Build-a-lot
 

Anyone ever played this? Seems like it'd be fun to build houses, because that's all I ever bothered with The Sims series for, but this a heck of a lot cheaper...

I've played 'em (there are 4 games in the series), and they ALMOST had enough going on to hook me...but not quite.

Also, I dunno where you ran across these, but you can play the first one for free at iwin, provided you don't mind sitting through ads every couple minutes, and you can play through an hour demo of all the others.

iwin games

If you preferred the interior design aspect of the sims, rather than the building, they also have a 'Home Sweet Home' series of games more down that alley (and the first one is also free):

http://www.iwin.com/games/home-sweet-home

Cool, thanks. I ran across them on Steam. I don't think I'm going to get it, the whole "stage" thing is a turnoff and I prefer sandbox mode games, but...I was just curious about it because I'd never heard of it before.

They are fun, but the depth isn't quite there. Once you figure out the math it gets pretty tedious fairly quickly.