Tag Archives mobile

I had a bit of time on the train back from Berlin this week and checking Twitter on my iPhone I saw a couple of the people I follow mentioning Tiny Tower and the fact that they were sorely tempted to (or had already made) in app purchases. I was curious to see what the mechanic was in this game that was getting people over this typically high friction barrier.

I downloaded it and got started with the 21 step tutorial that introduces all the core concepts in a couple of minutes, then spent the rest of my journey building floors, opening businesses, getting “Bitizens” into apartments and their dream jobs, stocking products, earning “Tower Bux”, and generally cultivating an unhealthy addicition to the thing.

After using it for a few days, I’d say it’s a masterpiece of mobile gaming. Trying to identify why, I broke it down into these key areas and their contributing factors:

Concept

• The tower is ideally suited to the device. The portrait format is the orientation that you’re most comfortable holding your phone in and you can play the game with one hand.
• Game actions are geared towards creating character attachment. You’re ultimate goal is to build a towering skyscraper, but all the decisions you make on the way are how to best fill the needs of your Bitizens based on their skills and the “dream job” they aspire to. Visitors who ask for them by name for various reasons and the different personalities they write with in the “Bitbook” newsfeed humanize them further.

Mechanics

• The simulation runs in realtime, and you can’t complete everything in one session (for example, restocking of floors takes time and you can’t create a queue of products, you must return to the app to restock the next one) so you’re compelled to check in on the status of your tower at intervals. Historically I’ve only ever exhibited this behaviour on my phone with social networking apps Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare.
• The required multitasking between construction, getting Bitizens, stocking businesses and taking advantage of normal and special building visitors keeps the attention-deficient player engaged.

Design

• The bright colours and charming 8-bit graphics give the game individuality and visual appeal, and will push the nostalgia buttons of what I presume is a big demographic of iPhone owners who grew up playing DOS games in the late 80′s/90′s (does anyone remember Jones In The Fast Lane?!)
• The interaction design has smartly stuck to iOS precedents. The menu and prompts are located at the bottom of the screen in easy thumb’s reach, the modal overlay design pattern for the various app tasks is straight out of iOS and the menu view could be an 8-bit skin of your iPhone home screen.
• The sound design has had serious attention. The smooth jazzy music supports the pleasant tone of the game without getting irritating, every floor type has custom sounds (e.g. a retail floor will ring a till when you tap it), and the quiet clinking of coins every time a sale is made provide an incessant audio stream of achievement.

Monetization

• Tiny Tower’s monetization model is setup to leverage gamers impatience to progress. Alongside the standard ingame “Coin” currency there are “Tower Bux”. This premium currency can be used as a catalyst to instantly complete all game tasks that would otherwise require time.
• The premium currency can be earnt through normal gameplay over time; no area of the game is locked off from users, they can invest time rather than dollars to acquire it.
• The further up the tower you go, the longer floor construction takes. The more engaged the player, the higher the time friction gets, ergo the bigger the incentive to purchase Tower Bux.
• The larger the amount of Tower Bux you purchase, the better the exchange rate is.

All in all, an impressively holistic piece of work from a couple of guys that call themselves NimbleBit. Watch the introductory video below, or go and get Tiny Tower here.