SUBURBIA City Building Game

Board

Ratings

Age

4+

Board

Languages

English

Latest Version 2.1.4

Mon Dec 15 2025

Updated for modern devices.

Ted Alspach’s best-selling city-building board game comes to iOS! Suburbia challenges you to manage a growing metropolis through strategic tile placement. Build over 70 different buildings across residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. Take on the Campaign mode to visit real-life cities with unique goals, or compete against six different computer personalities in a race to grow the largest population.

Dinsun Expert Review

Our Expert Score

85/100

Suburbia City Building Game is a brilliant digital adaptation of the Mensa Select board game. Unlike traditional 'god-game' city builders that focus on real-time resource management, Suburbia is a tight, tile-laying strategy game where every placement has a ripple effect on your income and reputation. The balance is delicate; building too many industrial zones might boost your cash but will plummet your reputation, making it harder to attract residents.

The app handles the complex bookkeeping of the physical board game effortlessly, allowing players to focus on the high-level strategy of the 'Market.' The inclusion of six distinct AI personalities and a globetrotting single-player campaign makes this a deep experience for solo players. While the removal of online multiplayer is a bummer, the local pass-and-play and the sheer variety of over 70 buildings keep the replay value high for board game enthusiasts.

Dinsun reviewed on: Fri Feb 14 2025

Features

Local pass-and-play for 2-4 players

Six unique AI computer personalities

Single-player campaign with real-world cities

Over 70 unique building types

Includes expansions like Nightlife and Essen SPIEL

Tips & Walkthrough

Managing the Market

The Market features a rotating set of tiles. Buy tiles early before they move to the cheaper slots if they are essential to your strategy, but watch your cash flow carefully.

Gameplays

The Reputation Balance

As your population hits specific milestones, your income and reputation will naturally drop. Plan ahead by building parks or civic buildings to offset these 'red lines'.

Screenshot

Q&A

Yes, the game includes a fully interactive tutorial and a digital rule book to help you learn the mechanics.

Ratings & Reviews

Bugs!

Sun Jan 16 2022 Wicked Nin

The preview showing how the tile will affect stats are incorrect. For example, the airport which should only show -1 rep if adjacent to a suburb is showing -1 in every possible spot, despite only one space being adjacent. So disappointing since I love this game.

I love it!

Sun Mar 03 2024 Tiff1111125

I got this for $0.99, which really is a steal. This is a great game and an adaptation of a very good board game. The AIs are tough and there’s a learning curve to figure out how scoring and modifiers work, but once you do, this is quite fun. Games take about 20 minutes, and the computer handles all the tricky math for you, but I still do recommend learning how it calculates these anyways, or you’ll never get far. I play on ipad. It makes zooming in easier, and this is important to remind you which tiles use what modifiers, as the text can be small. Placing a surburb tile next to a lake tile is good. Placing suburb next to landfill is bad. But, landfill is great for an economy boost. Part of the fun is learning how to combine your tiles for best effect. The goal conditions can change from game to game, so you can’t just use the same layout designs again and again and expect to succeed! Some tips - early in the game, build up your economic base first, or you will stagnate. Keep reputation healthy; you get +1 population for each rep point per turn, but control your growth! If you allow population to grow too quickly, you won’t have the economy to support them and you will fall behind. I play vs one AI at a time, and a game lasts about 19 turns, so if you cripple your economy, you won’t have time to catch up in time. Anyway, if you like strategic economy games (check out Le Havre too), or you like simcity-like games, Surburbia is a winner!

Enjoyable game

Sat Nov 30 2019 Mark S.76

I originally gave it 3 stars because I found the new graphics hard to read, but I found the option to revert to old graphics and all is well.

Works Perfect

Sat Apr 16 2022 Jared Olinger

My app works perfectly! Maybe a recent update fixed the errors. But this game is fantastic, and the campaign mode really brings new challenges. Love it!

It’s okay but buggy

Thu Nov 21 2019 Zirlburg

Tile purchases are wrong. Allows you to buy tiles even if you don’t have enough money. If the printed price plus the market price equals more than your coins then you should not be able to buy the tile.

Fix the calculations!

Tue Jan 27 2026 Joshbull33

This is a great implementation of a solid board game. However, the app is unplayable because of calculation errors when displaying impacts of a tile to income, population, etc. If this was corrected, the review would be 5 stars, but without it, it’s a 2. I realize this is an old app, but please fix this issue!

Bugs

Tue Dec 10 2019 Jane Doe in Pacific NW

Updated graphics are super cute but I just caught my newly purchased tiles not increasing my income (yellow warehouse +2 for every touching blue business & +5 for blue new car dealership + another +2 for touching yellow warehouse. 🙁. If purchases don’t increase my scores, it’s not so fun.

New writing on tiles is way, way to small

Wed Oct 16 2019 White--Black

The new tiles are gorgeous, however, I own an iPad Pro and even on this large 10-inch screen I can’t read the incredibly small writing on the tiles. :/ I’m sure the printed tiles will be easier to read, but unfortunately, the online game is now dead to me. :(