I'm typically not a big fan of micromanagement casual games, but one that surprised me with its quality when it was first released was Build-a-Lot. It was great to be land baron, buying up houses for sell, improving them, turning them for profit, and then buying up all the land in the area. Build-a-Lot 2: Town of the Year continues the same trends and gameplay from the last game, but yet has also added a few new features as well. Sigh, if only I had the money to really wheel and deal in real life.

In Build-a-Lot 2 you play as an unknown person going from town to town, working with the mayors of the respective communities to turn their neighborhoods into picturesque properties that every family would love to live in. The game doesn't have a story beyond the job of moving from town to town and the little Town of the Year awards you have a factor in at the end, but when the gameplay is so good the story matters very little here.

When you get to your first community you'll see both houses already shaded in (you own), houses that are gray (you do not own), vacant lots with surveying equipment (you have the right to develop there), and empty dirt fields (you need to buy the land from someone before being able to place houses). Each town has its own needs and requirements that you need to meet in order to complete the level and move on to the next one in desperate need of your help. The mayors at first want nothing more from you than to perhaps build two of one type of house and get a total rent revenue at a certain amount. As you move along through your adventures, however, you'll have to start worrying about neighborhood décor (new to the game), making sure the community has a park, coffee shop, and other such potentially harmful to your economy requests.

Besides buying/building a house and letting it naturally make what it can that way, you can also upgrade it a maximum of three times, making each upgrade more money you'll bank each time the rent is due. You can also paint a house a certain color, which will not only improve the décor quality of the neighborhood but will net you a few extra bucks more. The only problem with houses is that they break occasionally and need your men to fix them back up.

From the fixing up of houses to upgrading a newly purchased property, everything is run by manpower. Creating a simple house may only take one worker to complete the job, but maintaining something grander will take two, three, or even four different workers. A huge part of the game is the juggling act of properly using your workers and hiring new ones when possible so you have people not only constantly working but also waiting in the wings if another project comes up that you need dealt with immediately.

New to the franchise is the idea that the neighborhood must look clean and someplace people will want to live; you complete this task by improving the décor of the community. The first (and easiest) way to get some décor points is by painting a house. The second best option for getting décor points is by building a playground; not only will the playground add to the décor by itself, but for every house it touches (best placement is between two houses) you get bonus points added on to the décor total of those houses as well.

Though money is the root of everything in this game, it's materials that is the ultimate deciding point as to whether something gets built or not. No matter if you're building a house, coffee shop, playground, upgrading a house, or even painting – everything takes materials. Players are given a good supply to start with, but you'll need to buy much, much more each round if you hope to satisfy the mayor and move on to the next community.

The game moves briskly from beginning to end. It doesn't matter if you choose to buy a house, sell a house, demolish one, upgrade one, paint one, or whatever you want to do to your house – the menu system is setup extremely fluidly so there isn't a wasted movement and everything is very automatic and clean. With just a few mouse clicks (and the workers to help out) I can easily sell some land I have for money, buy a house, paint it, upgrade it, and then sell it to buy a bigger house if I wanted.

Build-a-lot 2 hasn't changed much in terms of graphics, as they are still pretty simple (an isometric looking down view) and yet the images are so detailed and nice that they make up for the lack of sparkle and shine. Besides the dapper houses all lined up in a row, the game features some very soothing music that at times is very tranquil and yet knows how to evolve into something a little more hectic sounding when you're running down to the wire and don't think you'll complete your objectives in time.

Build-a-lot 2: Town of the Year isn't vastly different at all from the last game, but when a game is so fun from the beginning, sometimes all people want is more of the same. Build-a-lot 2 is definitely more of the same, but we can't fault it for that, because it's still as fun and challenging as it was when we originally played the first game.

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