I downloaded Tiny Tower onto my iPhone just out of curiosity last summer. It appeared in the Top 25 Free Apps and unusually almost every reviewer gave it five stars so I thought I'd give it a try. Tiny Tower is created by Niblebit and the aim of the game is to build a tower as high as you can filled with shops and apartments. It uses 2Bit graphics so it is very retro and kind of cute too.

At the start of the game users are given a mini tutorial into how the game works, it's not really a complex game just something you would check into for a five minutes every few hours.

Gameplay

You start of Tiny Tower by earning TowerCoins these can be earned by 'products' that you sell in your shops or by rent from your Bitizen's (people who live in the apartments) . There are also TowerBux which are more harder to earn and available to purchase as an in-app product, they help you to advance further in the game but to be honest, i've completed the game and have never had to purchase as they can be obtained quite often. The game allows you to start with a 'free' apartment. This could be any of the random apartments that is in the game. Once you have your first apartment you need to move people into your apartment, each apartment can hold up to 5 citizens in it. You can either move a Citizen straight away by using 1 TowerBux per citizen or wait until a citizen arrives via the lift. Every so often a citizen will arrive at the bottom of the lift and will ask to be taken to a certain level, you must take that person to the requested level in order to recieve extra coins.

Once you have your first apartment you may also want to purchase a shop, after all you need to be earning some TowerCoins in order to build your tower. Once you have enough coins (directed by a sign at the top of the tower) you will then be able to build a new floor. You are given 6 options for what kind of floor you would like: 1. An apartment, 2. Food Store, 3. Retail Store, 4. Services, 5. Recreational 6, Creative. If you want to create a shop, then you would select numbers 2-6. After you have selected you have to wait for it to be 'completed'. The 'wait' is longer the more advanced you are in the game and more expensive. More advanced users may wait over 3 days for a new floor to be complete were as users early in the game may only wait half and hour.

After the 'floor' has been built, it will then be revealed as to what kind of shop you have. So, if you decided that you wanted a 'Food Store', after the time is up you will be randomly selected one of the number of stores in the 'Food' category (for example, this could be a Smoothie Store, Donut Store, Asian Cuisine, Pizza Place etc) or if you chose 'Retail Store' you may be given a 'Grocery Shop', 'Hat Store', 'Comic Store' etc. At the time of this review there are currently 20 kinds of shops in each category.

Now that you have your shop, you need to emply some staff. Staff may only be employed when they are 'living' in one of your apartments, and only a maximum of three citizens can work in one store. Each store sells only 3 products. When you have 3 staff working, you can sell all three products. This is how you earn coins and earn the money to build more floors/levels in the game. As with buidling floors, you must wait for a 'product' to be made before you can sell it, the time varies for each product. You also need to purchase your producs which then sells for a profit. One of the benefits of the game is that it still 'plays' even when you are not using it. So you may use the app some time later and see you have accumulated many thousands of coins.

Also, each citizen has their own profile, which details their dream job. If you are able to match them to their dream job then you will earn TowerBux and also double the amount of quantites of a product in their store. TowerBux can also be used to increase the level in each store. This allows the quantity of products to be increased and the time in which they are created to be extended which is beneficial for shops that have low quantites and short production times. A top tip would be, if you do have extra TowerBux, then use them for leveling up on the 'Food' stores as these generally have lower quantites and shorter production times and therefore you are always restocking.

The game also offers 'quests' which allow you to earn TowerBux, this is simply by creating a certain amount of selected products in a given time.

I've pretty much summed up the basic aim of the game and I hope I havn't over complicated it for any one as it really is a simple fun and quite addictive game.

They do tend to update the game with new floors every so often but the recent update was the longest gap since the last one that they have done so there are times when you have 'completed' and just re-stock which can be boring. Other than that, one of the better games of the iPhone and suitable for all the family.