There's no music past the title screen, for instance. There are many aspects of the app that feel a little rushed. While there's a pleasing satisfaction to be gained from slowly building up your metropolis and balancing the books, it's a little quiet and mechanically soulless to bother with around the table.īut in the lonely silence of online play, that doesn't matter, and I found the asynchronous play mode included in this version to be functional and surprisingly engaging. Suburbia is not a game I'd normally play against other humans. Some of the later levels are tough, but without the distraction of having to watch what other players are up to you can concentrate on getting the numbers right, making wins supremely satisfying. But this little inducement is hardly necessary: the solo campaign was the most fun I had with Suburbia. Success in this mode unlocks extra tiles that you can use in the main game. However, the app compensates by including an alternative solo mode where you're challenged to beat a series of increasingly difficult goals from a variety of pre-set starting tiles, loosely mimicking the make-up of existing US cities. And in a game based heavily around number-crunching strategy, there are few excuses for delivering such tepid digital opponents. It's possibly because the AI is so poor that no one bothered testing it. Why do I start AI games under "pass and play"? Why do I have to confirm that I'm ready to start my turn when playing against the AI? But the whole thing is plagued with other usability niggles. Thankfully, the app includes a comprehensive rulebook, and the game is easily learned. You might be expecting a reputation gain, only to see a nasty red penalty when you try the tile in place. Unfortunately, this lovely usability gain compounds a poor tutorial, which may leave you completely puzzled as to the reasons why those little numbers show the values they do. But in this app version, it's all smugly rolled up into a helpful little tooltip. I can only imagine this being a tedious nightmare in face to face play. This means every turn there's a colossal number of different factors at play when you make your choice about which tile to buy, and try to figure out how it'll affect your position. Municipal Airports, for instance, reduce your reputation by one for each adjacent residential tile, whenever you build it, and add one to your income for every airport tile in the city whenever and wherever you place it. One of the defining features of the game is the way that tiles you add can have knock-on effects based on things you built many turns before. It's a classic balancing act, very typical of modern boardgame design. And there are a series of randomly drawn bonuses on offer for things like most residential tiles or lowest residual cash. You'll need businesses to generate income to pay for tiles, and civic works like schools and parks to build your reputation, which attracts more people to your burgeoning metropolis.īut as your population grows, the city gets crowded and inefficient and your income and reputation drops. ![]() ![]() To achieve this you have to balance a host of factors. The aim is to construct a city from hexagonal tiles - because all real cities are built in hexagons, naturally - and attract the largest possible population. As your reputation increases, you'll gain more and more population (and the winner at the end of the game is the player with the largest population).ĭuring each game, players compete for several unique goals that offer an additional population boost - and the buildings available in each game vary, so you'll never play the same game twice.I've never played the physical Suburbia boardgame, but having played the app I'm struck by how dry and fiddly it must be. As your income increases, you'll have more cash on hand to purchase better and more valuable buildings, such as an international airport or a high rise office building. As your town grows, you'll modify both your income and your reputation. Suburbia is a tile-laying game in which each player tries to build up an economic engine and infrastructure that will be initially self-sufficient, and eventually become both profitable and encourage population growth. Your goal is to have your borough thrive and end up with a greater population than any of your opponents. Use hex-shaped building tiles to add residential, commercial, civic, and industrial areas, as well as special points of interest that provide benefits and take advantage of the resources of nearby towns. Plan, build, and develop a small town into a major metropolis.
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