Tiny Tower By Mobage [Game Review]

Tiny Tower
It is business as usual for Mobage with Tiny Tower: Build your own skyscraper with this game by constructing residential apartments and stores, and expand your empire into the skies above!

My tower.

The game is a feast for the eyes- a palette of colourful pixels and yawning characters will brighten up your day. When you construct a level, you get to choose between building a residence and a store. There are also 5 different types of stores to choose from: retail, food, services (e.g. barber, pet shop), recreation and creative (e.g. wood works, soda brewing).

This game is very basic, so you do not have to worry about the cost as long as you have coins available. You'll make it back easily since the game is designed for indefinite play.

Running your stores
The most time consuming activity of this game must be stocking and restocking your shelves. Every store gets to sell 3 different items for the 3 different employees hired. Stocks run out in a matter of hours, and restocking lasts anywhere from 5 mins to 3 or more hours.

You will get a notification when your restocking is done. However, you have to pay careful attention to your dwindling stocks. You are not notified when stocks run out, but only when all items are sold out. Then your store closes till the next time you play the game, and so you won't make any money.

In the example below, you will have to press tuna sushi to stock it in your store. After 8 minutes of virtual stocking, you will get a notification telling you to reopen the app to stock it.

Mm, sushi.

Hire workers: 
Your employees come from your residences in the same building. It is every employer's dream- they live, and work for you! They however, have preferences in where they want to work, and if you successfully match their dream job to the store in which they are employed, you get one very happy character and a bonus buck. There are however no penalties if they are unhappy with their jobs.

A Rose dressed like a cactus.

Tips: 

• Upgrade your lift! You only get one lift, and you receive 'assignments' like random visitors who will ask you to scroll them up to a particular floor on the tower. By upgrading the lift, you will travel much faster and ease some frustration in earning that few extra coins. 
• Invest some bucks in repainting homes, and dress your characters living in the same flat in similar colours for better organisation. 
• Don't be afraid to evict residents if their stats are not as high as you would like them to be. I think there is reasonable cause to evict anybody whose stats are all below 6.
• Save your VIPs for another time- don't be in a hurry to use them. The VIPs are characters who can speed up your construction or restocking time, celebrities who increase demand for your products when you deliver them into a specific store via the lift etc. 
• Build stores first then residences. Every additional floor costs more and more to build. Building stores ahead of residences means you will always have that extra bit of income generating in the background, than 5 characters idling around doing nothing! 

So, all in all, play this game if 

• You like cute games. 
• You like having your own tower (who doesn't, anyway?)
• You like games to play with for hours, but easy to leave behind during busy periods. 
• You want to easily return to the game when you eventually feel like it. (It is perfectly fine not to play Tiny Towers for a few days, and then go back to it to revive the game.)

Check out  my review of Pocket Planes here.