Tiny Tower: Create a home for “bitizens” and compete with friends to see who has the tallest tower.
Check out the pixelated fun in this Freemium Sims-like game. The brief overview is that you build floors of different property types and then ensure it’s staffed and stocked all the time. You keep earning coins and bux so you can keep building higher. Although on the surface we thought this game was like SimTower, we found out that there’s a strong micro-management aspect to it…
Gameplay: The aim is to erect an enormous skyscraper in order to compete with your Mobage friends. This free game is nothing like Sim Tower because it’s more like running a business – several little shops to be precise. You construct residential floors in your building so that people can live in your flats. Then you sadistically force the “bitizens” into mind-numbing jobs which they don’t like. … so I guess there are some parallels to real life here 😉 The daily aspects of the game involve you regularly ordering stock for the shops; rearranging staff so that their skills are optimised; helping to find people in your tower to earn green bux; and… controlling the lift for passengers… hmmm…. ?
Is that it? That’s almost all there is to it… even the lift controlling part. You don’t realise it at first, but actually your job becomes the lift controller eventually. Perhaps you might be thinking that it doesn’t sound so good? Actually this brews down to whether you like these Farmville-like time wasting games or if you have someone to compete with (… I’m the latter).
There are some interesting little events that spice up the game – everynow and then you get VIP visitors who help you to boost your development. If you’re really bored then you can check out the BitBook (Bitizen’s Facebook) to have a laugh at the ridiculous wall postings!
Pixel fun: I love it when I see old school pixelated graphics, so Tiny Tower was right up my alley. Most importantly, the pixelation is consistent throughout the main game and menus. When you first start the game up you might think that some of the super deformed people are a bit alien looking, but you get used to is and later you realise that there’s a wide variety of looks introduced. Music is spot on relaxing and the sound effects are all customised and tuned to reflect the shops and importance of occurances within the game.
Compared to the iPhone version: Within the game there are a handful of things which could improve, but I won’t go through them as you can spot them once you play the game. But I will draw your attention to a few things which are different from the iPhone version: there isn’t the ability to upgrade shops; stars are missing when you’ve allocated people to their dream job; achievements are different. We found this game port shocking to be different from the iPhone version in these areas… it felt like this conversion was incomplete!
Rating: 3/5: A great pixelated graphics game which is awesome for firing up the competition spirit amongst friends. Personally I thought this was four star, but the team have judged it lower as it’s definitely not a game for the impatient and it seems like this port is incomplete. But hey, it’s a free game – so why not give it a try? … just make sure you check it for updates regularly!
Tiny Tower Tips from Android Games Review
Apart from the tutorial there aren’t any other rules explained. So here are some important points:
- As with all of these Freemium games, there are credits which are difficult to earn. In this game it’s the green notes, called “Bux”. But actually they come on a semi-frequent basis. You can earn them by: finding people in your tower; transporting people in the elevator; sometimes by fully stocking certain shops.
- The statistics of the staff add up to provide a discount on purchasing your stock.
- Staff who are in their dream job will multiply the stock levels (i.e. one person would x2 to the stock total).
- Fully staffing is only required to stock a third tier item in a shop.
- You don’t have to use Bux to complete stock filling or selling products – you can wait patiently instead.
- If you do use a Bux, the time saving is roughly 1 Bux per hour of development reduced. So optimum usage is when the time left is near the hour marks.
If you’re looking to try and get ahead of your friends, then do the following when you start:
- Use the Bux to speed your way to creating one residential property and at least three shops.
- After that, then be patient and don’t spend any bucks.
- Your aim is to accumulate 50 Bux so that you can exchange them for 10 thousand coins. This exchange is only worthwhile at the beginning of the game when things are cheap – you should find you can get an additional 3 to 4 levels in an instant. Also, it seems like the Bux are given out more frequently at the beginning of your game life, rather than when you are part way though.
- Later on, 10 thousand coins can only buy you one floor, so it’s not really worthwhile saving Bux for an exchange after you have over 10 floors. You should instead use Bux to upgrade your elevator at least once. After both of these are done, we suggest using the Bux in the morning to kick start selling.
General Tips:
- A shop will still sell items even if it’s unmanned, so it’ not necessary to have all the shops fully staffed all the time.
- If you do have less people than there are job roles, then whenever conducting a stock repurchase, ensure that you have the minimum people necessary to do it. Otherwise you lock up your people into a stock repurchase when they could be placed somewhere else for a third tier stock buy.
- Change the colours of the people’s clothes in order to help you when allocating them to different jobs. This helps you optimise the stock discounts. It also helps you when you’re finding people in the tower as you know which shop genre they’re likely to be in.
- Although controlling the lift is pretty mundane, be efficient by eyeballing the stocks of each floor as the lift goes up levels.
- When a VIP arrives don’t click on him immediately as you don’t have the opportunity to set actions after you’re moving the lift for them. Look at what kind of VIP is it and setup your tower so you can take advantage of him.
- If the person looks like a builder, then he’ll cut 3 hours off the build time.
- If the person looks like a UPS delivery man, then he’ll cut 3 hours off the stocking time.
- If the person looks like an old man then he’ll either buy up all of one product or bring in lots of customers. Make sure you take this old man to the floor with the most stock on it – the general rule of thumb is that the longer it takes to stock the shop, then the more stock it’s likely to have. (You’ll need to factor in any dream job multipliers).
- If the person looks like an estate agent, then you have the opportunity to fire someone with low attributes, and instantly swap them with someone else.
- Don’t just sack people if they have bad stats. They may have a dream job which benefits you. Otherwise, they’re often in high demand to be searched for in the tower (i.e. more free Bux).
- After you’ve built a residential floor, it seems like new residents come faster if you pay a Bux to move it near the ground floor.
Tiny Tower QR Code
Click on the image or scan the barcode with your Android Phone to goto the Android Market
Developers: Nimblebit
