Tower Rip-offs

So I know that I just posted my last blog about the app Tiny Tower. Well, a weird coincidence is that I received an email today from the game company Zynga (for those that don't know...they are the creators of all things FarmVille related). In the email, Zynga provides me all the information about their new app called Dream Heights (I hate to even provide the name for fear that people might try and go find it...although strangely enough, I couldn't even locate the app on their website...only through iTunes). The app description states "Dream up the ultimate tower with retail stores, restaurants, apartments and more." For those that read my last blog post...does that sound a little familiar?

Further investigation shows that there are 5 types of stores...5 residents per floor...3 types of products per store...all of which are exactly like Tiny Tower. I look at the images that Zynga posted...and yeah, even though the game looks a whole lot more fancy/stylized than Tiny Tower is...it's basically the same game. And one of the reasons I really liked Tiny Tower was it's downgraded, pixellated images. I'm just a little bit frustrated. What I see is this huge mega-game corporation crashing in and trying to steal the thunder from the company that created what I thought was a pretty cool game.

Here's a couple of side-by-side images of the the two tower games (Tiny Tower is on the left):

So, of course I feel a little frustrated. Most people don't know, but I've been looking into writing my own game app. Now, ironically, the app I'm trying to build is somewhat based off of an app that I used to play several years ago. The app creators pretty much abandoned the app and you can't play it anymore...but because I liked it so much, I've been on this quest to bring something similar to it back to life. However, I would be very upset if some big-wig game company made a "copy" of my game and started promoting it. I guess I just feel a little sorry for the smaller game company...thinking that one day soon I could be in their shoes.

But enough of that...I did actually download the Zynga app to test it out. Because I didn't want to just bash their game without actually trying it out. I mean, you never know...their game might actually be better. Except that it wasn't really...at least not in my opinion. There were a few differences...there were a few things that I thought were small improvements...there were some things that were in the Tiny Tower app that weren't in the Zynga app (things that I thought should have been there)...and then there some things that Zynga added to their app that I felt were just there with the purpose of making them more money.

All-in-all, I would still recommend the Tiny Tower app over the Zynga one. But if you are wanting two different sim-tower games to play...then the Zynga app is the way for you.