

Car Town is first a garage game. Customers arrive in cars of their own, you click one, start the job at your lift and come back to collect. You buy cars in a shop that mixes models from different eras and classes, and you customize them in an editor with eight tabs, painting them any color you can describe in RGB or hex. Your garage value climbs through ten titles as it grows.

Around that you get reflex races instead of driving, neighbors you add from a panel, and a lot you decorate with objects. So “like Car Town” can mean four things: customizing and collecting cars, running a small business with customers, quick reflex races, or a decoration game played with neighbors. Knowing which one you want makes the list below much easier to use.

Which FB Games titles have customers, decoration and neighbors?

Restaurant City, from Playfish and Electronic Arts, brings the same kind of business with customers to another setting: you customize your chef, hire a cook and a waiter, choose the menu, serve your customers and decorate your restaurant. It comes in English only.

Pet Society, also from Playfish and Electronic Arts, is the personalizing side: you create a pet, decorate its home, look after it and stroll around town. It comes in eight languages, including English, Spanish, French and German. CityVille, from Zynga, is about building: homes, businesses, parcels and rents, in English and Spanish.

All three are FB Games browser editions of classic Facebook games, and all three are betas like Car Town, so expect some parts to be missing.

What about FB Games titles with missions, strategy or puzzles?

For neighbors and missions, Zombie Lane (Digital Chocolate) has you defend your home from zombies, farm, build and help your neighbors, and Bola Social Soccer (Three Melons) has you manage a football club with a team, a stadium and tournaments.

For strategy, Social Empires (Social Point) is a village where you train troops and defend it from trolls, and it is the one that is already released rather than in beta. Social Wars (Social Point) and Empires & Allies (Zynga) are base-building games with troops, tanks and vehicles, and Backyard Monsters (Kixeye) has you raise monsters and send them against the tribes of the map.

For other tastes, Bubble Island (Wooga) is a bubble-shooting puzzle, Wild Ones Rebirth (Playdom) is turn-based shooting with pets, The Last Stand: Dead Zone (Con Artist Games) is about a shelter, survivors and looting an invaded city, and Ninja Saga (Emagist) lets you create a ninja, take missions and fight turn-based battles. None of them is a car game.

What similar car games exist outside FB Games?

StreetRally, by Hypester, was a Facebook racing game seen from above, with customizable cars, and in 2011 it appeared as a rival to Car Town. CSR Racing is a mobile drag-racing game with cars you can upgrade, developed by Boss Alien and published by NaturalMotion Games in 2012.

Car Town Streets is a mobile game from the same saga, by Cie Games, for iOS and Android, with the same art style. It is a different game, not this edition, and FB Games does not offer it. We have not checked whether any of these three can be played today, so look at their pages or stores before you count on them.

How do I choose, depending on what I want?

Match the list to your reason. If you want to customize and decorate, Pet Society (a pet and its home) and Restaurant City (a restaurant) are the nearest on this site. If you like running a business with customers, look at Restaurant City and CityVille. If you want neighbors and missions, try Zombie Lane. If you want strategy, look at Social Empires, Social Wars, Empires & Allies or Backyard Monsters.

If cars and speed are what you are after, the other FB Games titles listed here are not car games, so the outside games above are where to look. And if you want a garage with free paint, reflex races and cartoon cars in one place, that is Car Town.

What makes Car Town different here?

It runs in your browser at cartown.fbgamesweb.com with nothing to install and no Flash, on a free account of your own. It has no Facebook login and does not import progress from the Facebook game, so you start from zero.

It comes in English and Spanish only. And it is a beta: the High Stakes Track is closed, events and brand promotions are switched off, and some windows are placeholders. It is an independent edition based on the original game, run by FB Games, and not the official site.

Where should I go next?

To learn what the game is and what it includes, read our guide on what Car Town is. To start playing, the how-to-play guide takes you from sign-up to your first race. Both are on this site.