Unless you’re allergic to the topic of real estate, there is no excuse not to try Build-a-lot 2: Town of the Year. It’s a well-polished building game with both plenty of satisfying challenges and enough customization to make you feel totally in control once you get a handle on the gameplay. And if you’ve played the first Build-a-lot, then almost all of this should be familiar to you - except it’s been spruced up and renovated in every possible way. This is one sequel that has a lot more than just a fresh coat of paint.
Although at first the game might tell you that you’re just a contractor, going from town to town to build improvements and generally raise the value of each community, in actual fact you’re going to be doing far more than that. In addition to just building and improving houses, you’ll be buying and selling empty lots as well as homes, and there’s an entire strategy of learning to buy low and sell high. Once you get a hang of it, you’ll be able to “flip” properties for a heaping profit!

Each town is visually represented with a map containing all the lots of land and the existing homes and other buildings on it, just as parks and shops. You’ll start owning one or more properties which you have to develop. You can only do a limited number of tasks at a time, depending on how many workers you have, and you’ve got to try to perform a number of tasks in each stage before time runs out. In one stage you might have to complete 4 townhouses, while in another you might need to collect a sufficiently high amount of rent while also raising the appeal rating of the neighborhood by making your homes more presentable.

Each upgrade, such as carpeting or a fireplace or an aquarium, will add a star to a home, boosting its sale value should you decide to flip the property. It’s too bad you can’t choose between different kinds of upgrades. You can also paint and repaint homes in any color you fancy, to increase the appeal rating. Of course, you will need to assign a worker to perform the upgrade, and it will use up building supplies just like when you construct a home. Sometimes, a home will be damaged due to some accident and will require repair. You get income from rent on your properties, but any property that is under construction or repair won’t generate any rent. When you factor in the limited time, limited number of workers (who cost a lot to train) and a limited amount of cash you have to buy properties and building supplies, each stage becomes a challenge that you have to manage quite carefully, if you don’t want to run out of cash and fail.

As you progress through the 8 towns in the game, you’ll get access to more types of blueprints, which add to the types of homes, parks and shops you can buy. Parks add to the appeal of neighboring properties, while the various buildings give different benefits - a coffee shop will give you steady income, while a workshop lets you train workers more easily.

The visual cues, such as ringing phones when someone makes an offer on a property, and the appealing sound effects, can only be described as pitch-perfect. Furthermore, there’s a sandbox mode that lets you play around with any of the towns in order to build them up just the way you like. There really aren’t many complaints I can make about this town-development game at all. And now that I’ve made my pitch for Build-a-lot 2, you really should click on the link and try building your own dream town now!

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• Put your own houses up for sale so you can Offer-Less or Low-Ball.
• Get other houses off the market using Offer-Less or Low-Ball buttons (make sure they will fail and give you “Sorry”). This will let you get full prices for any houses you are selling (by getting the competition off the market).
• A Shop’s profits increase as the number of houses in the neighborhood increase.
• Construct refineries to generate lots of cash…but then demolish them near the end of the level to help you reach an Appeal goal.
• Construct a garden center, landscape all of your houses and then demolish the garden center so you can re-use the plot.
• Re-paint your house periodically…this will prevent damage from happening.

(5 votes, average: 4.2 out of 5)

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