So I downloaded Tiny Tower the other day. Now I’m constantly checking my phone to make sure my stores are stocked up. I’ve learned to eat all meals with one hand, whilst managing my tower with the other. I’m even having trouble resisting the urge to play it during work hours. I’m literally afraid that I’m going to start trying to play while I’m driving. This is becoming a problem.
The thing about Tiny Tower though, is that it isn’t really that good of a game. I mean, it’s as addictive as all the other stupid iOS/Facebook micromanagement games, but it’s pretty shallow and needs way more babysitting than all the other one’s I’ve played.
The objective of Tiny Tower is to build a tower. Imagine that! It’s a neat little pixel tower, and the cute little people that move in are referred to as “bitizens.” It hits all the right old-school gaming notes as far as visuals go. The music isn’t quite as prefectly retro; I find the game is best played with volume off.
Building you tower is as simple as clicking the “build a new floor” button. Only it costs coins to do so. Coins are earned in a few ways, but mostly from businesses that you can open in your tower. Each occupies a floor, and each can be staffed by up to 3 bitizens. Bitizens live on apartment floors, and each apartment can occupy up to five bitizens. So you have to build more businesses to make profit, and apartments to keep them staffed.
Businesses are to Tiny Tower as crops are to FarmVille. Each business can sell up to three items (dependent on how many bitizens work there), and each one has an “ordering” time. So like farming games, you have to wait a while before your products will sell and make you money. Then you have to press the “stock” button before the ordered item can be sold. You get so many of each item, so you don’t have to restock every time a thing is bought, but stocks tend to go quickly. The thing that makes this different from farm games is that (at least early on), your products have an ordering time that’s measured in minutes instead of hours. What this means is that with farm games you can plant your crops before work or bed, then forget about them. Tiny Tower is constantly pushing notifications telling you that your stock is in, meaning that if you’re not constantly babysitting it, your profits are going to slow down to nothing.
There really isn’t much else to the game. Random bitizens will sit in the elevator, waiting for you to drive it to whatever floor they desire. This provides a small payment of coins, but the real reason to bother is that you will rarely get a Tower Buck instead. The “bux” are Tiny Tower’s second, rares currency. The one all stupid little Facebook/iPod games have to confuse idiots into spending real money on game money. The bux can be used to speed construction/ordering, improve your elevator/stores, buy coins, and get new costumes for your bitizens. The nice thing here is that Tiny Tower hands out bux much more liberally than most other games like it.
There’s a silly, useless little feature called “Bitbook,” where your bitizens post their thoughts. It’s more like Twitter than Facebook, but I suppose Bitbook sounds better than Bitter. Rollercoaster Tycoon had a similar feature, where you could read what your park guests were thinking, and use that feedback to improve your park. Bitbook comments are just for fun.
The two features I really like about Tiny Tower are that you can dress up your bitizens and rename all the stores and apartments in your tower. Dressing bitizens is mostly cycling through random, adorable outfits. There’s apparently an editor where you can design your own outfits, but I haven’t used it yet. Renaming shops is undispuatably the most fun I’ve had with the game, as I’ve gotten much more satisfaction from coming up with snappy names than I have from driving bitizens up the elevator. Some of my prouder examples include the bike shop called “Cerulean Cycle” (that’s a Pokémon reference, FYI) and the pharmacy named “Mr. Popper’s Pills.”
I think the only real reason I keep playing Tiny Tower is to create a bigger tower than my Game Center peers. And really, that’s less a competition of skill than a race to see who gets bored last. I could probably say more about Tiny Tower, but I think my summary has all the pertinent information. Now if you’ll excuse me, my sushi shop has run out of tuna rolls. Again.