Bezier Games

Suburbia

gets a new look!

By Ted Alspach

When Suburbia was first published almost 10 years ago, it was an instant smash hit. Never before had the engaging city-building mechanics of Sim City or Cities: Skylines been available in boardgame form. Suburbia’s rich thematic presence and gameplay engaged both casual and strategy gamers, as they worked to create the perfect city.

In Suburbia, players build a borough within a larger metropolis, with the goal of having the highest population by the end of the game. Each turn they purchase a new building; some buildings directly add to their population (like suburbs and apartments), while others, like parks, increase their reputation, which gives them additional population at the end of each turn. Still other buildings such as factories can increase their income they receive at the end of each turn, which allows them to buy better buildings on future turns.

There are other things going on that players need to be aware of: common goals reward the player with the most (or least) of something, such as residential buildings. Many buildings interact with each other in helpful ways, such as building residential and commercial areas near a park, which boosts reputation. Still other combinations of buildings need to be avoided, such as placing an airport near housing. As their population grows, so does their overhead and population density, reducing their net income and reputation - it’s often two steps forward and one step back, with each player attempting to come up with the right combination of buildings that will allow their borough to prosper more than their competitors.

It only takes a few minutes to learn the game (on your turn, you simply buy a tile and place it in your borough). It’s the wide variety of building tiles that give Suburbia its depth and replayability. In fact, you’ll use a different subset of tiles for a different experience each time you play! The brand-new 2nd Edition of Suburbia has been totally revamped with a new design, lifelike, detailed artwork, and a much better table presence. The building tiles are 20% larger, and the scoreboard has been redesigned to take up less space. The rules have been entirely rewritten and organized to make learning the game easier, and to make referencing the different tiles faster. In addition, GameTrayz™ organizers are provided in the box to make storing and setup quick and easy.

Suburbia has had multiple expansions published for it over the years, and the new Suburbia Expansions box includes all of them in a great companion box (again with GameTrayz™ organizers). The 2nd Edition and the Expansions set were created at the same time, conveniently allowing players to store everything from both boxes in the base game box, taking up less room for storage and for taking the complete game with them to game night.

Suburbia and Suburbia Expansions are now available everywhere great board games are sold.