Build-a-Lot 2: Town of the Year

It's often said that you've got to spend money to make money. Yet spending money probably doesn't mean hot-footing it to your local shopping centre and maxing out your credit card.

Investment is the key. Plunging cash into real estate - global economic crisis or not - continues to fill the wallets of those in the know to this day.

That's not to say Build-a-Lot 2: Town of the Year is built in any way upon realism. Instead, what's on the table here is a bit of a real-time strategy fest, with set goals given at the start of each stage and the onus on you being to find your own unique way to meet them.

With everything handled with quick taps, gameplay revolves around making snap decisions.

In conjunction with building properties from blueprints and available materials, you're equally free to buy property, convert it, upgrade it, or even flatten land if you so choose.

Each building you own pays rent as time passes. Naturally, upgrading your holdings nets larger sums of rent. The more prestigious three-star properties, for example, earn much more than those one-star starter pads.

The idea is to turn that rent money around for investment into addition properties. The whole game hinges on a fine balance between spending big bucks to generate further income and holding onto your cash to ensure you don't get left high and dry.

It's the same formula the original Build-a-lot perfected – one that still stands, even as pretenders have come and gone in the meantime – and Build-a-Lot 2: Town of the Year wisely avoids veering too far from what made the first game so addictive.

New additions are limited to spruced up homes – new villas and so forth – and fresh trades buildings, like garden centres and parks. There's also a Town of the Year competition hinted at in the title, but in truth picking your favourite town from those on offer is just a gimmick.

The new buildings add an extra layer of pressure. Constructing a garden centre, for instance, allows you to landscape gardens, which then lift the value of a neighbourhood.

Wisely, Build-a-Lot 2: Town of the Year doesn't heap all these new elements on at once. Just like the original, each new facet of play is added one at a time. In fact, this sequel does an even better job of schooling the intricacies of buying and building than its predecessor.

Indeed, while no great steps forward are made here, the whole thing just feels a little bit better, a little bit smoother.

When stripped back, this is Build-a-Lot mark 2 rather than a full-on sequel. Just as before, each new town – themselves brilliantly kitsch realisations of middle-class Americana – is split into a series of levels, the checklist of challenges to meet from one stage to the next just as varied as before.

While the lack of bold new fronts or gameplay styles might not sound especially encouraging for anyone who mastered the original, a quick five-minute dip is enough to confirm that the decision to merely strengthen the foundations of Build-a-Lot rather than renovate them has paid out dividends aplenty.