Designer: Ted Alspach

Don’t you want to be a city planner? Suburbia gives you the chance to zone your city just the way you want. So go ahead, put those undesirables next to the airport and the garbage dump!

Suburbia is a simple game: players buy tiles and add them to their cities. Every turn, players buy one hex, and add it. Where the hex is added will have effects on their cities, including the population, the popularity and the income of the city. Residential zones will add population, for example, whereas building a commercial sector will bring the bucks rolling in. All three things need to be managed and maximized to be successful.

Interesting Mechanic: The Real Estate Market. The prices for various buildings depend on how long they’ve been on the market. Something that you really want may come on the market on your turn, but have the most expensive price possible. This is an incredibly simple mechanism that creates a dilemma – while you are tempted to wait a turn to let the price fall naturally, there’s not guarantee it will still be there if your opponents snag it before you.

Suburbia often gets compared to Castles of Mad King Ludwig which is a game by the same designer. Suburbia is less wacky, and many players prefer the simpler pricing mechanic of the Real Estate Market. The biggest problem with Suburbia (that Castles solved) is that the game does require you to have a tad too much awareness of what’s happening in your opponent’s cities (airports score based on how many exist in all cities, for example), which can be hard to track. It’s still a game that is likely to appeal a great deal to people who like things that feel like SimCity.

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(Photo Credit: Dad’s Gaming Addiction)