I have a colossal backlog of games to play. You probably have too. I keep having to force myself to play Saints Row 3, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Deus Ex HR, Space Marine, etc. It's not like I don't enjoy playing any of them, far from it (well, maybe Deus Ex). It's just that they require my full focus and attention, otherwise I can't enjoy them properly. You can't just dip into 16th century Constantinople and half-heartedly punch beggars. It takes a certain investment of time and concentration, otherwise you simply won't get anything out of what is undoubtedly a wondrous experience.
There is one game I am playing an awful lot of, though. To the the extent that I am constructing my day around it in order to maximise my progress in it. Yep, I am playing the shit out of Tiny Tower.
I hadn't even heard of it or its developer NimbleBit until the furore with Zynga and the alleged copyright infringement. Reading about it, iOS's Tiny Tower looked colourful, fun and seemed interesting enough to check out. Especially as it was free.
The premise is simple. You run a skyscraper, building floors with a shop or apartments on each floor. You get "bitizens" to live in the apartments, and have them work in one of your stores. When you earn enough "coins" from selling wares from your shops and rent from bitizens, you can build another floor. Soon enough you'll have a 30 plus floor skyscraper roaring defiance at the petty efforts of gravity to constrain it to the soil. The addiction comes from the staggered restocking of stores and building more floors. Every store can sell up to 3 items, contingent upon how many staff members the store has. Each item restocks in real time, in proportion to how many coins it costs and how many of the items the store stocks each time. This means that you'll pay to restock the Day Spa with facials, for example. For 900 facials, you'll need to pay 416 coins and you have to wait an hour for them to be available. You also need to tap the item when it's finished loading, meaning you have to keep opening Tiny Tower and maintaining your tower if you want to make any coins.
You can speed this process up with "bux", a form of payment you can use to to instantly restock and item or have construction of a floor finished (as well as move in bitizens to apartments). However, bux are rather sparse, being earnt by the frankly tedious ferrying of people up your tower in the elevator, giving bitizens their dream jobs or fully restocking a store. The more stores you have, the more likely it is that you will have the dream job of one of your bitizens, getting you 2 bux. This is counteracted by the game demanding more bux to skip the waiting times, but with each floor you build, the longer you have to wait. For example, my 36th floor won't be finished for another 17 hours, which will set me back a whopping 18 bux to skip.
You can, handily, buy bux using the in game purchase system. You can get a paltry 10 for 69p, 100 for £2.99 (which I'm ashamed to admit, I paid), or get 1000 for a ludicrous £20.99. Even the insane £20.99's worth won't sate your bloodthirsty tower. It won't rest until it has bled you of your time, your bux, your sleep and your soul, draining your very life force until you become a bankrupt and broken husk of the human being you once were, a slavering sycophant bound to the anvil of the ever-burning forge that is Tiny Tower.
The result of all this is that I am constantly checking my phone at regular intervals for this game. It appears charming, has a lovely, friendly look to it and have some lovely little humourous touches. The warm, caring personality of the NimbleBit team really shines through. It's just unfortunate that you have to sacrifice your ability to go more than 10 minutes without checking your phone to play it. And your soul, too, I guess that kind of sucks.
8/10
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