Oh, the irony of playing a game about flipping houses when the real-world market for such endeavors has basically tanked. If you really have a hankering for buying a house, upgrading the innards and selling it at a profit, all without any sweat or real financial commitment on your part, Build-A-Lot is the game for you. Actually, Build-A-Lot has more to offer the budding real-estate mogul than the average do-it-yourself house-flipper, but in either case, it's addictive fun.
Build-A-Lot offers both a career mode and a casual mode. You only have to finish the tutorial level in career mode to unlock the casual mode, which seems fairly reasonable to me. In any case, I went with career mode. At first, I just wanted to see how things would progress, and before I knew it, I was completely hooked.
The game is divided into communities, from the middle-range Meadow Dale, climbing in value through Pleasant Valley, River Glen, Evergreen Park, Lakeside, Granite Springs, Summit Ridge and finally the ritzy Palm Grove. Each community is divided into three to five levels. The mayor of each community will assign you tasks that you need to accomplish before time runs out if you want to move on to the next level. Finish your tasks while your timer is still in the green, and you get a gold star for that level. Get a gold star on every level, and you unlock a surprise.
While the game keeps a running tally of all the money you've earned, your overall profits will not benefit you on any individual level. Each level begins with you owning a certain number of lots (usually empty), some starting cash, a few workers and some starting materials. You take it from there. You are going to build houses and commercial buildings over the course of the game. Houses can be flipped for profit (or kept for their rental income), and most commercial buildings have some sort of benefit. There also are some special buildings in the commercial category that don't "do" anything specific but are there as a special goal for the level.
For your houses, you'll build everything from the lower-end rambler, colonial and Tudor to the estate, mansion and finally castle. I love castles. They make so much lovely money — and they're kind of cute. Your specialty buildings can be anything from a post office to an Olympic-quality ice-skating arena. Eventually, you'll even start seeing premier lots. They have extra nice views and make the houses built on them worth even more.
There are four information tabs that help you navigate the game. The first is for Money & Goals. This will show you your current rental income, your potential rental income (if you own a place that is being worked on in some fashion, you can't earn rent on it until the work is done — making it potential income), a progress bar showing you how long until your next payday and a list of tasks you need to accomplish to win the level. You'll find as you go along that mayors are prone to adding tasks as you work your way through the level. You'll need to keep an eye on those tasks to make sure you don't miss something important. I'm not even going to tell you how many times I accidentally built the wrong type or quantity of house because I wasn't paying attention.
One of the commercial buildings most closely related to income is the bank. If you build a bank, you can periodically earn interest on your money. This is nice in the lower levels but not the primary purpose of the bank. As you progress through the game, you have to pay taxes on your property. The higher-end and more upgraded houses have higher taxes. Not only do you not earn income when taxes are due, but at even later levels, the taxes start compounding if you pay late. Enter the bank. You can set your bank to donate the interest you would have earned to charity. If you do this, you don't have to pay taxes. On later levels, if you build your bank and forget to set it to donate, you are almost guaranteed that you'll be too financially devastated to complete that level on time.
The Workers tab just shows you how many total workers you employee, how many are committed to a project, how many are available, and the cost to train one, two or three additional workers. If you build the workshop upgrade, once you have the blueprint, you can train workers cheaper and faster. In addition to giving you a little boost with hiring new workers, if you own a workshop, you can have your skilled workers inspect a building to protect it from damage. This is a good thing, because repairs cost materials and worker time, and you don't earn any money from a building that isn't in perfect shape.
All of your new construction, repair and upgrade supplies are generically called materials. The Materials tab shows how much you currently have, how much different quantities of materials cost and how many lots of materials you can afford. You get a volume discount, so if you almost have enough money to get the next biggest load, hold off and buy it as soon as you can. If you build the sawmill, you get a discount on materials, and they are delivered much faster. One of the ways you increase your rent is to do upgrades on your property. You'll see upgrades for mundane stuff like custom millwork and home gyms and upgrades for more fun stuff like music rooms, bowling alleys and even an indoor electric go-kart track! Normally, you can do up to three upgrades. If you own the sawmill, you can buy a permit and upgrade everything to the fourth level. Ka-ching!
The Blueprint tab shows you all of the residential and commercial buildings you currently know how to build. When the mayor of the community tells you to build something special for a level, you're going to need to raise the money to draft the blueprint before you even think about starting construction. Most of the time, I wait until pretty late in the game to buy the blueprint — much less begin building the item. The blueprint usually isn't cheap, and these items tend to take a lot of materials and workers, and while they meet a level goal, they don't earn you any income.
The tutorial is done well, and it really is easy to learn the basics of the game. The first few levels were incredibly easy to get through. Expect the difficulty curve to start getting steeper by about midway through the second neighborhood (out of eight). You really have to multitask and stay focused. Keep those tasks in mind while you build, upgrade, repair, demolish, inspect, train workers, order materials, and keep an eye on what you want to buy or sell.
Here's a hint — much like in the real world, supply and demand can affect the price people will pay for one of your properties. If there are multiple lots and/or houses for sale, your offers will be lower than if you're the only house for sale on the block. If you're trying to raise cash, don't try to flip two or three houses at once. Sell them one at a time to keep up demand.
I've had a lot of fun playing Build-A-Lot. Yes, things can get a little hectic, and you have to be able to multitask, but the way the game is set up, you can find the strategy that works best for you to achieve the various goals. If you're quick, you can even recover from minor strategic "oopses." I've played some task-management games that are pretty unforgiving of mistakes — to me, that's just not fun. Build-A-Lot sets goals, sure, but it's up to you how to get there. I like that.
The graphics are nice, and the sound effects are just right for a construction game. I normally avoid task-management games, but this one keeps me coming back for more. It has the perfect mix of challenge versus fun and suits me quite well. Check out Build-A-Lot, and you'll be morphing into a virtual real-estate mogul (without the bad comb-over) in no time.
I’m a working mom – married with one child. My daughter is 7 and she has autism. Everything else in my life moves around this core. Online gaming has been a big part of my social life over the last several years due to the difficulty of going out and about. I have to say that my daughter Alissa is awesome at computer games. She has skills with electronics that amaze me. When I get away from the computer, I like doing craft projects (knitting, crocheting, sewing, painting, quilling, whatever sounds fun) and reading. I mainly read suspense these days but I have a pretty eclectic collection and a library of about 6000 books. I’ve been using a computer since grade school – I started with an Apple IIe and have upgraded considerably and many times since then. I played Dungeons and Dragons for at least a few decades. I met and married my husband through gaming. He was my DM. I stopped tabletop gaming more from lack of time than anything. It’s easier to meet and game with friends online than it is to coordinate real life schedules around my daughter’s needs.
