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.

Teeny Tiny Towers

So I figured to go along with the whole video game aspect of my blog...I thought I would do some posts about the different apps I like to play. I carry my iPhone around everywhere with me...and so it's no surprise that if I'm not doing anything else, that I've got my iPhone in hand playing one of the multitude of apps that I have installed on there to keep me constantly preoccupied. 

The first app I'll talk about is the most recent one I started consistently playing. I even got my wife into playing it...and I'm pretty sure she enjoys it as well. It's called Tiny Tower (linked for your viewing pleasure)...and no, it's not an RPG or "guy" type of game. It's really a pretty simple Sim-type of game where you build a single skyscraper tower and manage the people that live there, mostly just by giving them jobs on specific floors. You can choose to turn each new floor that you build into a residence (which adds 5 new residents to the tower) or into a workplace of one of five different types of work (food, service, recreation, retail, and creative). Each workplace can produce three different products...with each product taking anywhere from a few minutes to many hours for your workers to complete and make available to the tower visitors.

For personalization, you can customize and change the outfits of residents/workers in your tower. You can also customize the color of every floor...which is helpful if you're OCD like me and need to have things matching up "just right". You can really spend as little or as much time as you want in the game. While your workers are plugging away at their jobs, an occasional visitor will come to your tower...and you have the opportunity to control the elevator and whisk them up to their requested floor.

Here are some images from my phone showing my game in progress...

 

The game currently is FREE and has a 4+ rating from over 100k raters. You can purchase in-game bucks to do different special things, but you don't really need to purchase any bucks to play the game. But it also doesn't hurt to occasionally support your app-creators by purchasing at least one of the in-game purchases...especially if you really like the game.

The game has certain missions and achievements you can complete, if you like doing those kinds of things. There's not much social aspect to the game, but you can link up with your friends using GameCenter and then help each other complete some of the missions.

You can also share your tower with others...like this...

my tiny tower

If you click on the link, you can see the image of my whole tower as it was in my game. If nothing else, you can download the app for free...check it out...and the delete if it's not your thing. That's the great thing about free apps.

Happy gaming everyone!