Suburbia (2nd edition)

Suburbia is a city planning game where players compete to build the most efficient city and attract the most people. The player with the highest population at the end of the game wins. Players must balance the city’s reputation and finances, while also battling the increasing bureaucracy that comes with a growing population.

Players each start with a factory, a park, and a single-family home neighborhood and must build their own city from there. This is done by purchasing new buildings and areas from the common pool. Each time a building is purchased, a new one comes into play, so there are always 7 to choose from.

Buildings have very different effects and you have to carefully assess their placement. For example, it is not enough to place a landfill next to a residential area, and with a restaurant you can make a lot of money as long as no others are built so that they have to fight for customers.

Suburbia looks like a very abstract game on the surface, but the buildings and their advantages and disadvantages fit thematically really well with what the game is trying to simulate.