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.

Pocket Planes By Mobage [Game Review]

In this post, I will review a game by Mobage: Pocket Planes. Mobage also developed Tiny Towers, which I will review in a later post.

Like many other games, this game is about doing business and expanding it. Players manage their airlines or their towers, and make money to further expand the business. However, they will also notice that the games are simple and that it is nearly impossible to wind up the business

In general, the pixel art makes the graphics look pleasant and novel, yet lending greater scope of customisation to the player. Players can customise the colour and names of every single thing, which is lovely for organising one's items. What really impressed me was how the pixels were also used to represent pearl necklaces or earrings which can then further customise the characters. This was quite creative.

Left: Pocket Planes, Right: Tiny Tower

Pocket Planes 
What else can this game be about besides buying planes, acquiring parts and airports, and flying them on routes? You will start off with a screen indicating the continent where you want to start the game. For example, I chose Europe to help me to remember where its major cities are, whereas the example below (taken from Google Play) shows America.

The screen below shows a plan enroute to New York. The plan carries both cargo and passengers. You can customise the pilot's clothes and the colour of the plane. Use the arrows to toggle between your different aircrafts.

And you will never experience birds or turbulence... or crying babies.

I'm pretty sure New York doesn't look like this, though. 

At the airport, you can choose what to load on your plane. Certain planes can only load cargo, other planes for passengers and some can handle both jobs. Sometimes it is more profitable to select jobs that pay less, especially if they are heading in the same direction- you get a percentage bonus.

Anne Price is not cargo and is also not on sale, unlike what her name suggests.

You will not need to deal with weather conditions, unless the airport is inaccessible- in which case, you simply select a different route to take. Map your routes by tapping on the airports, but note the amount of profit you will make. Sometimes selecting a different route earns you more money.

Note that the population size is listed below- the bigger the crowd the more expensive buying the airport will be.

No airline is complete without the ability to make or customise your own planes. Mobage uses 'bucks' to achieve this. Bucks are harder to get compared to the golden coins which you earn from flying your planes... You can think of it this way: bucks are generally used to cover your overheads (fixed costs, such as buying the plane) as well as make desirable upgrades to the plane (e.g. reducing weight or increasing fuel capacity to increase profitability), and coins are used for variable costs like expanding the business.

In real life, the prices come with a few zeroes behind.

That's all for the game play, and I'll leave you to discover the rest of the gems. Hint: Check the 'BitBook' for amusing posts by the pixel characters.

Play this game if 

• You enjoy playing games related to running a business. 
• You like cute graphics when playing games. 
• You have always dreamt of owning your own airline. 
• You love to travel and you are delighted to fly virtual planes to various cities.
• You do not mind getting consistent notifications on your phone telling you that your planes have landed every 10 minutes.

Do not play it if 

• You hate games that take up too much of your time. 

Check out my review of Tiny Tower here.