I admit without shame that I was a huge Poké-nerd back in Pikachu's heyday. The explosion of Pokémon's popularity coincided with my sophomore year of high school, and being nerdy enough to know my cool-kid rep was in the negatives even before I started lugging around a Pokédex with my textbooks, I wore Pokémon t-shirts and evangelized the games and cartoon without a care. I also saw new Pokémon movies on opening night and, surrounded by squirmy kiddles and their irritated parents, broke out in wild applause and cheers when the Nintendo logo appeared on the screen, which prompted all the kids to whoop and holler along with me (and the parents to stare at me with such loathing that I wanted to crawl into the nearest Poke-ball). There is, however, one immediately noticeable difference between MonTowers ~Legend of Summoners'~ [ Free ] critters and Nintendo's kid-friendly goldmine. Amid the fantasy- Read More

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines. As Nimblebit's Pocket Planes continues to barrel through its beta period, we've had a chance to try out one of its new features. It's been added since our GDC preview and we're pretty sure you're going to like it. You know how Tiny Tower [Free] and Pocket Frogs [Free] have missions you can complete—stock this much of certain items, or breed certain colors and patterns of frogs? Pocket Planes is going to have missions, too, but they're competitive. For these ones, you're going to need a little help from your friends. Or rather, your flight crew. A new Flight Crew challenge will be posted every so often—maybe twice a week. The challenges look to be pretty simple: deliver as many jobs (pieces of cargo and passengers) to a certain city somewhere in the world. You can't just take any old thing, though. Everything in the Read More

...vicio más tonto que me he pillado con Tiny Tower http://t.co/6fvi7dW3... Read More

NimbleBit's David Marsh kindly met with me at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this week. While he's not interested in discussing the Zynga/Tiny Tower fiasco (a game he first showed me at GDC last year), the public's interest in that story is understandable. Zynga is a social company that uses analytics and testing to make its games easy to play and monetize. However, Marsh says he and his developer brother don't bother with a lot of analytics. "Part of the thing," he admits, "is that we don't try to figure it out a lot, because that's not the most fun part of making the game for us." NimbleBit consists of the two brothers, another programmer hired last August and David's wife, who manages support. The group is happiest while making good games that monetize themselves because users enjoy them so much. That's a contrast to many of the social and freemium Read More

When news hit last month that social gaming giant Zynga decided to release their own clone of Tiny Tower [Free] on the App Store, we were all over it. NimbleBit has a massive fan following in our community, so it wasn't much of a surprise to see each subsequent story generating so much interest. Well, Dream Heights [Free] is now out of its Canadian "beta" stage, and is available for free on the US App Store if you want to see what the fuss is all about. Unsurprisingly, so far the game has been met with overwhelmingly negative iTunes reviews as users who are wise to this whole fiasco post their feelings on the game. Not everyone hates the game though. Zynga Senior User Experience Designer John Lerma mentions in his iTunes review: Meanwhile, Zynga Producer Matthew Ott writes in his review: Now that you no longer need to be a Read More

By Carter Dotson on February 7th, 2012 On this episode of The Portable Podcast, host Carter Dotson and co-host Rob Rich discuss the rash of cloning that's hit the App Store lately, along with recent releases that they have enjoyed. Dark Elves aren’t evil, they’re just misunderstood. On This Episode: Who We Are: Music: How to Listen: Apps Mentioned on This Episode: FREE! Released: 2011-06-23 :: Category: Games FREE! Released: 2012-01-19 :: Category: Games FREE! Released: 2012-01-10 :: Category: Games $4.99 Released: 2012-02-02 :: Category: Games FREE! Released: 2012-02-02 :: Category: Games Read More

I hope NimbleBit believes in the saying "There's no such thing as bad publicity," because they've certainly been the target of a boat-load of industry drama lately with not one but three individual TinyTower [Free] knock-off "betas" landing on the Canadian App Store in the last week. First there was Zynga's Dream Heights [Free], then Glu's Small Street [Free], and this morning we discovered another clone by Glu, Lil' Dungeon [Free]. The main innovation of Lil' Dungeon seems to be that you're building down instead of up. Aside from some new graphics, just like the other clones, all of the gameplay elements are identical. What's more interesting than Glu mashing the green button on their copy machines is that Zynga actually has responded to the recent controversy. VentureBeat not only scored a interview with Mark Pincus, Zynga's chief executive of social games, they also managed to snag a copy of a Read More

Börsen-Browser-Bude Zynga kopiert mit Dream Heights (kostenlos; US-Link) die Gameplay-Konzepte von Tiny Tower (kostenlos; universal; App Store-Link), einem Freemium-Hit des vergangenen Sommers, mit dem zwei Brüder ihren Lebensunterhalt bestreiten. Ian und David Marsh ‘gratulieren‘ der ‘inspirierten’ Neuveröffentlichung mit einem Augenzwinkern. Es spricht nichts dagegen, auf erfolgreiche (Spiel-)Ideen aufzubauen, anzuknüpfen und diese mit eigenem Kniff zu verbessern – im App Store finden sich viele (hunderte) solcher Beispiele. Tiny Tower selbst greift ‘Impluse’ von SimTower oder Yoot Tower auf. Wer allerdings nur ein paar Stunden Zeit in neue Grafiken investiert, muss damit rechnen, auf die Finger geklopft zu bekommen. Read More

Per the nearly standard operating procedure of "beta testing" wide-scale free to play titles, Canadians and "Canadians" can now get their hands on Zynga's latest iOS game, Dream Heights [Free]. It doesn't take more than a few quick glances at the screenshots and iTunes text to realize that Zynga has firmly focused their copy machines on NimbleBit's Tiny Tower [Free]. It's really incredibly just how blatant of a clone this is, as Zynga has gone far beyond just copying the premise of the game- They even directly lifted the restocking mechanics, elevator upgrades, UI elements, and more. NimbleBit's Ian Marsh has taken to twitter with an image that perfectly exhibits just how shamelessly Zynga's "inspiration" is for this new free to play title of theirs with side by side screenshots and a hefty amount of trademarked NimbleBit snark. Take a look: It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. Read More

By Carter Dotson on January 3rd, 2012 On this episode of The Portable Podcast, host Carter Dotson assembles a panel of podcast regulars to discuss their favorite titles of the past year. You’re the best around! No one’s ever gonna keep you down! On This Episode: Who We Are: Music: How to Listen: Apps Mentioned on This Episode: FREE! $0.99 Released: 2011-09-01 :: Category: Games $1.99 Released: 2011-11-17 :: Category: Games $0.99 $6.99 Released: 2011-01-25 :: Category: Games $0.99 $9.99 iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad Released: 2011-01-25 :: Category: Games $0.99 Released: 2011-02-10 :: Category: Games $0.99 $4.99 Released: 2011-04-21 :: Category: Games $1.99 Released: 2011-06-01 :: Category: Games $4.99 Released: 2011-12-15 :: Category: Games FREE! Released: 2011-06-23 :: Category: Games FREE! Released: 2011-08-04 :: Category: Games $0.99 Released: 2011-04-28 :: Category: Games $1.99 Released: 2011-04-20 :: Category: Games $1.99 Released: 2011-04-07 :: Category: Games $2.99 Released: 2009-05-11 Read More

In case you've been busy spending the holidays with friends and family, or just cross-country skiing to the North Pole, here's our recap of last week's epic, five-part series on the 50 best iOS games of 2011. How many do you own? #50: Temple Run In 2011, independent developers Imangi Studios had their biggest hit yet: The endless running game Temple Run. A cross between Canabalt and Raiders of the Lost Ark, in Temple Run you have to make split-second decisions and quick button presses to try to survive. The combinations of simple swipes and tilt controls, plus Temple Run's freemium pricing and stylish 3D graphics, made it one of the year's best high-score survival games. Our Bottom Line: Now is your chance to be Indiana Jones. #49: Tapper World Tour After nearly 30 years, the Tapper license awoke from a drunken stupor to revel in the App Store. Tapper World Read More

Here it is: Our Top 10 games of 2011. It's been an amazing year for mobile games and technology, and these 10 games represent what we think are the most fun you can have on an iPhone or iPad in 2011. Tell us your year-end favorites in the comments section, and get ready for a spectacular 2012! #10: Mage Gauntlet Mage Gauntlet is Rocketcat Games' most ambitious title yet, and all that effort paid off magnificently. Infused with the developer's delightful humor and pixel-perfect 16-bit art, Mage Gauntlet gives you a satisfying array of attacks and puts you up against hordes of enemies. Before long you'll be performing a dance of death, slaughtering baddies with every step as you make your way through the levels. The game has tons of content and lots of replay value, making it one of the year's best for anyone with an iOS device. Our Bottom Read More

By Carter Dotson on December 30th, 2011 As 2011 winds down to a close, 148Apps takes a look back at our picks for the top five games released this past year. In what was another fantastic year in the world of iOS gaming, we are here to bring you the titles that we, the staff of 148Apps, thought were the best of the year. Here are our top five picks for the Best Games of 2011: : Listening to some of the most prominent voices in gaming journalism right now, so-called ‘social’ and ‘free to play’ games are the scourge of the industry, and will bring forth the end of gaming as we know it, or at least a cowpocalypse. Of course, the problem is more that these games tend to be designed for nefarious purposes, to try and suck every last penny out of players’ wallets. Tiny Tower was one Read More

I love video games as much as the next guy, as long as the next guy doesn’t spend hours a day grinding through the upper levels of Call of Duty or the latest Super Mario creation. So for casual mobile gamers, as promised in this week’s App Smart column, here’s a list of my top 10 new iPhone gaming apps for 2011. Scribblenauts Remix ($1) A beautifully-designed cartoon adventure game for children, Scribblenauts Remix is the mobile version of the popular Nintendo DS title. (For ages 9 and older.) Where’s My Water? ($1) A charming, light game in which you help an alligator find water in increasingly complicated conditions. (For ages 4 and older.) Tiny Tower (free) Build a tower within the limits of your ever-changing virtual budget. It’s creative problem solving, wrapped in graphically cute packaging. (For ages 4 and older.) Tiny Wings ($1) An adorable, seductively simple and addictive Read More

Inside Mobile Apps has an interview with the winners of Apple's choice for best iPhone game of the year, David and Ian Marsh of NimbleBit. I was a huge fan of their freemium title Pocket Frogs, but it's their latest release, Tiny Tower, that has earned a lot of solid accolades (not to mention a bunch of in-app purchase money). I talked to the guys way back at GDC earlier this year before Tiny Tower came out, so it's good to get an update like this on where they're at now. Tiny Tower's been downloaded over 7 million times so far, and the brothers expect it to clear 8 million by the end of the year. And not only are people getting the game, but they're playing it, with nearly a million daily active users at peak, and around 600,000 right now. That's phenomenal for an app of this kind. Their Read More

When it comes to forecasting the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is in-app purchasing, or IAP for short. We've been having a house debate recently about the proper role of IAP in game marketing and development. Some companies have been treating their customers as cash cows using IAPs. We find that attitude unacceptable. That said, many games (including Tiny Tower, Battle Nations and others) use IAPs responsibly and well. We feel IAP by itself isn't bad, but some companies (and let us be clear, those are actually the minority of companies) put in-app purchases over game play instead of the other way around. Our group take is that IAP, economically speaking, rewards bad game design. Developers can make more money from games with a high initial fun factor Read More

Apple released its iTunes Rewind 2011 and App Store Rewind 2011 today, the company’s annual lists detailing of the top selling apps, music, TV shows, movies and podcasts for the year. This year, the biggest winner on the apps front was Angry Birds, which ran away with the number one spot on the iPhone and iPad in all categories except top free iPhone app, which was awarded to Facebook. Apple also selects its own favorite applications, and one of our preferred apps, Instagram, won the honor of being Apple’s “iPhone App of the Year.” Angry Birds, which is available on iOS as both a paid and free application, not only dominated the year-end lists as the number one download in several cases, it also occupied additional slots on multiple lists for its spinoffs, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio. Several other games also appeared on the year-end listings, including Fruit Ninja, Read More

Apple has released the 2011 edition of its annual iTunes Rewind feature in the iTunes Store. The piece offers a look at what the company has judged to be the best music, movies, TV shows, apps, books, and podcasts of 2011. Some of the notable winners: Apps: - iPhone App of the Year: Instagram - iPhone Game of the Year: Tiny Tower - iPad App of the Year: Snapseed - iPad Game of the Year: Dead Space for iPad Music: - Song of the Year: Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People - Artist of the Year: Adele - Album of the Year: Wasting Light by Foo Fighters Books: - Best Novel: The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obeht - Best Nonfiction: Boomerang by Michael Lewis It's important to note that these awards are all for the United States iTunes Store. In some cases, Apple gave awards to different items in different Read More

Another day of the holiday season brings a whole lot of great downloads from the App Store. What we saw yesterday was mostly new releases, but here's a list of free games (and free updates) you might want to check out. Once again, there's more there to play than you'll need all weekend. Things are picking up as this holiday season gets into swing. Stay tuned, because I'm sure we'll see lots more of this over the next few weeks. Read More

...do you have the ipod/iphone app Tiny Towers? http://t.co/xdV4BZUT... Read More

...do you have the ipod/iphone app Tiny Towers? http://t.co/xdV4BZUT... Read More

...do you have the ipod/iphone app Tiny Towers? http://t.co/xdV4BZUT... Read More

It's not like we needed more reasons to love brothers David and Ian Marsh of NimbleBit. First off, they make terrific free (and lucrative) games like Pocket Frogs and Tiny Tower. Second, they're super nice and very supportive in the developer community. Third, they're humble and smart, keeping their company small and focusing on just developing good games rather than growing into a megacorporation. And now there's another reason to love NimbleBit: They're darn generous. Sign on San Diego reports that the pair have gifted over $30,000 of equipment, including 35 iPad 2s, to an elementary school in their hometown. The principal of the school is the Marshes' old technology teacher, and he inspired them so much that they wanted to give a little something back, by putting this tech in the hands of elementary school students early. What a great story. The school will use the iPads to manage their Read More

By Leanna Lofte, Saturday, Aug 13, 2011 | Every week a few of us from team TiPb will bring you our current favorite, most fun and useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they’re fair game. To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break! Especially with school starting back tomorrow, I figured it would be smart to get it in early. Now put it somewhere safe!!! I jumped on the Google+ bandwagon early. I never liked Facebook, and I was tiring of Twitter. If you haven’t already tried Google+, there’s a great forum thread where you can get an invite, if you can’t already get yourself in there. The app works a lot like the web client, only it Read More

On this episode of The Portable Podcast, host Carter Dotson and guest co-host Rob LeFebvre discuss the iPad and Android tablets, along with the rise of free to play games on the App Store. Kickin’ it old-school. On This Episode: Who We Are: Music: How to Listen: Apps Mentioned in this Episode: FREE! Released: 2011-06-23 :: Category: Games FREE! Released: 2011-07-26 :: Category: Games $1.99 Released: 2011-07-21 :: Category: Games Read More

If you've been playing the app Tiny Tower as much as I have (and since it's free and great, you probably should be), you have likely imagined yourself as a Bitizen, one of the little residents of the floor-by-floor residential and commercial construction that is your own tiny tower. And thanks to this tutorial by developer and pixel art creator Brandon Trebitowski, you can make that a reality. He's essentially reverse-engineered the design of the little Bitizen characters (though he admits they're not in as much detail as the Retina Display-enabled game versions), and walks you through step-by-step in Photoshop how to make one of your own design. All it takes is some Photoshop grid shadings and a little coloring, so you don't even have to be a super great artist (or like me, have any design skill at all) -- just keep tweaking it until it looks right. I love Read More

Welcome to our weekly installment of Picks of the Week at iSource where we provide our expanded coverage of Apple accessories and applications  Here we will promote our favorite iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac and Apple TV related items, as well as bring you occasional tips and tricks.  Hopefully many of our favorite items will also be of interest to you. Please feel free to comment on our selections, and suggest picks of your own.  Check out this week’s picks after the break My pick of the week is crack. No wait… Sorry. My pick of the week is Tiny Tower, which might as well be crack because if you download this (freemium) game and start playing it, you can pretty much kiss your family, friends and job goodbye. The premise is simple. Build a tower, add some people to work in the shops and keep those shops stocked so you can Read More

07.15.11        App Score: 9/10    RC Plane 2 flight simulator app for iPhone is a chance to relive childhood dreams. Over the years, my fear of flight has left, but my interest in planes has remained and therefore I have logged my fair share of hours in various flight simulators. One that I’ve really enjoyed lately is the app for iPhone and iPad. Its combination of difficulty, plane selections and interesting camera views have made for a lot of entertainment. If you’re new to this type of app, then The RC Plane 2 iOS flight simulator will be a bit difficult to jump straight into gameplay. I would suggest starting out with the flight school, which will bring you through everything from taking off to landing and the basics of controlling a 3 channel and 4 channel RC plane. While taking off is the easiest, coming down and Read More

There’s a lot of enthusiasm around Kairosoft right now and rightly so. The studio has just released another banger in the form of Pocket Academy [$3.99 / Lite], a cutesy school simulation game that puts you in the shoes of administrator, planner, and coordinator. Prior, it wooed us all with two other simulation games, Game Dev Story [$3.99 /Lite]and Hot Springs Story [$3.99 / Lite]. Because of the language barrier, we don’t get to talk to the studio as much as we’d like, which is why we're just as surprised as you when a new game hits the US App Store. Those surprise drops and relative quiet periods of non-Kairosoft news might be at an end -- Kairosoft is starting to talk to the US audience as a whole. The studio has set up a Facebook page and it’s currently doing its best to keep fans interested by letting slip some neat bits Read More

On this episode of The Portable Podcast, host Carter Dotson talks about some new games with Brett Nolan of AppAddict.net, and discusses the game Hard Lines with developer Andrew Smith of Spilt Milk Studios. Now with more snarky one-liners! On This Episode: Who We Are: Music: How to Listen: Apps Mentioned in this Episode: FREE! Released: 2011-06-23 :: Category: Games $0.99 $6.99 Released: 2011-06-30 :: Category: Games $0.99 Released: 2011-06-09 :: Category: Games Read More

On this week’s BONUS episode of TAS, Eli and Brad grill the brothers Marsh, the two co-owners of the two-man studio NimbleBit. You know these guys, right? We’ve been raving about Tiny Tower [Free] for a couple of weeks now, and in the past, we’ve said many a good word about their other titles like Pocket Frogs [Free], Scoops [Free] and more. We hit several awesome points in an otherwise offbeat discussion revolving around the studio, how it got started, forgotten NimbleBit games like , what informs the Marshs’ idea of how to execute a free-to-play game, and Jon Romero. Turns out that even though Dave worked with the man, he never got the chance to oil his hair. Seems like a missed opportunity to us. There's a number of ways you can listen, either by subscribing either on iTunes or the Zune Marketplace, direct to our RSS feed. Alternatively, if Read More

Tiny Tower: A free 8-bit style game that lets you channel your inner landlord. You build floors on a tower to attract "bitizens" to live in it and then control their lives (manage, hire, give a job, evict). It's like SimCity but actually fun. Fotopedia North Korea: Eric Lafforgue, a photograph, went inside the veil of North Korea and took thousands of pictures for Fotopedia to show the world a little glimpse of what the oddest country in the world looks like. He was under tight supervision, so he couldn't dig deep but the app is well worth a look and includes interactive maps, slideshows, wallpapers and favorites to easily navigate, bookmark, organize and share these amazing pictures. Avadon: It's a super old school, classically deep RPG game with over 40 hours of gameplay. Like any good RPG, the narrative is great, the characters develop and the adventures are pretty much Read More

...Tower เกมสร้างตึกสนุก ฟรีสำหรับ iPhone และ iPad http://bit.ly/kk85mw #flashfly... Read More

...@flashfly: Tiny Tower เกมสร้างตึกสนุก ฟรีสำหรับ iPhone และ iPad http://bit.ly/kk85mw #flashfly... Read More

Since NimbleBit's Tiny Tower [Free] launched last week, it has become their most successful game yet. As of this writing, the game has been downloaded 1,230,688 times and is seeing a surprisingly high 2.6% in-app purchase conversion rate which is nearly double that of their previous title, Pocket Frogs [Free]. Over 18 million sessions have been played with an average length of 9.3 minutes. In all, players have played just under 320 years of Tiny Tower. Even though Tiny Tower has exceeded NimbleBit's expectations, not everything went as planned with its launch. Namely, an irritating crash bug that didn't appear in testing. This has since been fixed in an update that launched today, so if you've had crashing issues in Tiny Tower, download this update ASAP. Another update is also in the works that will apply some tweaks and address some other minor issues affecting a small number of players. Following Read More

Developer Ian Marsh of NimbleBit has been sharing some interesting facts and figures on Twitter about his new app Tiny Tower. Perhaps the most impressive overall is that the pixelated freemium tower simulation game has already gained a million players, despite only being on the App Store for four days. There's a large amount of engagement with these users as well; Marsh has also tweeted that each user is logging in for a number of different sessions during the day (the game encourages you to come back often to re-stock the various stores in your tower). That's added up to a lot of playtime -- over a quarter century and counting. Perhaps most importantly for NimbleBit, Tiny Tower is seeing about 2.6 percent of its users actually invest in in-app purchases, which is about double the standard amount for Marsh's other big freemium title, Pocket Frogs. Obviously NimbleBit hasn't released actual Read More

...else out there on #TinyTower ? :P add me on GameCenter http://is.gd/HC6qXc #iOS... Read More

Browsing the App Store this weekend?  If so, here are ten applications released recently. Also available for the iPad, this is a tower defense-style strategy game with 3D graphics, mini games and Game Center support.  Currently 50% off.  $1.99/£1.19. The third in the Treasure Seekers series from G5 Entertainment, the game has 48 levels of hidden object fun and a choice of casual or enhanced game modes.  The app is a free trial version, and the full game must purchased in-app.  An HD iPad version is also available.  Free. A timer app which can keep track of everything from how long the oven needs to be on, to how long until your passport needs renewing!  Set up to 64 timers then customize the name and alert tone.  $0.99/£0.59. A universal app for the iPhone and iPad, here you build and maintain your own tower block.  Includes Game Center support and in-app Read More

Tiny Tower es un nuevo juego gratuito, con unos gráficos estilo pixel art, que nos propone la idea de construir nuestro propio rascacielos. Es un juego al estilo Farmville (para que os hagáis una idea), en el que tendremos que ir ganando dinero para contruir nuevas plantas y colocar diferentes negocios y viviendas, que harán que tengamos nuevos trabajadores e ingresos. Así que empezaremos con un edificio bajito, pero poco a poco iremos ampliando su altura y nuestras ganancias. El juego está muy bien acabado, tanto a nivel visual como a nivel jugable. Por ejemplo, podremos acceder al “Bitbook” donde veremos los comentarios de los habitantes del edificio o recibir visitas VIP’s, que darán lugar a incrementos de las ventas u otras ventajas. Disponible: App Store Precio: Gratuito Read More

I actually played Tiny Tower for the first time back at GDC this year -- the guys at NimbleBit kindly showed me an early version of it while they were in the middle of designing the game. The title itself is now out and finished on the App Store, and after having played it for about a week already (thanks to a press preview), I can say it's an amazing title that's made even better by the fact that it's completely free to install and play. It's very much like the old SimTower game in that you create and run a tower filled with little characters called Bitizens. You can build residential floors to move Bitizens into, and then you can put them to work on other floors that fill out certain categories, like retail floors and services and recreation areas. You can assign three Bitizens to work on a certain Read More