Being a free game it’s easy to just download the game and try this game for yourself so I will keep this review short and to the point. Tiny Death Star takes the hugely popular Tiny Tower game and gives it a Star Wars themed make over.
For those unfamiliar with the Tiny Tower mechanic, the game revolves around building a tower floor by floor that includes residential, retail, food, recreation, services, and special, or in this case Imperial. Each floor has a theme so it might be the Mos Isley Catina for the food, Watto’s toys for retail or a workout center for services. Imperial levels are basement levels and include floors such as the interrogation room and the hangar bay.
The gameplay revolves around you operating the elevator and dropping of the slew of both well known characters and aliens races you will recognize. Each level needs to be stocked with stuff from Whomp Rat burgers to wedding licenses. The more stock you sell, the more credits you earn. These credits can buy you additional floors, people, goodies and even a faster lift.
Whilst the game is highly addictive it does has its flaws. It is highly addictive and you will find yourself constantly checking on your creation thanks to its floor of push messages. After turning off this feature you will check it periodically and increase your stock levels, deliver Bitziens (people) to their required floor and build new levels. Every so often you be granted a ‘scene’ where a main character acts out a comedy version of mixed up Star Wars scene. For example, Jar Jar eats a snack dangling down from a rope, and subsequently pulls the ceiling down squashing himself under Jabba the hut. Whilst this is amusing, they are not very frequent.
What dawned on me after a few days (and 20+ levels) is the payment function. Being a free game, there are lots of opportunities to buy credits with real world money. The most expensive in-app purchase is £69 / $100 which would get you enough credits to pretty much unlock everything and buy about 50 levels. This made me think about the long hard slog ahead of me. If having 50 levels and unlocking all the characters and scenes is my goal then how long would it take in slow mode to do it. I calculated around three weeks and a lot of phone checking.
After this I had to weight up the idea of stocking shelves in Tiny Tower or playing a real game. I don’t know if everyone will come to the same realisation as I but at some point most people will stop playing when they see the near endless slog to unlock the different goodies. If that kind of thing floats your boat then you will get hours of fun from Tiny Death Star, however if you want more game for your hard earned hours then this will get boring quickly. I will keep my Death Star ticking over nicely (I am still partly addicted) but when memory is needed for my next title I will have to say goodbye to my busy little space station.
Overall, it’s a lovely looking game with great Star Wars themed chip tunes. It does so many things right in the presentation stakes and you’ll be addicted for hours but ultimately the game mechanic can be a boring after a while. If you spare $100 the get it, spend four hours to complete it and enjoy all the cut scenes then move on to a real game that requires more than just making an elevator go up and down!
Check out the first 20 levels of my Tiny Death Star Below:
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