Games you should be playing: Tower Bloxx Deluxe 3D
Tower Bloxx Deluxe 3D is a game made by Digital Chocolate (Chocolate Shop Frenzy and Crazy Penguin Catapult) somewhat reminiscent of Topple, although with more depth and replayability. The game has 4 game modes: Quick Game, Multi-player, Time Challenge, and City Building Mode. The basics of all 4 games are you want to build the tallest, straightest building possible, in hopes of attracting the largest population (people seems to enjoy living in straight, non wobbly, non-collapsing housing for some odd reason). Pieces are loaded by a swinging crane, and you tap to drop the pieces. Perfect drops give you population bonuses, as well as a sturdier tower, while off-center drops cause your tower to sway. REALLY bad drops will knock a couple blocks off your tower, hurting your population score (and we assume, anyone standing at the bottom fo the tower).
For those of you with friends, there’s a Party Multi-player mode.
While all modes are decent, the real game is in the City Building mode, where you attempt to build a thriving metropolis as you advance through different districts, each presenting a different challenge. There’s a fair degree of strategy involved, as tower placement is key to a well populated district. For example, a red tower holds more population than a blue tower, a green tower beats red, while a yellow tower beats green. The tricky part is, red towers can only be placed near blue towers, green towers must be touching both a red and a blue tower, and a yellow tower needs to be placed touching a blue, red, and green tower. You can trash towers and replace as needed, but this puzzle aspect makes for a much more involved and fun game than other simple stacking games.
Above: The District Grid map allows you to figure out the optimal tower placement to reach your population goal.
Like all Digital Chocolate games, the graphics are wonderful. There’s a cohesive art design to all three of their iPhone games thus far, and it is distinctive and engaging for both kids and adults alike.
Issues
I’ve run into a couple stability issues with TBD3D, the game will occasionally quit (although for the most part your progress is saved). Also, listening to your iPod music while playing will sometimes cause the game to quit, but those are minor annoyances sure to be fixed soon, given Digital Chocolate’s track record of quality gaming titles.
The worse your block placement, the more the tower will sway, making future blocks harder to drop.
For me the biggest issue is there is no way to turn off the “vibrate” on the iPhone that occurs when you really mess up tower block placement and cause a building collapse. Vibration is very annoying, and actually kind of loud, so since I do a lot of my playing in bed at night while the Bride of Macenstein sleeps next to me, I’d prefer this to be an option. Obviously for iPod touch users this will not be an issue.
The only other issue I have would be it would be great if the multi-player party mode worked over Wi-Fi, instead of both users needing to hold the same iPhone (but then perhaps I am just not secure enough with my masculinity to crowd next to another 190 pound guy. Oddly I had no problem when playing a girl…).
Yellow Towers are 40-story monsters.
Conclusion
If for some reason you don’t have enough faith in me to plunk down $5.99 on a game on my says so, Digital Chocolate offers a free “Lite” version of Tower Bloxx you can use to get a feel for the game. Tower Bloxx Deluxe 3D is a game you should be playing NOW.
Agreed, the game is quite fun.
However, there’s not a whole lot to it. The city building mode you raved about only has three districts (levels) and once you’re done with that, there’s nowhere else to go. The $5.99 price tag seems kind of steep for such a short game, IMO.