I liked how you took a city builder type of game and zoomed it into a smaller community. The smaller scope felt like a nice difference from the usual city builder. The goal of kicking out BigRealty was particularly fun.
It took me a bit to figure out how to move my character, as it didn’t really feel intuitive to me to click on the thing I needed to interact with and then click on the road to move. I did figure out how to move by selecting the building I wanted to interact with and then clicking a second time, but in my first playthrough I wasn't able to get it to work until I finished the tutorial. It might have been an issue on my end, because my partner didn't have any issues with it from the start and when I started a new game it worked just fine.
I didn't really acknowledge the Ratings on my first playthrough, which had me a little confused as to why I couldn't establish certain buildings even when I had the funds for it. On my second playthrough, after I had the basics mostly figured out, I was able to spend more time figuring out some of the other ideas. The Ratings felt like they were suppose to be an important part, but they felt a little outside of the core gameplay. I think it might be helpful if you were to expand the tutorial a bit to include more of the Ratings and what they are for.
I was regularly feeling like I was running out of money. One of the Goals mentioned finishing a job, but it wasn't very clear how to get a job. Even after reading the itch game page and the devlog, it took me several plays before I figured out how to do a job, and thus gain extra money for more buildings. The job listing looked more like set dressing than like something I could click on and interact with.
I didn't acknowledge that the background of the different houses was an indication of whether or not I could rally them. It wasn't until my partner pointed it out that I realized that that was what I was missing. Afterwards it made sense, but I completely missed it at first. I lost a few games because I couldn't figure out how to rally houses because the ones I went to were already rallied. I noticed that the first game I played after starting the program was fairly easy to win, but playing a new game felt more difficult.
I wish it had been clearer how to stop moving after I selected a location to travel to. There were a few times where I was traveling the long way around a gate because I forgot which one I had already opened, and I didn't know how to cancel my movement so I could go straight to the gate to open it up. Similar to the houses, I completely missed the change in the background color after rallying them. These could use with a more clear indication when they are open.
The UI in general could use improvement. I could figure things out, but it wasn't very intuitive to me. It wasn't always clear what I could and couldn’t click on, and some of the information when I could click on UI elements wasn't very clear. Improving the UI would help draw people in.
Once I figured things out, I did have fun with this. I played it multiple times, in part to try to give you good feedback, but also because I was enjoying it. It needs more play balancing and more polish, but it has a lot of potential to be a really fun game.