According to Jon-Paul Dumont, the director at Disney's mobile division, "We here at the studio have been big fans of NimbleBit and the Marsh brothers for a while… We had been talking to them about things that would be fun projects and would be the right fit." Thanks to Disney's recent acquisition of LucasArts and the Star Wars licence, what came out from that discussion was a fun merging of one of the most popular casual mobile games Tiny Tower and arguably the best movie franchise in the history of the film-making, Star Wars.
Star Wars: Tiny Death Star is an interesting take on Tiny Tower with Star Wars elements slapped on top of it. In essence, the game plays much like the beloved casual vertical tower game, but this will probably appeal more to fans of the Star Wars universe.
As the story goes, the dark side is trying to build and complete the Death Star, but is running out of money. So the Empire has decided to turn the Death Star into a cash machine by building residential, retail, food, services and various recreational activities to help raise funds. Interestingly, you get plenty of cool Star Wars characters and races that visit your Death Star, and you will chuckle at the sight of them running on a treadmill or eating your pie in your inter-galactic cafe.
You play as the infamous Darth Vader and start the game with a couple of floors, and slowly build your way up. To help you along the way, there will be progressive missions that will slowly teach you the ropes and move you forward. To be honest, I have never played Tiny Tower personally, so these missions really helped with getting used to what I am supposed to do and how to do them. Completing these missions will give you rewards, mostly monetary.
As you build more levels, you also need to hire people (Bitizens) to work in them. This can be accomplished by building residential apartments and using the lift to bring visitors to the appropriate floors. Yes, to those who are familiar with Tiny Tower, the lift makes a comeback with a purpose. Each Bitizen has their own characteristics; some are good with serving food, some are good with sales, so it can be quite interesting to juggle them and put them in their appropriate jobs. Besides that, they also have "Dream Jobs" which, if you play your cards right, will mean that fulfilling the wants and skills of these workers makes them work better and earn more from paying customers.
In addition to managing your Bitizens, you have to of course manage your businesses. You have to manually place an order for each item and business and make sure something is selling all the time in every one of your business for maximum profit and efficiency. The levels can also be upgraded with Bux, NimbleBit's favourite in-game currency, to earn more money.
When you have played a while, you will soon realize that building more floors costs more and more. As this is a free game, I personally think that NimbleBit has found a good balance between those who want to pay and those who refuse to open their wallets. I was never compelled to spend any real money, although I can definitely see why some of the less patient people would.
Overall, the game is not bad. It does get repetitive quickly, and there will be a lot of waiting for orders and construction, and the only thing to keep you occupied is transporting people via the lift to their desired floors. If you are looking for a game that you can really sink your teeth into and play for hours, this is not what you are looking for. Like most of NimbleBit's games, Star Wars: Tiny Death Star is a good game to jump into whenever you have 2 minutes to spare.
If you like Tiny Towers and fancy the Star Wars universe and characters, then pick this game up for free from the Google Play Store. If not, just stick to the original or try one of their other games (ie Pocket Planes/Trains).
