Another thing to remember is that you get 10% interest on the money you have. That means if you have $1000 in your account, you'll be getting $100 in interest.

I remember someone from VF1 saying that before you buy something, have twice as much money in your account as the thing costs. For example, if the upgrade costs $1500, then be sure you have at least $3000.

Yeah, but with this game the money doesn't build fast enough for you to even save that much. That's the problem.

If you save your money and don't spend any of it, even the lowest salaries can earn that much money fairly quickly on that amount of interest, Darien, which is what I think Ajuma was saying.

Hmmm, well, sure, I'll try it. But the medicines are so much more expensive in this version. Ha, just like real life.... getting sick can wipe out your savings.

So true! And we never know when one of our little friends will become ill. Being true to life makes this game more interesting.

There is more to the game play than meets the eye at first. Our peeps need to work, save, plan and look ahead.

Needing to plan and work towards goals ( home repairs, furnishings and so on) results in a satisfying feeling of having really accomplished something! Your patience will be rewarded. :-)

I am finding that it helps at first to spend only on groceries (and medicine if needed). Even with children the house already has everything that is required to meet basic needs. Several peeps can sleep on that old free sofa!

Selling collectibles can add up to a nice daily sum.

Ajuma & Xay make a good point about the daily bank interest.

:-) Referring to the Bank stats can be encouraging :-)

I decided to try one family where they only have one child. The first generation, I didn't buy any upgrades, only basic food (the 20 coin one) and medicine as needed. No frills at all. I ended up with about $16,000 when the first sweet couple passed away together.

I decided to only purchase one room (bedroom) and one kitchen upgrade, plus a bed that was on sale, in the second generation. After less than 24 hours, I'm up to almost $22,000.

Great tips, guys, thanks so much.

What I really miss, however, is the 'family' button and being able to locate a certain family member just by seeing who's in your family list, clicking on their name, and it will take you to that family member's location by highlighting them. There's no way to do that now, or at least not that I can find. Sometimes if I have multiple families I'll forget which couple has kids (or not) and I can no longer click on "family" and find out who exists within the family, nor can I quickly locate them. I have to literally go searching for them until I spot them somewhere in or around the house.

I also miss the food sales. And, as big as the house is in the 2nd version, why is there only ONE trash can in the entire place? If my peeps are walking slow and there are wrappers in parts of the house that are far from the kitchen, I don't even bother telling them to pick them up anymore. If it's possible to purchase other (useable) trash cans and set them throughout the house, someone please tell me.

I realize it took a while for this game to come out, especially for PC. But I wonder how long the developers and 'testers' actually played this game before they released it and how familiar they were with the first one, because there are still so many things I would change for the 2nd one.

Add to that the funky cursor problem and you've got yourself a game that's not very user-friendly.

Hi Darien. Clicking on your little person's portrait (below the tool tray) will open up their Details page, where you can scroll through your other family members and find them quickly. In the original VF you click the Detail button to access them.

You can access the Family Tree by clicking the Menu button, then the Family button. In the original VF you click only the Family button.

Good idea about adding more trash cans. Everyone is encouraged to add their ideas in the Developer Feedback Forum. Otherwise they may not be seen.

In the meantime, Maid service is available for purchase from the Special Upgrade section. Your little people will never have to pick up a wrapper, sock or clean a dirt smudge ever, unless you want them to. Wish I had one of those for real! LOL! You can even fire the maid if you no longer want one.

The cursor issue was fixed in an update released by LDW on April 23rd. To quote LadyCFII in this post

The full discussion begins here.

VF2 is definitely laid out differently than the original Virtual Families. I invite you to explore all the different buttons/options.

You can access the family screen by clicking on Menu, then the Family icon. You'll also find several other useful things there, such as Settings and Trophies.

As I mentioned earlier, although our version of the game is already fixed, other portals will have the fix to the cursor problem at some point. You do still have the option to run the game in windowed mode as a workaround.

We are very familiar with the first version of Virtual Families, since the same team developed both games. Our games evolve over time, as has happened with the Virtual Villagers series. VV5 is, in many ways, very different from VV1, although the foundations of the games are the same. We don't want each game to be the same as the last one, or there would be no point in making a new game.

MissKathy, thanks for the tips and I'll continue looking for the bug fixes from bigfish. And I'll have to look into the maid thing, as long as it's not too expensive.

LadyCF, I know you can see your family by going to menu and then the family icon, but that seems like a lot of work just to quickly find where in the house a certain family member is. I'll go through the portrait

And what's the point in wasting money on lights and lamps that you can't interact with?! LOL It would be neat to be able to turn lights off and on.