It was published in France by Monte Cristo, in the UK and Germany by Deep Silver and in North America by CDV.

More recently, the game has been criticized for lack of many detailed elements, such as weather, disasters, and more "in depth" user control.

City Life continues the very long tradition of city-building and construction and management games that was originally started by Utopia from developer Don Daglow and Will Wright's SimCity series by allowing the player to customize their urban city's roads, buildings, finances, ordinances and much more.

The six groups include the Elites, Suits, Radical Chics, Fringe, Blue collars and Have-Nots.

Clockwise from the top are Elites, Suits, Blue Collars, Have-Nots, Fringes, and Radical Chics.

Employment for Radical Chics derive from jobs in designing (i.e. clothing and interior spaces,) researching, and cosmetic surgery.

The Fringes are artists who have low incomes (slightly lower than that of Blue Collars) and are usually fans of cultural activities.

Employment for the Fringes derives primarily from clothing workshops, wood companies, and paranormal activities (i.e. wraith hunters and extraterrestrial landing sites.)

Employment for Blue Collars is usually found in manufacturing, private investigating, fishing companies, and oil derricks/platforms.

The Have-Not community is the working poor, who are too focused on meeting the most basic needs to concern themselves with the clashing values of the Fringes and Blue Collars.

In order for them to appear, the player will usually have to create a district focusing primarily on Have-Not jobs and leisure activities.

Therefore, the monthly budget for the city (i.e. for the player) is calculated by taking the taxed income and subtracting the infrastructure costs for each building.

For example, the basic industrial building has $50 of fixed infrastructure costs and generates up to $100 in revenue tax per worker.

For example, building a vegan restaurant in a city with a low population of Radical Chics will result in less than maximum income.

In this way, the game forces the player to partially develop the richer communities in order to make their larger businesses viable.

Additional content includes: On December 30, 2006, registered game users received an email advertisement for City Life Deluxe, which was released only in Europe on April 13, 2007.

On August 30, 2007, Monte Cristo and Focus announced an upcoming second expansion pack for City Life entitled City Life 2008 Edition, saying the expansion would include "60 more buildings, bringing the total to 360, including famous structures such as St Pauls Cathedral, Royal Opera etc... New scenarios, 10 new maps, and an updated version of the editor allow you to import satellite maps, as well as import from applications such as World Machine, or GeoControl."