I'm all for time management games. I'm a big fan of them both for my casual gaming life and my personal life of organizational genius. This week, I attempted to venture into the world of real estate time management with Be Richer, the sequel to the similarly titled Be Rich. You take on the role of a struggling development mogul looking to turn their company into the largest provider of homes in the area. Like many time management games, Be Richer focuses on getting a set number of tasks done as quickly as possible - in this case, that means building houses and turning a profit.

During your time in the single player campaign, you'll get a chance to build a number of buildings including homes and community structures like grocery stores and pizza parlors. Much like real life, value of property depends on three things: location, location, location. The difference is that as you develop your areas for living, you can make the location as prime as you like by adding parks, bus stops, trees and other various sundries to drive up the value of the property. Your goal normally has to do with making a neighborhood profitable and building certain types of structures including small houses, cottages, apartment buildings and hotels. As you progress in the game, the minimum profit needed to complete your goals increases, but the goal is relatively easy to meet.

The biggest problem with Be Richer is that it is far too easy if you enjoy time management games. From the first level on, I never once failed a goal, getting an expert rating every time. The game rewards you a little too much for concentrating on making one location of the map the best place to live and drives up the profit for buildings that are surrounded by trees or billboards and have a hotel, grocery store or pizzeria in the area. Building the most expensive building to start rewards you in the end, making you reach your goal easily and with time to spare.

While there are other aspects to the single player campaign, including demolition of decrepit homes and road maintenance, they aren't completely necessary for your success in the game. While occasionally your properties will need maintenance or the tenants will become irritable due to the lack of a grocery store in the area, taking care of these problems is as easy as sending a construction van to the problem site and watching a green bar fill up. You can build a good number of vans as you upgrade your headquarters to send them on jobs for special levels where you build huge attractions like shopping malls, zoos and other forms of community entertainment.

Be Richer also sports sandbox levels where you can do whatever you want with no time limit to reach the goals. It's very rewarding to get to make as much money as you want as quickly as possible and it presents a nice relaxing challenge to those who enjoy time management games as much as I do. The sandbox levels are easily the best part of the game - but a large part of you wishes that they lasted a bit longer and didn't have a final goal.

Whenever you finish a level, you go back to your corporate headquarters where you can hire employees that give your company benefits in the game, such as making your vans quicker, having the roads deteriorate slower and increasing the number of tenants per building. These tweaks, while helpful, are also not essential to your enjoyment and successful completion of the game.

Be Richer has a very intuitive control system, making it easy to select and place buildings as well as track your current profit margin. The music is very reminiscent of elevators - easy to ignore but somewhat relaxing at the same time. It's a good looking game, running smoothly with cute trucks and scenery. However, when you finish the single player campaign, you want for more and replaying the sandbox levels just doesn't do it.

Be Richer is short and simple, which will appeal to a good number of casual players. Once you know how to successfully play it, the game quickly becomes boring, almost tedious to play through. The game is by no means bad, but I would think twice before a purchase unless you're really, really into time management or real estate. This is like a very basic version of SimCity and might be great for kids who aren't quite ready for the complexity of running a city just yet. Other than that, it's a decent distraction until you're ready to move on to the next game.