Build-A-Lot Review



Posted on Monday, May 04, 2009

Frustrated developers take heart; Build-A-Lot is here.

Build-A-Lot is a sim program about building, buying and selling houses with the dual purpose of creating the worlds best neighborhood while making huge amounts of money. Sounds fun? It is.

Build-A-Lot Game window

You start on the tutorial level which literally points to the vital controls and tabs you need to play the game. As with most sim games, you're given an assignment you have to complete within a certain amount of time and which requires you to perform several actions. To keep the game interesting, the assignments become tougher with each level and require more action on your part. Most of the game controls are in the bottom menu shown in a reduced view below.

Bottom Menu

Let's get to the specifics.

The main screen is a group of roads with empty lots or houses. You're given a combination of empty lots, houses or just money to start the level. Your assignment can range from earning a certain amount of money to creating a certain type of neighborhood or combinations of both.

The main point of the game is building.

House going up
House going up! You need four items to build a house: a vacant lot, materials, workers, and a blue print. The tabs on the bottom change the bottom menu to access different controls. As you build houses, you'll run out of material and have to buy more by clicking on the materials tab. Materials are cheaper if you buy more of them but large purchases could present a cash flow problem and prevent you from buying other houses or vacant lots. They also take longer to deliver which could cause construction delays.

Grayed out buttons
If you don't have the resources
for an action, the buttons turn gray Certain builings will require more workers than you have to build them so you'll have to hire more by clicking on the workers tab. Bigger houses and commercial buildings become available as the game progresses when the blueprints become available for purchase.

At the start of many levels, you already own vacant lots which appear as a brown area next to the road. You can only build on the ones you own which will have blue flags on it. You can build on the lot by selecting the lot then selecting a building that you have a blueprint. The building options will be grayed out and unavailable if you don't have enough materials, workers or a blueprint. The missing items are indicated to the left of the building options.

Upgrade Option
Upgrading houses increases the rent
you collect. Once you complete the building, you can start collecting rent for it and make money. The rent you collect is higher for larger houses. You can also increase the rent by adding improvements. Click on the star icon and a worker will go to the house and add improvements as long as you have enough materials and enough available workers. Each improvement shows up as a star next to the house and you are allowed up to three improvements.

Lot for sale
Lot For Sale If you have no empty lots you can demolish a house you already own and build another one. This makes no sense unless you're building a larger house in the place of a smaller one. The other option is to buy an empty lot. Empty lots and existing houses that you don't own become available for you to buy when a "For Sale" sign appears on it. Clicking on the property gives you an option to buy and displays the asking price. You can offer less money but it is usually refused unless several of the same type of property is being offered at the same time. Once you own the property, you can improve it as you like. One way to make money is to buy a house, demolish it, build a larger house, improve it, and sell it for a nice profit.

Mayor Hudson
Mayor Hudson Selling property is done by selecting the property and clicking on the for sale option. After awhile, a cell phone icon will appear over the house that you click on to display what the offer for the property is. The offer may not be as much as the asking price and you can accept or decline it. After you sell a house, you no longer can collect rent from it.

Once you complete your tasks, a civic leader will appear to congratulate you, diplay the stats for the level, and drop confetti on the screen.


This is how I rate Build-A-Lot:


Cost - Cheap - less than $10

Available Platforms - PC and Mac

Gameplay - The key to playing any sim is to balance the game variables so that everything runs well. In the case of Build-A-Lot, you have to balance your money, materials and property so your workers are kept busy and your profits are maximized. If you mess up, you'll be unable to do anything but stare at greyed out menu options until more rent money comes in. As with all sims, there's quite a bit of mouse clicking involved with this game. The bottom menu on Build-A-Lot is very intuitive and makes finding the proper controls easy.

Graphics - Nothing outstanding but adequate.

Originality - Nothing really new to this sim game.

Strong points - Indicators show what items are missing when you can't build so you don't have to hunt through five menus to find out. Controls are easy to use.

Weak Points - Some of the lower levels are a bit too easy.

Boredom/Frustration Ratio: 2/1 - Some levels give you too much time to get things done which makes them really easy. The challenge is not always in completing your goals but in trying to maximize your profits or to complete the level in less time. Extra points are awarded on each level if you can complete them in half of the alotted time. The excellent menu design keeps the frustration level down to a minimum.

Overall rating: 7

Conclusion: If you like sim games, you'll like Build-A-Lot. It isn't the toughest sim game that you'll ever see but it is engaging and enjoyable. Until you get to the higher levels, you shouldn't have any problem completing the tasks but you can make the game more interesting by completing the levels faster or trying to pile up millions of dollars in profit.

Download Build-A-Lot for PC
or
Download Build-A-Lot for Mac
 from The Shareware Genie and try it for one hour free. The price has been reduced to $9.99.