Suburbia Review
Price: $4.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0.5
App Reviewed on: iPad
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I don't think it would be particularly controversial to say that two of the most popular types of games on iOS are management-style and turn-based. Suburbia is a title that combines the management aspects of city building, and merges them with competitive and board game elements to make a pretty great mash-up of a turn-based management style game, complete with a pretty cool single-player campaign to boot.
The key to Suburbia's success is how each of the game's resources interacts with one another. While the goal is to grow a large population, the amount of people that come to a city per turn depends on the city's reputation. But a city's reputation is dependent upon the structures built in the city, all of which cost money. On top of this, players are all choosing from the same limited pool of structures to build their cities, and this scarcity drives competition as the game ends when there are no more tiles to be dealt out. To add replayability, Suburbia also adds random elements like shared and private objectives, which can add to a city's population at the end of a game if completed.
Overall, Suburbia is pretty awesome. It plays well, looks good, has lasting replay value, features local and online multi-player, and has a neat single-player mode. There's simply not much to complain about; except maybe that its board game roots are clearly visible and might be off-putting to some, but that's really about it. Even so, Suburbia is easy to recommend as a sleek-looking, competitive, and puzzly experience for iOS.