Suburbia 2: A Facebook Game Continuation

Yes, you read that right, there is a Suburbia 2... Just to recap:
Suburbia was an abandoned game on Facebook that pretended it was still running, but was completely ignored by its creators. It continued taking money from unsuspecting people who didn't know that it stopped at Episode 6.

Then, without any warning, a sequel appeared on the Facebook page. To clarify, I checked Suburbia's original game and there's been no changes to it. It still claims that the next episode is 'on the way' after two years without any real updates. I'm assuming Suburbia was finally left to die while they worked on this sequel.

...So what's the sequel like? Surprisingly, Suburbia 2 is a bit different from the original Suburbia... But in mixed ways.

You play as yourself, inheriting a bakery from your missing uncle who may of ran off with a woman. Or murdered her. Or was murdered by her. That's the mystery this time around, but the game doesn't really focus itself on that. In fact, the game's focus is much different than in the original.

Instead of raising your skills, doing a job for money, and collecting furniture to make your house look nice; Suburbia 2's gameplay is primarily focused on running a bakery. So you spend a lot of your time farming resources and cooking meals, which take a pretty long amount of time, to progress in the story... Or what story there is. I'll go into that later.

As in the original, it wants you to shell out real money for its red rubies. Considering the situation with the first game, I hope people decide not to do this and instead wait twelve hours to bake a pie... So baking isn't even in real time, which would make more logical sense.

Completing orders is not a choice. You have to complete orders so that you can get story points to continue actually playing through the story. Not that the story is worth playing for. At least in the first Suburbia I was able to find a body pretty quickly, in this game all I've seen is 'character x wants y, gives vague story element that contradicts other ones, leaves'. I'll address more about this later.

So the gameplay involves a lot of waiting for resources and creations to be finished crafting, collecting them, and getting a few seconds of dialogue as a reward. The money system that you collect from the orders is practically pointless unless you want to buy stuff for the front room, but most of this is locked behind the dreaded ruby wall that blocks you from continuing playing.

Like, for instance, remember when you could go into a neighbor's house a shamelessly use their stuff, but just wouldn't get as much of a mood reward? You can't do that anymore. This is both good and bad. Bad because it limits choice and playability. Good because, well, the mood meter is completely gone! You don't need mood to keep going, which is great... But the price is the ruby paywall, the lack of actual stuff to do except farming resources, and the basic shell of a story.

And the story points really are a problem. Mostly because they aren't needed in between episodes, but in between the basic actions of the story. An episode can still be in progress, but you have to ship hundreds of apples just to talk with a different character than the one you were originally talking with.

With these waiting times, you'll be stuck for hours waiting for a pie to ship to the library, to get enough points to talk to a woman who may say something entirely pointless. It's unbelievable how much longer you have to wait in this game compared to the first one, and it doesn't help me feel better about my choice to actually play the game.

Another big issue is that some quests require items that you need to unlock through leveling, and leveling involves doing more orders... And the horrific cycle continues yet again

So, you think, it can't be that bad. Harvest a ton of ingredients and then set a lot of things to cook overnight... Nope, doesn't work. You have limited storage that you can't upgrade. (Or you can upgrade with rubies, but I haven't seen that option.) So you're basically damned if you do and damned if you don't. You're stuck constantly managing resources and wasting your time for no payoff.

Suburbia 2, with all pros and cons, is probably on the exact same level as the original game. However, with the questionable nature of the first game, I don't trust this one nearly as much. Giving them money is absolutely not an option under any circumstances, and even promoting the game with 'it's okay' feels like a slap in the face of those who needlessly lost money.

So, to be careful, I checked Suburbia 2's Facebook page and found a few recent comments that... Seem very significant. Because of privacy concerns, I won't mention these people's names, but I'll give a summery of what they said:

Person one said that, like Suburbia, once you hit a certain spot you get stuck behind a 'coming soon' episode wall. This time it's episode seven. She also mentioned a 'spice problem'.

Person two said that they were stuck in a glitch where all orders called for muffins, but they hadn't unlocked muffins, and couldn't without finishing orders.

Person three again mentions this spice problem. Person four mentions that the spice rack won't work at all.

Person five mentions a limit on neighbor visiting and sending gifts to other players. As I don't play with others, I wouldn't have noticed this.

The final person, and most important, mentions that they've been stuck for a week on the same story element, mostly because of this mysterious spice glitch. They say they get no response from the technical team, which doesn't shock me in the slightest, and have decided to quit.

So here's my thoughts... Yeah, no, this is awful. Every problem I mentioned and now there's a severe glitch screwing everyone over. Nobody should be playing this game. It's a tedious nightmare.

UPDATE:

I returned to Suburbia 2 after a few months and found out more. Firstly, they are at episode 11... But you have to pay rubies to get early access. Somewhat glad to see that they're still updating, but the ruby paywall is still heavy with this one.

Only a few people were complaining about spice, but I'm seeing people complain of various other glitches here and there. The biggest issue seems to be this; people are getting bored of the gameplay and are having a problem with the grinding it takes to make it to the next story element.

I'm not surprised in the slightest. Back when I wrote the first part of this, months ago, I questioned how long a game like this could last. These 'ingredient farming' games are everywhere and this one's only perk is a story that just won't get moving.

Another thing is some sort of delivery truck thing you can do in the higher levels. I haven't reached that point yet, but a LOT of people are saying that it is not paying out high enough. From the screenshots I'm seeing, they seem about right. You have a time limit to farm plenty of recipes and then only get a small amount of cash. I wonder if this is to sell rubies, to get everything done quicker?

And, just as expected, no plans to fix the first game. The first game still says 'coming soon'.

So... My final verdict is that this game is a chore. It's not even as fun as baking in real life and you have to feed it cash to get any sort of immediate reward. Just on principle alone, I don't think you should play this game. While they're updating now, whose to say that one day they won't just abandon this one too?

With the glitches and the boring mechanics, the slow story and the spice; this game just seems like a recipe for failure. If you want to try it, then be my guest, but I strongly warn against giving them money.

Also, so we're on the same page...

"Who are the Allens and why are they out of spice?"