Tiny Tower

I have yet to talk about any mobile games in this blog, and I never really intended to as I don't really count them among my backlog. This can mostly be attributed to the fact that most mobile games have no win condition. They're designed to be a quick distraction you can use to pass the time while you're on a bus or possibly sitting on the terlet.

However, I feel compelled to describe my experience with "Tiny Tower". There's something about Nimblebit games that suck you in against your will. It happened with "Pocket Planes", it happened with "Tiny Tower". I remember telling people multiple times that it is absolutely no fun but for some reason I keep playing it.

First, let me describe what "Tiny Tower" actually is. It's a management game. You are in charge of a tower in which you will build floor upon floor infinitely toward the sky. That's basically it.

You have a lobby and an empty floor, to start, to put either a residential apartment area, food establishment, retail store, recreation location, service, or creative business. You move people, called Bitizens, into your residences, but they can't just spend all their time holed up at home. These motherfuckers have needs...like Froyo. Build it and they will come.

The Froyo won't function without workers though. That's fine. I have a whole floor of people loafing in the residence I have renamed Shithole Apts. Swish. Each Bitizen you assign to an establishment will unlock a new commodity that is sold there, with three being the maximum number of workers at any one location.

Choose a product to purchase and after waiting an inordinately long amount of time, it will be ready to stock. Lather, rinse, repeat and your shop will be fully stocked with all three available items. But what's this? Eileen Miller hates her job at the Frozen Yogurt stand, as evidenced by her frowny face. I would be a terrible human being to allow her to continue this unfulfilling digital existence. She just won't be happy unless she's working in the recreation industry. It is her dream to work at a bowling alley. Dream big, Eileen.

Well, I'm raking in the frozen yogurt money and can build another story to this tower. I'll build a random recreation business, so I can whisk Eileen away from her personal hell.

What? It's going to take 14 hours to build this?!

Wow...this game is really no fun at all, yet I keep checking to see if my inventory needs to be restocked. I reorder and restock the shelves as necessary as construction of my new floor trudges on. If I leave these bastards to their own devices, we sell out of product, and they all go home. Get back to work you loafs.

That seems to be the key to the addictive quality of these games. It requires constant management. It's not fun, but it requires you to check up on your Bitizens numerous times during the day lest your whole tower ecosystem grind to a halt. Everything takes time to build or restock, and this keeps you coming back. For the impatient out there, you can speed this up though, with TOWER BUX! You can gain these slowly by playing the game or you can buy them immediately with real moneys. It's genius really... Who wants to wait 15 hours to build a Hat Shop? I got shit to do. (Note: I have never spent money on microtransactions, and I don't intend to, but there are apparently people out there that are making this monetization system feasible or it wouldn't exist. Right? Right.)

Anyway, I waited the whole time, used TOWER BUX I accumulated in-game, or used the various VIPs that arrived in my lobby to speed up the process when I chose, without spending actual money and slowly built up a total of 38 floors. I even went home on vacation and kept playing it. All while I was there, I tried to explain to my Mom why this game was terrible and that I wasn't quite sure why I kept playing. The Brainy Gamer wrote an article which echoed my experience of forced unfun. (You can read that here. He's way more eloquent than I and curses much less, if you're into that sort of thing.)

"Tiny Tower" is a hamster wheel. When you get enough money, you can build more floors, which require more workers, which require more residential areas to house them, which requires more floors, and so on and so forth. I was trying to form some sort of exit strategy because I wasn't enjoying myself but couldn't quite tear myself away. The way I usually do away with a game is to beat it. How was I to get that feeling of accomplishment in this sort of game?

My only hope were the missions. There were only...75 of them. *gulp* These missions require you to collect a certain amount items for a particular event and only one could be active at a time. Example: The "A Day at the Beach" mission requires 900 Sandals from a Shoe Store, 13,500 Tournaments from a Volleyball Club, and 1,350 Jumbo Swirls from a Frozen Yogurt. I had all those establishments, so I accepted the mission and started collecting. After finishing it, I found two others that required businesses I already had plus a Pub, which I didn't have. Therefore, I set out to build a Pub.

Upon building the Pub and completing those two missions, I looked at the remaining missions and thought, "What the hell am I doing?" It was like King Théoden coming out of the fog of control created by Gríma Wormtongue.

It no longer held any interest for me. I've been "Tiny Tower" free for three days. "Tiny Tower" is not a game. It is a constant obligation in the guise of a game, and I'm glad to be rid of it.